Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Stop Suburbanizing Country Music

This hit me so hard! I feel about this performance the way I felt the first time I ever heard Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs harmonize, the first time I heard The Seldom Scene do “Wait A Minute”.

People don’t do this kind of music anymore, it seems like. It’s head over heart, even in bluegrass these days.

It’s funny: People who are embarrassed by country music’s humble origins keep trying to drag it uptown, polish it up, so their faux-cosmopolitan friends will feel safe around it. I grew up on honky tonk music and “Hee Haw”, even as I was being classically trained as a musician, and I like my country music just fine like this.

Here’s the Foghorn Stringband with “You Didn’t Have To Go”.

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