Rhinofy-Speed Trap Town
They say we should listen to “24 Frames,” but if you do so you’ll get an appreciation of Jason Isbell equivalent to the one of Ryan Adams if you listen to “New York, New York.”
That’s right, they were both in bands that didn’t work out for them and went solo and suddenly got acclaim, Ryan Adams on an indie label with “Heartbreaker,” with its masterpiece “My Winding Wheel.” But if you listen to “Gold,” the follow-up, you’ll discover “New York, New York” was one of the weakest songs on the LP. an album-opening ditty made to appeal to the casual listener, and neither Adams nor Isbell is for those driving by, they’re for the cognoscenti, the diehard fan. But labels are flummoxed and they point to the catchy tune when anyone who believes knows that the track on “Gold” is the slow burner “Nobody Girl,” and the track on Jason Isbell’s “Something More Than Free” is “Speed Trap Town,” a song that no one writes about that stopped me in my tracks when I was listening to it way past midnight in the Santa Monica Mountains.
We’re looking for something human, that touches us, that helps us make sense of this complicated world, that makes us feel not so alone. But the music business has given up on this paradigm, it’s just too difficult, because if you take the non-pop road you’ve got to deliver on an “A” level, you can’t fake it if you want to survive. But for those of us who live for the sound, who are waiting to be soothed and made to feel life is worth living, these are the tracks we’re looking for, the ones that cannot be categorized that ooze truth and the whole ball of wax we call life.
Well it’s a Thursday night, but there’s a high school game
That’s what you do when you live in nowheresville, go to high school sports, even though you’ve graduated and you no longer care, if you ever did. But there are so few options. Thank god for the internet, used to be the small town was literally death for those who stayed, emotional, if not physical. If only you could get up the gumption to leave…
Sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name
The boonies will make you an alcoholic. I know, I lived there. There’s nothing to do. First you drink for the excitement, then you drink to get away from your everyday life, and then you drink in the hope of having the greatest night of your life and when you wake up hung over the next morning having failed in your quest the depression is so overpowering all you can do is lie in bed with the phone turned off and wait for the darkness.
And it never did occur to me to leave ’til tonight
I always wanted to get out. From my hometown. From Middlebury, Vermont. I wanted to go where nobody knew my name and I could continue to be anonymous unless I happened to do something great. The smaller the town the more people you know, but the harder it is to escape from your branding, the preconception everybody formed of you on Day One, however inaccurate.
And there’s no one left to ask if I’m all right
That’s when the wind of loneliness blows hardest, when you’re needy and you discover there’s no one who cares. You go to school and everybody’s down your throat, telling you what to do, and then you graduate and no one cares about you, you’ve aged out, you’ve become an adult, even though you still feel like a child.
The doctor said Daddy wouldn’t make it a year
But the holidays are over and he’s still here
He’s conflicted. He loves his dad but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to abandon him but he wants him to be gone. But it keeps dragging on. He’s looking for the release of being an orphan, of being free, that’s what they don’t tell you about losing a parent, as sad as it is there’s an incredible sense of freedom, you can finally grow up and do what you want, without judgment.
He didn’t care about us when he was walking around
Just pulling women over in a speed trap town
How do you square the biology with the practicality? When your loved ones are not like those depicted on television. Life is chiaroscuro but too often it’s portrayed as black and white. And until you gain the confidence to know that everybody is insecure, has more questions than answers, you feel inadequate.
I’ll sleep until I’m straight enough to drive, then decide
If there’s anything that can’t be left behind
The truth is you can leave it all behind, but you’re scared of being that naked and free, without anyone to bounce off of, to complain about. Too many stay because they’re too scared to leave. But you’ve got to go, you’ve got to save yourself.
The road got blurry when the sun came up
So I slept a couple hours in the pickup truck
Drank a cup of coffee by an Indian mound
A thousand miles away from that speed trap town
A thousand miles away from that speed trap town
What did James Taylor sing, “There’s nothing like a hundred miles between me and trouble in my mind”? But that was back in ’76, when we looked to singers for answers, before the dash for cash made our country coarser, before the artists started telling us how much better they were than us, before we stopped looking to music for answers.
And I’m not sure there are any answers in “Speed Trap Town,” on all of “Something More Than Free,” but the truth is even Bob Dylan was confused, he could only sing what he saw and hope that we resonated.
We did.
And I resonate with “Speed Trap Town.”
And truly, the words are secondary. It’s more about the sound. The spareness. That loping acoustic guitar providing the rhythm, that electric guitar wailing in pain, “Speed Trap Town” sounds like the prairie, sounds like somewhere barren, which we know everything about even if we’ve never left the city, because we’ve all experienced emotional barrenness. And that’s when we turn to music.
I don’t know what happens to the music industry, hell, I don’t know what happens to our country, with income inequality and global warming, but I do know I’m looking for a needle in a haystack.
And in this case I’ve found one.
Don’t let the relentless hype turn you off.
Jason Isbell is not that good. Steve Earle’s “Guitar Town” is a classic, “Something More Than Free” is not. But back when Steve cut that nailing the experience with an acoustic guitar and some words was a goal, like writing the Great American Novel in the fifties, now music is mostly about getting rich, which leaves Jason Isbell as a party of one. Sure, there are others doing his act, just nowhere near as well. But if we all listened to “Speed Trap Town” and saw Isbell’s path as viable…
Maybe Jason had nothing more to lose. He wasn’t on the fast track. He could take risks. Which is why our greatest art rarely comes from the educated and privileged, who usually play it safe. Jason Isbell is risking it all, he doesn’t care what we think.
Which is why we care so much.
