I was hiking in the mountains listening to the new Jamey Johnson album "The Guitar Song".<\/p>\n
It’s gonna take a good long time for me to unpack this sucker.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a double album in an era when people only care about singles.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, "The Guitar Song" ain’t like regular country music, you know, the fake shit you hear on the radio about babies and churches with a banjo thrown in to make you realize this pabulum’s got ROOTS!\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re blazing your own path, you get to do it your own way.<\/p>\n
And a bunch of the songs are about the economic situation.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the pandering crap of the usual suspects, but the blue collar angst of men who’ve been screwed by the fat cats and want their revenge.\u00c2\u00a0 I want my revenge, don’t you?\u00c2\u00a0 How can it be that Goldman Sachs ruined the country and no one goes to jail and these fucks continue to get rich?<\/p>\n
Watcha gonna do about that?\u00c2\u00a0 Worried about your bills while sold-out politicians say they care about you but are beholden to corporations that pay no tax.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s gonna soothe your soul? Certainly not Sarah Palin, not unless she gets paid.\u00c2\u00a0 And Barack Obama is so fearful of demonstrating black rage he’s in bed with the worst of whitey.<\/p>\n
Maybe that’s who we need in power.\u00c2\u00a0 An angry black man.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s gonna put the fear of God deep into the heart of all the chiselers.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what broke rap, it was the sound of the streets.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s the sound of the ATM.<\/p>\n
But this Jamey Johnson record.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s got the roots of Alabama with the hope of a rube in California.\u00c2\u00a0 It evidences humanity.<\/p>\n
But the track I’m writing about here is not the social comment with authentic country instrumentation.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m writing about the ANTHEM!<\/p>\n
That’s what’s astounding about "The Guitar Song".\u00c2\u00a0 It sounds like country.\u00c2\u00a0 You know, the shit you hear at the general store, the music that comes to mind when you think of "Deliverance".\u00c2\u00a0 A sound not made for the radio, but the people.\u00c2\u00a0 It evidences a humanity that satiates crackers and frightens you.<\/p>\n
But "Heartache" sounds like Lynyrd Skynyrd.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s closer to Alice In Chains’ "Rooster" than anything by Taylor Swift.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s that music that grabs you by the gut and has you raising your fist in the air.<\/p>\n
Oh, there’s a cool lyric.\u00c2\u00a0 Heartache is personified.\u00c2\u00a0 The names of famous broken couples are trotted out.\u00c2\u00a0 But what hooks you immediately is the organ.\u00c2\u00a0 As if Felix Cavaliere met with Alan Price and they tried to capture the sound of the Mississippi Delta.\u00c2\u00a0 Then, there’s a bit of guitar pickin’.\u00c2\u00a0 Not chicken pickin’, but strumming that sets the mood.<\/p>\n
And then world-weary Jamey starts to sing.\u00c2\u00a0 He didn’t win a talent contest.\u00c2\u00a0 Didn’t give it a year before he went to grad school.\u00c2\u00a0 This is his life.<\/p>\n
And the track is building like Fleetwood Mac’s "The Chain".<\/p>\n
And then there’s a chorus, not as great as one in a Beatles song, but it’s more than serviceable.\u00c2\u00a0 The background vocals put it over the top.<\/p>\n
And by time they hit the second verse, you’re hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 You were just minding your own business, listening to a record, and then suddenly somebody jerked the steering wheel and drove you right into the ditch.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything that mattered before is suddenly meaningless.<\/p>\n
And now the guitars are electric.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s more than one.\u00c2\u00a0 You’re reminded of the Allman Brothers.<\/p>\n
The song breaks down.\u00c2\u00a0 And then it starts to BUILD!\u00c2\u00a0 And for the remaining two minutes Jamey and the band WAIL!<\/p>\n
There’s no dancing involved.\u00c2\u00a0 Not on stage.\u00c2\u00a0 But in the audience, you’ve got longhairs shuffling their feet, nodding their heads, not that the band cares, they’re playing for themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 You feel like you’re getting a peek at something magical.<\/p>\n
And I’m listening to an MP3 on an iPod.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine if I had vinyl or an SACD on the big rig.\u00c2\u00a0 The whole house would shake, sixty years on I’d have the same feeling as I had back then.<\/p>\n
I’m not quite that old.\u00c2\u00a0 But every time I hear that Elton John song, I’m taken to a place that’s both dead and alive.\u00c2\u00a0 Like someone lifted the lid of a casket.\u00c2\u00a0 I can’t help but look.\u00c2\u00a0 This is death. This is life.\u00c2\u00a0 This visceral experience is so rare today.<\/p>\n
I had to hit repeat.\u00c2\u00a0 And then again.\u00c2\u00a0 When you hear something this good, you can’t let it go!<\/p>\n
I go through life looking for peak experiences.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I’m bitten on the ass unexpectedly, I feel fully alive.<\/p>\n
That’s how I felt tonight.<\/p>\n
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I was hiking in the mountains listening to the new Jamey Johnson album "The Guitar Song". It’s gonna take a good long time for me to unpack this sucker.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s a double album in an era when people only care about singles.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, "The Guitar Song" ain’t like regular country music, you know, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-RP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3337"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3339,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3337\/revisions\/3339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}