NEW(ER) MUSIC
One of the most enjoyable things about working with the Word of South Festival of Literature and Music for a decade-plus is that it’s exposed me to music I otherwise would never have heard. I still like classic rock, and when I referred to myself as middle-aged a few years ago, a (now former) friend replied, “Middle-aged? You’re old!” Plus, some of the things I’ve discovered aren’t necessarily new, only new to me. Still, here’s a few favorites:
· I’ve never known much about classical music, and only through effort can I now (generally) pick out certain composers. I’ve discovered, though, that I like the 20th century’s odd and atonal stuff. Try Debussy, then move to Schoenberg. I like the Copland Piano Fantasy stuff, Ives, Ligeti. We had Mathew Shipp at Word of South our first year—have a listen to his “The Gospel According to Matthew and Michael.”
· We book a lot of singer-songwriters and Americana acts at the festival. A few favorites: Amythyst Kiah, Dustbowl Revival, Shovels & Rope, Ben Sollee, Randall Bramblett, Abe Partridge, Chuck Cannon, Buffalo Nichols, Allison Russell, Jamestown Revival, and my wife’s favorite, The Currys (she’s a groupie for the band).
· Greta and I caught Billy Strings in Nashville last year. Pretty amazing. If you haven’t heard his version of John Hartman’s “All Fall Down,” you should.
· There was a period during the early 90’s when we had small children and I guess I was listening to Barney and Sesame Street, as I seemed to have missed quite a bit of music. We’ve had a series of 80’s-90’s era headliners at Word of South in recent years, including Ben Folds and The Flaming Lips and will have Violent Femmes this April—all excellent. I have to remind our festival planners that nostalgia is the 90’s and 00’s, not the seventies.
· We try to not stick too much to any particular genre at the festival, so here’s a few suggestions of some other stuff:
o Bluegrass – check out Chatham County Line, and JigJam (Irish bluegrass!)
o Jazz – we hosted a tribute to Nat and Cannonball Adderley that was out of this world, and also a tribute to the women in jazz. Look up the pianist Helen Sung and the multi-instrumentalist Gunhild Carling. Impressive stuff.
o Alt-country – we did a Muscle Shoals tribute to the music of Arthur Alexander a few years back that people still talk about.
o Check out in general John Paul White’s “Hope I Die,” Jason Isbell’s “Children of Children,” Lyle Lovett’s “She’s Already Made Up Her Mind,” Aoife O’Donovan’s version of “Can’t Find My Way Home,” the Billy Childs tribute to Laura Nyro (okay, this is seventies, but listen to Renee Fleming on “New York Tendaberry”), the Joshua Bell At Home with Friends album (and particularly their version of “Eleanor Rigby”), Pierce Pettis’s “Legacy,” Allison Moorer’s “The Rock and the Hill.” It’s all great.
Enjoy!