I recently watched a documentary on Nashville’s songwriting culture called It All Begins with a Song, and while it was an occasionally insightful and touching look at the tunesmithing industry, it omitted an important part of Music City’s creative community: the writers who fly under the mainstream's radar, and yet craft equally—if not more—satisfying numbers that hit deep emotional notes and tell profound human stories.
I get it. More viewers would like to watch how the songs they’ve heard were built than songs performed by artists who’ve not, for a lack of luck, financial support, or other business machinations, reached their ears. And yet, I felt the film missed an opportunity to enlighten people to a different kind of Nashville songwriter—a breed of artist less slick in, perhaps, the writing of Top 40 hooks, but sometimes more attuned to the rawness and complexity of real human experience. Writers who have the ability to capture humor, sadness, and life without flounced dressing. I’m thinking of artists like Buddy Miller, Kevin Gordon, Jon Byrd, Tim Carroll, and even Emmylou Harris—the latter a cross-generational bridge with the ability to create a beautiful latticework of words and music with her lyrical skill and unmistakable voice. (Note: Listen to Gordon’s “Colfax,” for example, and you’ll enjoy one of the most complex-yet-accessible stories about adolescence, small-town America, and race put to song.)
My point is this: When it comes to every aspect of the music you love, try to dig deeper. If you love guitar, and I know you do, don’t stop with Jeff Beck, Carlos Santana, Josh Homme, or Jack White. Find out about the outliers like Sonny Sharrock and Yvette Young and Stan Lassiter, or, if you dig blues, Junior Kimbrough. They are all uniquely and brilliantly themselves. And Tom Waits is the rare example of an outsider songwriter who has penetrated the mainstream, and a damn fine one.
“There are great artists flying just under the widescreen radar everywhere that music is played and stories are told.”
I’ve chased artists like this, and the songs and sounds they make, for my adult life. If I had to blame it on anyone, it would be Johnny Cash, whose unadorned music and poetry, punctuated with surprising vocal approximations of train whistles and shouts of “sooey,” spun my head around and opened my ears to the world when I was a child. (Cash was, perhaps, the ultimate outsider insider.) And because of this pursuit, and my decision to become a music journalist as well as a player, I’ve been able to speak with and even be befriended by quite a few of them. Their stories, whether in words or sounds, have profoundly shaped my perspective, character, and creativity. They influenced me to become and remain a storyteller, one way or another. Heck, some, and especially the late Mighty Sam McClain, the greatest soul singer you’ve probably never heard, even became my chosen family. In Sam’s case, a second and better father, whose voice echoed between the Earth and the stars. (Listen to his interpretation of Carlene Carter’s “Too Proud” for a jolt of scarred honesty, then explore his catalog.) The same with R.L. Burnside, who shaped my thinking as a guitarist and a human in ways I’d not realized until they were ingrained.
There are great artists flying just under the widescreen radar everywhere that music is played and stories are told. It just takes a little more effort to seek them out. Chances are, if you choose to speak with one of them after a performance or even through social media, you might make a connection. It could be a one-off exchange or it could be a new friendship, because life has a way of taking you down unforeseen roads if you are willing to take the first step onto them.
You might even be one of these artists yourself. If you are, you have my respect for striving forward, in search of the essence, the expression that helps the world fall into place for you and those for whom you record and perform. You may be underacknowledged but you are doing essential work. And you understand that it truly can begin with a song or a sound.
