Whiskeytown - influencing the movement

The music produced by Whiskeytown is the music of a band that knew all but didn’t care. And uniquely for a band that began and ended their career together at such a young age, their story is a rounded one, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Other seminal alt-country bands have left us with unfinished business: Uncle Tupelo had only just discovered their most satisfying sound when they broke up; the Jayhawks moved away from their most countrified sound and then carried on in a variety of other directions. So of the most trailblazing of the groups that added a punky spice and songwriting grit to country music, only Whiskeytown give us the opportunity to assess a complete career – how it developed musically, and how it influenced a movement.

Right from the start, there was a feeling that Whiskeytown could do what none of their predecessors had really achieved – that fusion of country music, punk sensibilities, and superb songs. Their first album, Faithless Street, is not a complete album – and it is certainly not a great album. But it is a suggestive album. Faithless Street contains enough hints of songwriting expertise, enough rural American story-telling, and enough of a sense of unease at the confines of the country world, to indicate that this band could top the lot. In the event, having briefly touched some sort of alt-country summit, they disintegrated, leaving their chief protagonist, Ryan Adams, to attack on his own the challenges of maintaining the high standards he and his band had set so early on.

The fascinating thing about Faithless Street is the story-telling ability on display. In the sleeve-notes to the 1998 re-release of the record, Caitlin Cary, the band’s violinist-vocalist, says that the album exists “as a fond memory of simple times”. That may very well be true, but it also reveals the extent of the band’s carefree, devil-may-care attitude. Because at this point, the band were not writing very many personal songs – the individual emotion, the heartfelt pleas, and the heartbreaking tragedies would come later. On Faithless Street, for the most part they try their hand at telling other people’s stories. And although at times it comes across as facile and inadequate – where could they possibly have acquired sufficient empathy by their early twenties? – at other times, in particular songs, there is at least a real sympathy and understanding of other people’s problems; they manage to create an image of themselves as narrators who are also fellow strugglers. The unspoken implication is that although each person’s problem is her or his own, Whiskeytown are in that same broad category: life’s underdogs, life’s fighters. But how do they pull this off?

Take Drank Like a River, the second song on Faithless Street. It’s a song about a drunk with a story, not dissimilar to those we have all heard before. Like the album’s opening track, Midway Park, the song has an infectious sound which Ryan Adams in particular would perfect with Whiskeytown before using to glorious effect on his solo album Gold – not too heavy, with a really clean and ringing guitar sound which gives an exuberant feel to the saddest of songs. But this exuberance finds its way into the very structure of Drank Like a River, and it lends it an unconvincing air – the chorus explodes in a classic Adams rock and roll style, but the sound is at odds with the sentiment. The resulting effect is that the band don’t seem to have got inside the character’s head, inside his life – and in fact the first few lines suggest the same thing - the song’s narrator isn’t even sure where the root of the drunk’s problems lie:

Well, he was nearly died when he returned to the town he'd come from
He's brown bagging it tonight behind some tavern
Somebody wrecked his life, and I'll bet you it was his darlin'

When the band back away from empathising, perhaps to take their own tentative steps on that faithless street, the record is much more successful. On Tennessee Square, the country music and the more introspective songwriting combine much more effectively, providing tasters of the brilliance to come. Two untold stories are hinted at, and the tension this provides gives a more realistic and yet still more profound feel than in some other songs on the album. The singer watches the old people dancing in a local square festooned with red ribbons, but he has no money – so he just sits and watches. He can’t join them. But a wonderfully wistful musical accompaniment gives the lie to such a simple reason for his inactivity. The people are just dancing - why can’t he join them? The majestically considered acoustic guitar and Cary’s violin combine to suggest that perhaps this narrator has greater – more emotional - troubles than he is letting on, and sure enough, as the song unfolds, he hints at just that: “Vacant parking lots across the street remind me I'm going nowhere”. So this is music as a palliative for – or maybe just a temporary escape from – the depression that is his lot in life. The singing and dancing in the Tennessee Square just brings it all home for him. This use of a more immediate and genuine emotion, using the instrumentation to make the listener think about the words, is a much more mature approach than that of telling other people’s stories.

Ryan Adams would presumably agree, because as the album unfolds, the slower songs become more and more personal, written mostly in the first person singular, and many of the ballads emerge as dry-runs, developmental works, for his later more rounded (basically better-quality) solo ballads. Faithless Street’s title track uses the violin and a very down-home guitar sound to ground the story right in the middle of country music; in fact in the middle of the country itself, and for the first time, a feeling of rural geography comes through in Whiskeytown’s sound. The band’s harmonising – usually between Adams and Cary – is both natural and sweet. But this song is important in another way. The song itself is pure country, and the first of its two verses seem to paint country music as some sort of answer to the narrator’s lack of faith in god – “So I started this damn country band”. But actually this is only half the story. It takes Adams until the end of the song to fill us in fully, suggesting perhaps a reluctance to do so. But that unease at remaining within the confines of country music eventually becomes evident:

So I started this damn country band
'Cause punk rock was too hard to sing

That last line, absent in the first verse, is crucial, and explains a lot of what would come later, from both Whiskeytown and Ryan Adams. Neither act was ever afraid to use real, unadulterated country music to express that yearning sense of loss that it exposes so well. But the adventurous quality of Adams’ songwriting will not be denied, and here, in effect, he says just that – if I could have sung punk rock, I would have done. That would be my means of escape. Another ballad, Black Arrow, Bleeding Heart, contributes to this feeling. The pure country sound of the song sits comfortably with the inevitably being expressed in the lyrics, about the incompleteness and held-back qualities of every love affair. Some other genre, or more realistically the influence of some other genre, was going to be needed if the band were to live the classic American dream through their songs. As a result, they needed, if not a conversion to full-on punk music, some more punk attitude within their country music. With their next record, Strangers Almanac, they achieved just that.

It would be unfair to say that Strangers Almanac washes away everything that was achieved in Faithless Street; though it does render its predecessor, if not irrelevant, then almost redundant. However, it begins with a nod to the slower, more countrified sound of Faithless Street. The song Inn Town appears at first to be an echo of their first album. But actually it is something more than that. Much as television programmes often begin with a recap of last week’s episode, so as to set the scene for what is about to occur, Inn Town reminds of us the sound of Faithless Street, while simultaneously giving a strong impression of a band on the edge, with loose throwaway question and answer vocals hinting at the revised sentiments and fresh sounds that are about to explode in the listener’s direction:

Fifty cents or a dollar three
I don't owe you anything
Spent a life on a heart that woul
Rather not feel anything
I can try
I can see
I can want it to be
I can laugh
I can feel
I can see anything without dreaming

And indeed, the next few songs on Strangers Almanac are delivered with that very carefree attitude: “I don’t owe you anything”. Strangers Almanac isn’t a punk album – it is a country album. But it is so infused with high quality songwriting and that punk approach that “alt-country” is perhaps the only – though imperfect – way to describe this record. Significantly, the next three songs on the album were all recorded by the band around the time they made Faithless Street. But for Strangers Almanac they were re-recorded. While before they were laid-back, with guitar lines that warmed and comforted you, now they are angry and urgent, with guitar lines that bite you. Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight has a country vibe to it, with slide guitar and harmonica prominent, but Ryan Adams’ vocal is virtually shouted, and he pulls every single instrument in the band with him. Throughout this album, Adams as lead singer is also Whiskeytown’s lead musical instrument: the entire band moves, shifts and pauses whenever he does, and generally there is a togetherness born out of a trust in the songs’ main writer to shape the songs as he sees fit. The result is a completely organic sound, with nothing out of place. And so it transpires in Excuse Me…, with even the violin sounding bleakly livid as Adams barks out the song’s theme – it is my heart, my life, and I will destroy it. What else could I possibly do? It is mine to do with as I please.

Yesterday’s News takes the album further down the same path, pausing only to pick up fresh supplies of vitriol:

I can't stand to be under your wing
I can't fly or sink or swim
It's a lot like falling down
Standing up, and I'm falling down

Adams’ message is so explicit – look what you’re doing to me! So much for the slightly idealistic vision of two people’s love which is touched upon – either directly or through a third party – on Faithless Street. This song simmers a bit more than Excuse Me…, but its menacing feel never disappears as the backing rumbles on. The lyrics in the song Faithless Street, about playing country because punk rock was too difficult to master, seem more relevant than ever now, because the passions of Strangers Almanac sound as if they have been stored up for a long, long time, and are finally breaking free – perhaps from the shackles of country music? The instrumentation, of course, is still country-oriented, and who can blame the band for this? Their combination of electric and acoustic, piano and organ, violin and harp, singer and harmonist, is a good one, and enables them to retain much of what is good about country music: genuine heartfelt emotion and a tangible sense of American musical geography. But the songwriting is the key here, because Ryan Adams has found a way to express, lyrically, his restlessness. He then delivers this punked-up message with an appropriate vocal style, and that country band takes on that attitude as it follows him.

Arguably, then, the beauty of Strangers Almanac lies less in any individual songs and more in the overall sound that is created by that combination of writing, band and attitude. But along with Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight, the record does contain two further real masterpieces. Houses on the Hill harks back to the attempts made on Faithless Street to tell the story of another person – someone to whom the narrator has no discernible link. But whether Adams grew significantly as a storyteller between these two albums, or whether he increased his life experiences so much that he could write with real empathy about a broader range of things, this dip into a more conventional country song is perfectly-formed – relaxed, poetic, and above all convincing. In some ways the piano gives the song a slightly contemporary edge, but in this song Caitlin Cary’s violin combines even more effectively with Adams’ voice than her own voice does, and it is this that provides appropriate backing to the story. The songwriting lesson here is “less is more”, as Adams floods the songs with rich images described with a frugal use of words:

There were stars in the sky
There were bunkers on the hill and there were caskets to fill
Where he will lie
Shrouded in the red white and blue with the stripes

An economic use of words – often the sign of a mature and thoughtful songwriter - is even more obvious on this album’s other stand-out track, Losering. The song starts with the premise of an invented word, and to be honest, such a trick at once hints at possible genius and warns of pretentious nonsense. The reality is fortunately closer to the former than the latter. In the context of the song’s few other lyrics, and the mood of the song in general, the word “losering” takes on a massive and portentous meaning. As the song inexorably builds, as the electric guitar becomes ever denser and the harmonica and violin in turn enter the fray, Whiskeytown build a classic piece of alt-country. Again, in some intangible way, the song is rooted in the country – not as directly as, say, Emmylou Harris’s vocal performances or Jim White’s soundscapes, but still there is something in Losering that sums up the vast, sparse nature of much of the country from which this music emanates.

So Losering sums up what Whiskeytown achieved in Strangers Almanac: well-written rock music with a modern country feel to it, a carefree attitude, and a strong sense of Americana culture and geography. It is similar in that respect to Uncle Tupelo’s Andoyne. But while the latter album represented Uncle Tupelo’s swansong, thus ensuring the band went out on a high (and with a legend intact), Whiskeytown went on to make Pneumonia. With Strangers Almanac under their belts, more life experience to fuel both their writing and their performances, and an even better collection of songs, Pneumonia should have been a masterpiece – the album where the band took the Strangers Almanac sound – and hence alt-country – to a whole new level. But the reality was somewhat different. After much production and re-production, Pneumonia was released after the band had broken up; in fact after Ryan Adams’ first solo album, Heartbreaker, had come out. And either by accident or Adams’ design, Pneumonia sounds like the musical link between Heartbreaker and his next solo record, Gold. That is not to say it is a bad album – far from it. But rather than being Whiskeytown’s magnum opus, it comes across as a snapshot of where one man was at certain, very transitional, time.

Pneumonia is a gentler album than Strangers Almanac; it has a gentler sound and its songs carry a gentler message. Ryan Adams’ vocals dominate throughout – indeed, the two elements which make Pneumonia a really good album, possibly rescuing it, are the quality of the songs and Adams’ vocal style. His ability to lead and shape a band was first evident on Strangers Almanac; ever since then he has used this skill to great effect, and Pneumonia is no exception. From the outset, with the opening bars of The Ballad of Carol Lynn, his high and soulful tones act as a very real link between traditional country music and the more individualistic direction he was moving towards. But for the rest, the sound of Pneumonia is more of a mixed bag. The opening song features horns, which re-emerge from time to time; and the piano is much more prominent than on Whiskeytown’s first two albums. A key aspect of good quality alt-country music has been subtle and considered use of the piano: if there is too much piano, it dominates the other instruments to the extent that what could be a genuinely collaboratively band degenerates into a honky-tonk ensemble, or in the case of ballads, a lounge group. Pneumonia threatens to head in this direction at times – and it is difficult to escape the feeling that this is due mainly to Ryan Adams himself, who is after all the main pianist on the album.

However, we shouldn’t judge the album based on a set of premises which the band probably had no thought of when they were making the album. At times, Adams’ piano is used at just the right level, as part of a band. This is never truer than on My Hometown. Several songs on Pneumonia hark back to the narrator’s younger days, even his childhood. However little life experience someone has had, they will have a full childhood of some sort to look back on, and this is perhaps why the further back Adams’ retrospectives go, the better they are as songs:

On back down in my hometown
Everybody's feelin' it bad
No new breaks, whatever it takes
Not to have to sway it on a classified ad

Hey there Ma and Pa here I am
Money's running out all the same
I just close my eyes and bring it on home again

In the wrong hands, these lyrics – and by extension the whole song - could be cloying and sentimental. But with Whiskeytown, something saves the song and makes it sound like well developed – almost poetic – alt-country. What is that something? It is hard to pin down, but contributory factors include the subtle use of the piano, the delicate harmonies (from Caitlin Cary) and steel guitar, and once more, the way the music waxes and wanes just as Adam’s voice does. This a country song, and it is alt-country partly because of the collaborative and yet firmly directed band interplay.

It is worth dwelling on Adams’ seemingly new-found ability to look all the way back to his youngest days, because it is in these songs that he and the band most successfully fuse real country music with genuine songwriting genius. Jacksonville Skyline refers even more explicitly to his hometown, and although fans are well used to this song being performed as a solo acoustic number in concert, its incarnation on Pneumonia flows beautifully, with appropriately spaced out guitar licks and acoustic playing. Adams’ thoughtful songwriting recalls Houses on the Hill, as he creates vivid pictures which only begin to hint at the depths hidden tantalisingly beneath:

Well, Jacksonville's a city with a hopeless streetlight
Seems like you're lucky if it ever change from red to green
I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness
And fifty cent picture frames bought at a five and dime

One thing is clear from Jacksonville Skyline: much of the bitterness and anger evident in Strangers Almanac receded by the time Whiskeytown made Pneumonia. Lyrically, this can be heard most obviously in Reasons to Lie, a gorgeously half-formed feast of interplay between fragile vocalist, sweet guitar and confident violin. There is a hint of the old bitterness, but the sense that the narrator is looking for someone to blame has disappeared; or, if anything, he now blames himself. On Pneumonia, Adams begins to give expression to his own failures and frailties – something which would become a common theme in his later solo work.

The change in mood, from blame to lament, can also be heard in the overall sound. Pneumonia is a smooth album. It still has all those classic country-rock instruments – the steel guitar, the mandolin and the violin all compete for space with the more conventional rock instruments, just as on the two previous Whiskeytown albums. But while on Strangers Almanac the instruments retained a sense of individuality while also coagulating as a band, on Pneumonia there is perhaps too much direct merger between them. On songs like The Ballad of Carol Lynn and Don’t Wanna Know Why, despite some good lyrics and infectious hooks, the message is less outspoken, less outrageous, and the violin and jingle-jangle guitar are muffled. The addition of horns adds to this feeling too. Of course, this is essentially a problem of production, and is no reflection the band members’ playing; but given the music they made before, it is something of a shame. Pneumonia is probably the best collection of songs that Whiskeytown ever produced – other than those already mentioned, What the Devil Wanted, Sit and Listen to the Rain and Crazy About You demonstrate quite clearly the songwriting talent that Adams possessed in his mid-twenties. But at times, and to be fair only at times, the sound behind the songs isn’t quite as incisive as it needs to be.

Following My Hometown, Pneumonia draws slowly and majestically towards a close with the song Easy Hearts. The band provides a wonderfully drawn-out and lazy accompaniment to Ryan Adams as he sings “I’ve had a pretty hard life” – and whether he really had had a hard life at the time he wrote this song no longer matters, because he is now so comfortable with putting himself in someone else’s shoes – a talent he developed on the job. Caitlin Cary harmonises with Adams at length, and her vocal presence makes it easy to imagine that she is the person to whom he sings “Can I be yours tonight?” However the reality is somewhat more prosaic, a fact that Cary herself seems to recognise with her violin lines after the chorus, which reach out to him not for reconciliation but for a final farewell – they see to be replying to his plea with “No, it is time to go our separate ways”. After all, as Adams says before making his request, “If the money isn’t right…” After the emotional push-and-pull of Easy Heart, there is little left for Pneumonia to say. Bar Lights, packed full of jaunty violin, upbeat picked guitar, and a slightly more unhinged vocal, represents one last look back to the carefree days of Strangers Almanac. But that is all it is. For better or for worse, Ryan Adams had taken full control of his music, and would go on to make several albums which would arguably out-do anything his old band ever came up with. But for the defining and perfectly executed alt-country record that is Strangers Almanac, and also the flawed but superbly written Pneumonia, we should be forever grateful to Whiskeytown.