The Places Music Goes

To this point, blogging has been relatively easy. Even the days when nothing seemed available to me to write about I've been able to write about the lack of inspiration and ingenuity. Today my mind is truly blank. Well, that's not completely true, i have a refrain from a Tom Waitts song running through my head: "It is the same with men, as with horses and dogs, nothing wants to die." But i can not tell you what it means to me, exactly. All i can say is that lately I've been obsessed with his album "Bawlers" from the box set titled Orphans. While I've been installing hardwood floors in a tri-plex, Tom Waitts has been my companion. His knack for turning somewhat pleasant tunes into deep, dark, melodies has captivated me completely. His cover of "Young at Heart" is, to me, about the end of life and his build up of the darker parts of life--loss, love, pain, heartbreak, loneliness--peaks with the last song: "Young at Heart." I don't have, completely available to me, the vernacular to write about music. All i can give you is my opinion from my experience, and Tom Waitts, to me is a great musician. I love his understated melodies, his guttural and raspy voice, and the dark nature of his music. It is easy to get lost in his songs, and the album "Bawlers" plays as out as a life story for some unfortunate soul. Tom Waitts co-starred in the movie Shortcuts, directed by Robert Altman and based on the short stories of Raymond Carver. If Carver's short stories are snap shots into the dark and smelly underbelly of the middle to lower class lives of seriously fucked up people and families, the Tom Waitts has written the perfect sound track.

I think it is the time in my life, i a drawn to the darker side of music. Or, maybe, the aspects that i can most closely identify. When i was younger, high school age, i swore that country music was a category for un-talented sellouts. While i still may hold to that on some level, I've also gained a deep appreciation of the foundation of country music and in the new category of country music radio people and music commentators are calling Americana and Freak Folk. It is inspired by the roots of country music and folk and informed by a new generation and tradition of grunge rock. It is the clean sound of the music that draws me in. There is no distortion and there is a poetic and honest quality to the lyrics that seems to be missing from other genres. And, i think on a very base level, i connect with the sound.

I grew up in a cowboy/farm town and country music was a common, if not default, sound all around. I, in typical not-a-cowboy-farmer-redneck kid kind of way, rebelled against it strongly once i hit high school. But the roots of that sound brings me back to the small town feeling. I should note that my parents didn't really listen to popular music when i was a child. The sounds of the 80's completely passed me by and it wasn't until i was 15 or so that i truly began to discover my own taste in music. That tastes was strongly informed by my friends and by the AM radio in my dad's old ford. On that old radio we would drive through the mountains listening to the "oldies" station. Those songs, pop music from the 50's and 60's may have had more to do with my music background than anything else. I am quite sure, that for a long time, no other music existed for me.

Now, grown and corrupted by the sounds and experiences of a life away from my parents and the small town i grew up in, i can not listen to those songs. The remain a profound and impacting part of my memory and there is very little i remember better than those long days of fishing and hunting and the three of us (one of my brothers, my dad, and i) crammed on the bench seat of that old ford pick-up sipping cokes, eating Hershey miniatures, and listing to the oldies.

My dad has a new truck now, has for some time--though the old one remains parked on the side of the house--and he listens to different music as well. There are c.d.'s in his truck and an FM radio and a back seat. The simple pleasure of riding three across the front of the truck in the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon is alive only in memory now. My brothers and i have lives of our own and live, if not far away, far enough away that it doesn't happen any longer. Yet, when i reflect on music long enough if brings me back to that old truck and all the memories attached to it. I remember clearly and with the most pleasure, hunting and fishing with my dad. He was, in my memory, truly content on the river and in the mountains, happy to let us fish--or not--and hike along side him, eventually carrying our own guns, as we looked for deer and grouse.

My memory of music isn't about the music, it is about my dad, and though our tastes in tunes have changed dramatically, the roots of my appreciation have not.