Carousel corner: Heartland Bands, Part 1. (The Music).

We talk and write a lot about the country's heartland, how rock `n'roll seems to travel up and down the Mississippi River from N'Awlins to ChiTown getting pricked, jabbed, poked, prodded into its latest incarnations. We focus on the sources of American music making: blues, R&B, bluegrass, country, folk, gospel, and their outgrowths, some successful and others less so. What gets left behind is a whole genre of rock bands, who draw from the same sources, squat at the feet of the same traditions, and for one reason or another rarely achieve more than critical and regional notice. Our first three bands this ish--and two more the next--share a number of commonalities: they're all white guys from the Midwest `burbs; they've all been around about 15 years; and share a recording and performing history, while not unique in rock, as influential as any band over the past decade. While each was and is critically acclaimed and fills clubs wherever they go, they're rarely, if ever, heard on the radio. None of them has ever issued a bad or even a mediocre recording. All of them seem to have missed out on the au courant trends of the past decade: rap, grunge, techno, hip-hop, goth metal, etc. And they all make original, challenging, innovative rock`n'roll.

Uncle Tupelo. Hailing from the St. Louis suburb of Belleville, Illinois, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, along with drummer Mike Heidorn, founded Uncle Tupelo right out of high school just as the "Reagan Revolution," trickle-down economics, and poor job prospects thrust their absorption of American roots music and Midwestern punk into a two-year road gig and alcoholic haze. Their debut album, No Depression (Rockville, 1990), took its title and a precocious sensibility from A. P. Carter, and was tempered by Huddie Ledbetter, Husker Du, and the Minutemen. Furious post-punk thrashing alternated with delicate, country-tinged ballads, while a taste for melody constrained the thrash. The lyrics were what you'd expect from a bunch of post-teens: job angst, social angst, rage--but their take on Midwestern, small town reality, soaked in gin, was remarkably absent of self-pity.

Still Feel Gone (Rockville, 1991) followed with a harder edger tighter arrangements, and Farrar's expanded guitar vocabulary--having taken a page from Peter Buck's inspired sense of rhythm. Their lyrics, still soaked in gin, matter-of-factly described their ongoing battle with the road, and, as it turned out, themselves: "When the Bible is a bottle/And a hardwood floor is home/And morning comes twice a day/If it comes at all" ("Still Be Around"). Farrar and Tweedy could still wed a punk thrash and steel guitar bridge ("Postcard") with an ease that belied the genres' apparent disparate natures. Still Feel Gone included a touching tribute to the Minutemen's D. Boon, who'd died the previous year.

Uncle Tupelo retreated to the studio for the remarkable March 16-20, 1992 (Rockville, 1992), an all-acoustic set of C&W covers ("Moonshiner," "The Great Atomic Power") and deeply contemplative original tunes, an antidote to their punk-infused alcoholism and produced by none other than Peter Buck. After the March 16-20 sessions, Heidorn quit to devote more time to his family; the band enlisted Ken Coomer as their drummer and formally added longtime sidemen John Stirrat (bass) and Max Johnston (fiddle, banjo, mandolin, pedal steel) to the line-up. This band released Anodyne (Reprise) in 1993, a statement of authority and power--and a thinly veiled reference to the band's grip on Tweedy and Farrar: they'd finally stopped drinking. Anodyne virtually abandoned their punk roots for what became known as "alternative country rock" (or "alt.country") and included a cover of Doug Sahm's "Give Back the Key to My Heart" with Sahm on vocals. Sadly, like Lennon/McCartney, Strummer/Jones, Stills/Young, and others, there wasn't enough room in a small Midwestern town for two enormous talents. In 1994 Farrar left the band, reunited with Heidorn, and recruited the Boquist brothers, Dave and Jim, to form Son Volt. Tweedy quietly buried Uncle Tupelo as its remains became Wilco.

Sony/Columbia/Legacy acquired the rights to Uncle Tupelo's Rockville catalog and issued 89/93: An Anthology this year, which included several singles, unreleased songs, and the astonishing "Effigy" from the AIDS project No Alternative (Arista, 1993) in addition to a smattering of cuts from their four albums. While the Sire/Reprise catalog still includes Anodyne, the first three discs have been out of print for years. Sony/ Columbia/Legacy has announced their remastering and reissue this year. Uncle Tupelo's brief output can only be described as authentic, heartfelt, timeless music, tenderly--and at times not so tenderly--rendered by two geniuses whose prodigious talents flared for five all-too-brief years. Uncle Tupelo is one of the very great bands of the last two decades, one to which I listen frequently and avidly. If you haven't discovered them, take advantage of the reissues this year. You won't be disappointed.

Son Volt. Fast on the dissolution of Uncle Tupelo, ace guitarist Jay Farrar summoned original Tupelo drummer Mike Heidorn and recruited brothers, Dave (guitar, fiddle, banjo, dobro) and Jim (bass) Boquist to form Son Volt. Their debut CD, Trace (Warner Bros., 1995), picked up where Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne left off. Supplemented by frequent sideman Eric Heywood on pedal steel guitar, Trace allowed Farrar's take on alt.country, a genre he and Uncle Tupelo partner, Jeff Tweedy, had virtually invented, to veer back to rock. Unlike the completely countrified Anodyne, Trace threw Farrar's seminal punk influences back into the mix, where neither the country nor the punk accents that characterized Uncle Tupelo dominated. Trace was issued amid much fanfare because surely as rain, Uncle Tupelo, still warm in the grave, had attained quasi-legend status. The album did well, yielding a hit single with "Drown."

Son Volt followed Trace with Straightaways (Warner Bros., 1997). Stylistically, Farrar revisited the alt.country paradigm, with both Dave Boquist's lap steel and Heywood's pedal steel featured prominently. Farrar is one of those quietly unsung guitarists, whose work with Uncle Tupelo, especially the Peter Buck-ish flourishes on Still Feel Gone, often astonished. Curiously, with the exception of "Caryatid Easy," as on Trace, he placed his own fretwork into the background. Unlike Trace, Straightaways is alternately ornate and a bare, stark affair. Droning dirges ("Been Set Free"), reminiscent of Civil War-era recreations, alternate with mid-tempo rockers ("Last Minute Shakedown," "Back Into Your World"). Lyrically, Farrar plunges into the dark side with a vengeance. "This life burns from both ends ..." ("Left A Slide") is as optimistic as it gets: both "Been Set Free" and "Cemetery Savior" dwell on death as, ulp, a solution.

The following year Son Volt issued Wide Swing Tremolo (Warner Bros., 1998), dropping long-time co-producer Brian Paulson and going it alone. Wide Swing Tremolo is somewhat brighter and faster than either its forebears, but there's plenty of room for Farrar's patented slow grinders, meditations on life and its processes. Lyrically, Tremolo is as obtuse as any of Farrar's work "There is a slowness on the throttle, a sterility at hand/Painted out of a comer, breaks to bind the strands/To decide within the barstore, Overshadows feeding in the lurch/Just survive by a stone's throw/The decision wheel's at work" ("Strands"). For all of his sonic density and melodic sense, one gets the unmistakable feeling that Farrar's virtual stream of consciousness is akin to Michael Stipe's: the voice is much an instrument as messenger. But that view belies Son Volt's lyric density. I don't pretend to understand them, though I find their poetry, indeed their rhythm, compelling.

Last year Farrar issued his first solo disc, Sebastopol (Artemis), after Son Volt was dropped by Warner Bros. While the lyric content is less dense, accessible even ("When you get to Barstow/You're halfway to hell"--"Barstow"), Farrar significantly broadens his sonic palette, adding keyboards, saxophone, and even a tambura. The songs are Farrar-familiar, preferring a contemplative, droning tone and the distinctive resonance of alt.country with a mesmerizing array of slide guitars. Indeed, "Equilibrium," all of 0:45, is emblematic and perhaps symbolic, composed entirely of Farrar on one slide guitar repeating a plaintive phrase. It may be after two late bands, Farrar has found his equilibrium on a small label, Sebastopol his own project, and a sense of peace with his musical vision.

There will be endless debate about "whose" band was Uncle Tupelo, Farrar's or Jeff Tweedy's. So overwhelming was Uncle Tupelo's influence that one is tempted to look for its "better" echo in either Son Volt or Wilco, though there's little point in that kind of exercise. Farrar's expansion of "alt.county" is as personal and intense as his development of the genre with Uncle Tupelo. And, as Sebastopol evidences, Farrar's output and creativity have yet to crest.

Wilco. At one point Jeff Tweedy admitted to having "idolized" Jay Farrar's sense of music history, his absorption of indigenous American forms, and his facility on guitar. When Farrar left Uncle Tupelo, Tweedy's sense of loss was palpable. However, it's in positions like this that one finds one's own abilities, rising phoenix-like from the ashes of one band to start another. So it was with Tweedy and Wilco. While Wilco is better known for its two collaborations with Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue and Mermaid Avenue, Vol. 2, it seems as if Tweedy's post-Tupelo direction, while initially maintaining some of the alt.country trappings, has steered toward Paul Westerberg, The Replacements, and pop. Wilco started essentially as Uncle Tupelo without Jay Farrar as Tweedy recruited guitarist Jay Bennett for fill the hole left by Farrar's departure. Their first release, A.M. (Sire/Reprise, 1995), puts them firmly in pop mode, with light-handed lyrics, catchy melodies, and the occasional winkin' nod toward Tupelo and roots.

However, with the release of the double-CD Being There (Reprise, 1996), Tweedy declared his independence from alt.country and his rediscovery of straight ahead rock`n'roll. The funereal dirge that opens Being There, "Misunderstood," is followed by, "Monday," a soulful R&B rocker with an infectious Stones-ish groove and a surprise horn chorus--this isn't your mama's alt.country any more. Or is it? Just when one believes the break complete, "Forget The Flowers" pulls the pedal steel out of closet for a quixotic return to Wilco's Uncle Tupelo roots. The album's stylistic panorama is perhaps best captured in "Someday Soon," a mild country rocker, replete with banjo and pedal steel, whose vocal emerges ballroom-style from an echo chamber and whose vocal chorus feels lifted from a Rubber Soul session.

Max Johnston's subsequent departure reduced Wilco to a quartet for the astonishingly lush Summerteeth (Reprise, 1999). Summerteeth was again Tweedy's voice and direction, moving toward a fuller, more orchestrated sound, with equal measures of Westerberg-style vocals and Sgt. Pepper-ish sonic flourishes. It is a rock`n'roll record as far removed from Uncle Tupelo as Tweedy had yet ventured. Without any bows to his and their past, Summerteeth signals Tweedy's emergence as a singular pop writer with his own voice and vision--and his final break with Farrar and UT's heritage. Summerteeth opens with "Can't Stand It," a paean to the futility of prayer whose sonic signature flows from the Replacements, Beatles, and Kinks--all masters of pop irony and jingle. Through the dreamy "She's A Jar" to the sprightly "A Shot in the Arm" to "I'm Always in Love," Tweedy whoops and whirls through a series of panegyric love songs, the likes of which never inhabited Uncle Tupelo's bleak urbanscape.

Additional personnel changes (Coomer and Bennett were replaced by Glenn Kotche and Leroy Bach) presaged Wilco's next release, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Nonesuch, 2002). YHF is another, more radical statement, one spawned out of Beck and Radiohead and heavily influenced by 9/11. Tweedy has staked out a middle ground between Pepper-ish ephemera and Radiohead's overt electronica, creating an auralscape of seemingly random, found sounds, a sonic simile to Robert Rauschenberg's "found object" paintings of the `60s and `70s. Not surprisingly, the pop-oriented suits at Warner Bros., having been buoyed by Summerteeth, refused to issue the CD. Wilco bought out the masters and landed at Nonesuch, a label renowned for its daring and eclecticism.

Tweedy's vocals, always wispy but ever strong, adopt Thom Yorke's languid, sliding style through songs as down as Summerteeth was up. "Kamera' tells of simply being lost: "I'm counting on/A heart I know by heart/To walk me through this war/Memories distort/Phone my family tell them I' lost on the/ Sidewalk ... No it's not o.k.," another nod to Radiohead (O.K. Computer). The impact of 9/11 reverberates throughout: "Cheer up/Honey I hope you can/There is something wrong with me/My mind is filled with radio cures/Electronic surgical words" ("Radio Cure"). "War on War" is even bleaker: "You are not my typewriter/But you could be my demon/Moving forward through flaming doors/You have to lose/You have to learn how to die/If you wanna wanna be alive ... o.k." And if you haven't gotten the message yet: "I would like to salute/The ashes of American flags/ And all the falling leaves/Filling up shopping bags" ("Ashes of American Flags").

Like many of us in the post-9/11 world, Tweedy evokes fond memories of a gentler bygone time when life's issues were decidedly less complex, "I sincerely miss/Those heavy metal bands/I used to go see/On the landing in the summer/She fell in love with the drummer ... I miss the innocence I've known/Playing Kiss covers/Beautiful and stoned ..." ("Heavy Metal Drummer"). For all of its preoccupation with the new world, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a singular achievement. This version of Tweedy/Wilco has expanded its vision beyond the Belleville suburbs, silly love songs, and calamitous terror to embrace musical forms that are influential without being overpowering. Wilco's progressed from an Uncle Tupelo reclamation project to a pop band of dynamic reckoning.

Next Issue: The Jayhawks and BoDeans.

DVDs. Another eclectic collection, most worth the effort.

Huey Lewis and the News, Live at Rockpalast (EME America/Pioneer Artists)

Live at Rockpalast is not just the name of this disc, but the name of a very popular German television show that has been showcasing rock's most popular acts since the `70s. As you browse your DVD music aisles, you'll see a number of acts whose "Live at Rockpalast" concerts have been reissued. This concert was broadcast in October 1984, when Sports was the No. 1 album in the world, and a buoyed and buff Huey Lewis was rock's most unlikely poster boy.

Lewis grew up in hippie haven Mill Valley in Marin County, California, under the shade of Mt. Tamalpais and was dragged--kicking and screaming no doubt--by his mother to seminal flower powered rock events at the Avalon Ballroom and the original Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in his early teens. His first band, Clover, included future News-man Sean Hopper and future Doobie Brother, John McFee. After Clover emigrated to London, Hopper backed Elvis Costello on My Aim Is True, but the band went nowhere and disbanded. Lewis returned to Marin and cherry picked the cream of the local musicians to form The News. Marin County had not produced a tighter band since The Electric Flag, and on Sports a more exciting one.

Live at Rockpatast is Sports come alive. The News (Bill Gibson, Johnny Colla, Chris "The Kid" Hayes, Mario Cipollina--brother of Quicksilver's John--and Hopper) play like a band at the top of the world and masters of their genre. There's not one dull moment, missed cue, or wrong note. And if you're wondering how they pull off the double saxophone riff on "I Want A New Drug" with only one saxophonist, well, I guess you'll just have to watch it. The video transfer and sound are both excellent, and the sound's been remastered in Dolby Digital.

Eagles, Hell Freezes Over (Image Entertainment)

When I first saw this DVD, it was only the lead song, "Hotel California," in a dealer showroom in surround sound. Oh, the sound was breathtaking. The Eagles are one of the great rock bands ever--I'd seen them last on the Hotel California tour--so picking up Hell Freezes Over was a no-brainer. Okay, it's the Eagles, and they're in fine fettle. They play all their hits with deadly accuracy, a bunch of help from other musicians, and with all the passion of a wet dishrag. Old rockers in a Barca-Lounger. They've rearranged the songs to accommodate the curious decision to perform almost everything acoustically. This is not to say that they've foregone electricity, but the wondrous guitar interplay among Don Felder, Glen Frey, and Joe Walsh that characterized that incarnation of the band simply isn't there. Oh, okay, they do "Life in the Fast Lane," but little else.

Their ability to warble four- and five-part harmonies is as solid as ever. Indeed the vocals are the stars of the show. The video is impeccable, the sound superb, and if you don't have a DTS decoder, you'll not be able to play/hear "Seven Bridges Road." In fact Hell Freezes Over only offers DTS and PCM stereo decoding, no Dolby Digital. My DVD player will decode DTS, but our A/V agglomeration still lacks 5.1 sound, so its effect was wasted. Yep, the sound and picture are perfect, the arrangements note-precise, and execution impeccable. There's not one mistake, not one skosh of raggedness, and not one moment of joy, just a pristine, made-for TV production with a lifelessness that's inescapable.

Neil Finn, Sessions at West 54th (Sony)

Like "Austin City Limits," "Sessions at West 54th" is one of the finer live music programs to be found anywhere today. Finn, founder and creative force behind the late, lamented Crowded House and with brother Tim the astonishing Split Enz, showcases his 1998 solo album, Try Whistling This. Backed by a new band, including son Liam on guitar and drums, Finn's compositions preside over a dense landscape of angled shadows and oblique light, one very suited to the muted ambience at West 54th. Finn includes two Crowded House crowd pleasers ("Fall At Your Feet," "Don't Dream It's Over") and a Split Enz nugget ("I Got You") in addition to the entire solo album. The balance of the band includes at least Robert Moore (guitar, bass), and Crowded House road band member, Mark Hart, contributing piano and vocals. The drummer and keyboard player are unidentified, but are probably Jim Moginie and Sebastian Steinberg. What ever happened to introducing the band?

As lovely as Try Whistling This is, the songs achieve a great deal more immediacy, warmth even, performed live. Indeed, I prefer this DVD somewhat over the original CD. The DVD transfer is excellent, and it offers both Dolby Digital and PCM stereo sound. Neil Finn, along with semi-luminaries like Glen Tilbrook and Marshall Crenshaw, resides in my personal pantheon of Guys Who Shoulda Been MegaStars, But Aren't. I will always acquire anything he does, simply because he's incapable of writing a bad song or issuing a bad performance. This Sessions date is one of them.

Tony Rice, The Video Collection (Vestapol/ Rounder)

A couple of years ago when my buddy Paul and I went to Alexandria's Birchmere to see Woodworks, the live moniker for Rice, Rice, Hillman & Pederson, I asked a number of the folks around me whom they were there to see. We were there mostly to see Chris Hillman, who I'd interviewed for The Sensible Sound many months prior (No. 73, January/February 1998). They were almost all amateur musicians, and to a person they responded, "Tony Rice." To assert that Tony Rice is the reigning dean of bluegrass guitarists is like starting an argument about who is the best NBA point guard or major league shortstop. There's really no point. Suffice it to say that Rice's absorption of the history of bluegrass guitar, especially primal influences Doc Watson and Clarence White, and his invention of a new bluegrass vocabulary have elevated him to a lofty status for which he has few if any peers.

The Video Collection is three different performances by Rice with three different bands during the Merle Watson Festival in 1992. Traditional songs like "Red Haired Boy" and instrumental rave-ups like "Bluegrass Breakdown" are put through their energetic paces by Rice and the likes of David Grisman, Del McCoury, Ricky Skaggs, Sam Bush, Mark O'Connor, Jerry Douglas, Pete Wernick, Bela Fleck, the Simkins brothers and many more. Tony Rice's recordings with The Rice Brothers and The Tony Rice Unit are marvelous in their own right, but these sets, live and in a couple of places barely rehearsed, display his inventiveness, humor, and generosity. And for you picker pretenders, it's a chance to take a good look at his fretwork. It's a sign of respect for his audience that Rice always wears a suit and tie when he performs, and on these obviously hot and dusty dates, he delivers without dropping a bead of sweat.

Prince/AFKAP, Rave Un2 The Year 2000 (Image Entertainment)

Perhaps Prince's best party song, "1999" foretold of millennial calamity, lending pop credence to Nostradamus's age-old predictions. So it's with no little irony that he chose to film his New Year's Eve 2000 concert conducted on a Paisley Park soundstage. While one might expect the lascivious leers of his youth or the fey prancing of the Purple Rain era, both designed to maintain an aloof distance from his audience, Rave Un2 The Year 2000 delivers a mature, boldly rocking Prince who is enjoying the moment, the audience, and himself. The distaff, self-indulgent, slightly infuriating Prince of recent memory doesn't appear except in the interviews, but it's the performances that count, and perform he does.

The crack band includes the legendary Larry Graham on bass with guest spots from Maceo Parker on sax and Rosie Gaines on vocals. Interspersed with Prince's hits ("1999," "U've Got the Look," "Let's Go Crazy," "Raspberry Beret," and loads more) are guest spots from Lenny Kravitz, ("American Woman," "Fly Away"), Cynthia Robinson and Gerry Martini, the Family Stone's horn section, and George Clinton. Old stablemates and friendly rivals, Morris Day & The Time fill one break with two blistering numbers, "Jungle Love" and "The Bird," breathless tributes to James Brown, Ike Turner, and all the review masters who came before.

But the night belongs to Prince. Whether he's leading the band, supporting a guest, or clowning around, it's a joyous, elating, utterly captivating performance. And if you doubted that the brotha' could dance, sing, play guitar and keys--all with authority, then check this one out. He can still do it all and does it better than most. The picture is flawless, and the sound almost perfect. You can choose DTS, Dolby Digital, or Dolby Stereo. Rave runs almost two hours, the perfect accompaniment to your next New Years Eve party.

The Band, The Last Waltz (MGM)

Is The Last Waltz the "finest of all rock movies"? Is Robbie Robertson's admittedly single-handed decision to disassemble The Band by throwing a lavish, almost self-indulgent Thanksgiving Day dinner-and-a-concert, deserving of its endless accolades? I'm not going to rehash all that you've read in the "straight" press about Robertson's machinations, director Martin Scorsese's cinematographic agoggedness, or the rest of The Band's reluctance and bitterness over Robertson's decisions. The film is a tour de force, an assemblage of incredible proportions, and a record for the ages.

The concert is splendiferous: Dylan, Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Doctor John, Ronnie Hawkins, Paul Butterfield, Muddy Waters, and Neil Diamond all perform. One tends to forget, however, that The Band's recorded legacy going into The Last Waltz, was both epochal and spotty. They had produced two remarkable albums, Music From Big Pink and The Band, followed by some a bit more uneven, Stage Fright, Cahoots and Rock of Ages. The hit songs, nonetheless, dominated The Last Waltz, and like the majority of their concert appearances toward the end only a selected few from the first two albums were added. Does this diminish their achievement or The Last Waltz as an event? No. But in retrospect it is a bit like putting a 36-pt. exclamation point on a 12-pt. sentence. The Band was there at so many beginnings: with Ronnie Hawkins at the dawn of rock'n'roll, with Dylan's electric debut, and at the initial reawakening of American roots music. It was and is fitting that they wrote their own end.

At the end of the soundtrack, at the conclusion of "I Shall Be Released," one hears the noodled beginning of an impromptu jam. I, like almost everyone, wondered why the jam wasn't included either on the film or the soundtrack. It could have Turns out that Scorsese's 35-mm, cameras, which were then not engineered for lengthy operation and had been burning out motors all night, had had it. The first jam was never filmed. However, the second jam was. It includes Carl Radle and Stephen Stills in addition to Ringo, Ron Wood, Butterfield, Young, and the lone member of The Band remaining on stage, Garth Hudson. We needn't have fretted all these years. It's nothing special--more like a medicine ball being heaved about. And as if spun by the Fates, Scorsese's cameras burn out before it's over. Eerily, the sound continues and finally fades.

Special Overtly Self-indulgent Mention. My old prep school maintains a very active alumni society, which sends a quarterly magazine to anyone they can find. A recent item touted "Billy Stapleton has released a new CD: Got to be a Love. He was recently featured in the official publication of the Washington Blues Society as `a musician's musician.'" It's difficult not to remember Bill Stapleton. Except in school--very frowned upon--he toted his axe everywhere. Through the years, I'd invariably run into him at a favored hamburger joint after all the bars had closed. He'd have on one outrageous outfit or another, depending on what was selling that day: flower power, disco, metal and later probably punk. And always his guitar. He was a pro's pro: stone sober, always prepared to play, always ready to take a gig. Got to be a Love (Interurban)--available through amazon.com--is pretty much what you'd expect from a "musician's musician," standard songs, standard lyrics ... and cut after cut of blazing guitar wrung though an amazing assortment of styles--master of them all. I don't know where he got the "Billy," but I suppose after you've made it, you're entitled. Seems Buddy, Bobby, Willie, B.B., and Muddy all felt so.

E-mail: [e-mail]. RIP, Otis Blackwell. Goodness, gracious, great balls o' fire ...

--KE