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Tom Russell: Savage Rants from the Minstrel Trail - Part 1

Mike Harding | 13:43 UK time, Wednesday, 7 October 2009

Tom Russell writes:

There is no danger. Not anymore. Not in song.

Bob Dylan walked out onto a small stage at Newport forty years ago and scared ten thousand soppy-hearted folkies.

Johnny Cash shook his fist at American radio in an ad in Billboard magazine for their refusal to play Peter La Farge's 'Ballad of Ira Hayes'. "Radio people! Where are your guts?"... he screamed.

Janis Joplin tore the screws out of every stage she stomped across.

Hank Williams cut to the heart of every possible footnote on modern love, then expired on the road at age 29.

These voices ripped into the soul of this cotton candy wasteland. But there are not many songs today that will make you pull over to the side of the road and weep.

But hell, I can try to write a few...here I am in Pittsburgh staring out at another mall, on a six month tour to push 'Blood and Candle Smoke', a 12 song record I believe in.

Remember the days when 'Blonde on Blonde' came out and you took this holy piece of the grail home and locked yourself in the room for three days dissecting the message? And a good one it was. A total work of art.

I'd like to aim for making a record that strong.

I'm staring at a broken cheese platter in a dressing room darkened by the spit and graffiti of desperate rock and roll bands and punkish songwriters, and the tea kettle is boiling over, and it's time to change the guitar strings.

The troubadour road. once mused that perhaps it was the troubadours who invented the concept of love. I'm with him.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    "But there are not many songs today that will make you pull over to the side of the road and weep."

    I first heard Chris Wood's "Come Down Jehovah" as the last song of a gig he played in Canterbury -- and vividly remember stumbling out dazed into the night afterwards, blown away by his ability to state so simply and beautifully what I'd been trying to articulate for a long time. Not many, but when a good one comes along...

  • Comment number 2.

    Yes, I'd agree with the comment above. Except I'd add about a hundred more songs...some by Karine Polwart (at least a couple from 'This Earthly Spell'), one or two by Martin Simpson, some Rusby, that Chumbawamba song 'Word Bomber', lots of Boo Hewerdine compositions...I could be here all day!
    The difference between all the above and Dylan is the amount of exposure they get in the wider media perhaps. Not much gets through the thick layer of bland at the top these days.

  • Comment number 3.

    This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

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