Getting That Old Time Feeling Again

Now that I've listened to Son Volt's new album, Okemah and the Melody of Riot about a million times, I feel like commenting upon it. Just this morning I transcribed the lyrics to the most catchy song, "Afterglow 61". To wit:

US highway from north to south
It's history grinning
Get out from under the gun
And drive down highway 61

Hannibal's son saw the goldrush
Saw the Civil War done
And settled down soon
On Highway 61

There's no reason to feel downhearted
There's music in the wheels there to be found

"Goodnight Irene" and the prison walls
Killed a man
Lived to sing about it all
Stella 12 on Highway 61

Immigrant son left a mining town
Electrified traditional
And headed out on Highway 61

There's no reason to feel downhearted
There's music in the wheels there to be found

If you've ever read about American folk music, you'd know that, back in the day, the train was a prominent symbol in song. The westward expansion, American ingenuity, hittin' the rails and off away from home, from community in search of a new life - that whole bit. And I think that's what Farrar is tapping into here. He just altered it a bit and used a road - the famous Highway 61 to express much the same thing. The car, after all, is a more potent symbol of the above to us here in the 21st century than the train. Then again, Los Lobos recorded "Everybody Loves a Train" back in the 1990s. Anyway, the first verse refers to Mark Twain, the second to Leadbelly, and the last to Bob Dylan. I also finally looked up what the heck "Okemah" is and found out that it's a town in Oklahoma and Woody Guthrie's birthplace. I recalled that another of the new songs, "Bandages & Scars", contained the line, "The words of Woody Guthrie ringing in my head". The final epiphany I had was that the band's new best-of album, which comes out next week, has a few unreleased songs on it including a cover of Woody Guthrie's "I've Got to Know". So something was up. Too many references to Woody Guthries, to classic American historical figures. (What makes all the references to Woody Guthrie all the more amusing is that Farrar's old pal, Jeff Tweedy, took his band, Wilco, and made two albums with Billy Bragg that utilized lyrics that Guthrie never got around to using and pairing them with original music.) It seemed that there was more to be had than just a mere collection of unrelated songs. Had Farrar created a (gasp!) concept album?

Musically, Okemah rocks harder than Son Volt's previous effort, Wide Swing Tremelo. For example, "Jet Pilot" is reminiscent of "Chickamauga" or "Stay True" from Farrar's days in Uncle Tupelo. But there's also the eclectic "Medication" with shakers and a slide dulcimer doing its best imitation of a sitar. Although I haven't gotten all the lyrics down yet, it seems like Okemah is Son Volt's most cohesive album, lyrically. Farrar began in Uncle Tupelo writing songs about working dead-end jobs in a boring small town. Waiting on a bar stool for Reagan's economic properity to trickle down. Placing such songs on an album next to traditional folk songs like "Coalminers" and the Carter Family's "No Depression" equated the two but also seemed to show that Farrar had a knack for viewing the present through the lense of the past. The first two Son Volt albums tended to stay away from such subject matter but they returned in a wider worldview on 1998's Wide Swing Tremelo in such songs as "Blind Hope" and the wordy, almost eschatological, "Medicine Hat". There's more on his first solo album, Sebastopol, with lines such as "Breathe in all the diesel fumes/admire the concrete landscape/and doesn't it feel free" and "They'll be digging through landfills to find evidence of our great demise". The death of Farrar's father had a definite influence on his second album, Terroir Blues, but "No Rolling Back" mentions "21st century blood" - oil - and "Fool King's Crown" which does a good job poking at popular culture.

On Okemah, "Atmosphere" recounts 9/11 and talks about "Mad men on both sides of the fence". In "Endless War" he wonders how "another wrong can make a right". I get the impression that much of the rest of the album is an attempt to capture our post-9/11 zeitgeist. But social/political commentary is not all that's here. "Gramophone" describes looks to the comforting effects of music by looking back at when "vinyl discs" had the "power to hypnotize" while "6 String Belief" sounds like Farrar is talking about the galvanizing force of music for folks who want to change the world. Perhaps this is what he means by "melody of riot". And of course there's "Afterglow 61" which is part tribute to tradition and part call-to-arms. Twain, Ledbetter, and Dylan - they went out and did their own thing so we should do the same. That's what heading down Highway 61 is all about. Taking the lessons of the past with you as you go out and makes new things, make the world better. A thorough reading of the lyrics is needed for this, but it sure seems like Farrar is back at commenting on the present by looking at it through the lense of the past.