Americana music can be a hit or miss type thing. Wide swaths of it feel more hipster-oriented, like wealth adjacent folks cosplaying as old school country in vintage outfits more than authentic music. Don’t even get me started on my disdain for Sturgill Simpson, and his son-of-an-Appalachian-narcotics-officer bullshit. Whatever credibility anybody out there wants to explain to me he has is automatically negated by the aforementioned familial fact about him and him wearing a goddamn cop mustache. Wack with a capital ack. Usually my personal litmus test for Americana music is whether it would jibe with the longhaired redneck crowd… those country ass dudes who are too outlaw to even bother telling you about it, because honestly, they don’t want anyone bothering them about their shit. They are like 1%ers without motorcycles, nor the means to afford a nice Harley, much less all the material accouterments that go with that. It’s a 1%er outlaw club that drives whatever the fuck is still running and has gas in it, so they might be in an ’87 Dodge Ram one day, then an old Ford Escort stationwagon with a trash bag window on the passenger side the next, and then you see them on Friday night at the liquor store and they’re driving a fairly decent Firebird somehow. This is pretty much my dad and all his closest conspirators of FTW that I saw back in the day growing up. Malcolm Holcombe always felt completely in that crowd, like he’d be totally comfortable sitting at the kitchen table smoking a bowl with those dudes. I have loved his music for a while, and he was that refreshing actual outlaw rural voice that was tolerant of the things you’d hope one was tolerant about (folks’ sexual identity, who they wanted to fuck or how they wanted to be in the world) and intolerant of the shit actual outlaws should be intolerant of (the police state, in fact the whole goddamn militarized pyramid scam from the top down, which too many rural dudes who consider themselves outlaws seem all too intent on mentally fellating every chance they get). I had really hoped to see Holcombe perform live at some point, but I knew he was old, and word of his health problems got online as his performances became fewer and farther between. He passed away last year, but he left behind a large body of work, that if you’re looking for music that is more country than country music, and way more outlaw than the bullshit your local All Lives Matter jack ass is bumping, you should go digging into Holcombe’s discography. This was off the last album released after he died, of the stuff he was working on in the end. That makes this song feel a little more more… didn’t really know what more to put there. It’s just more. I love this dude and I hope he has found peace, and may his memory be a blessing.
No comments:
Post a Comment