[Dixielandjazz] The Wisdom of Old Age - (For Older Band Leaders)

[Steve barbone]

This post is mainly for Aged Band Leaders. While about "Country Music",
there is a lesson here (at least for me) about using your age to your
advantage in connecting with the audience.

All of us with "old" bands and "old" singers might well benefit from
absorbing this. Songs like "The Million Dollar Secret" are perfect for us to
impart advice to the young ladies.

For others, you may want to delete now. :-) VBG.

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Words of Wisdom Delivered Twangily

By KELEFA SANNEH Published: July 14, 2005 - NY Times

This summer, country music fans are getting something that many other kinds
of fans wouldn't appreciate: unsolicited advice. Maybe it's pure
coincidence, but four of the season's most popular country songs come with
instructions included. On radio stations and on the country-music cable
networks (CMT and GAC), the genre sounds unexpectedly stern these days,
thanks to the singers who are moonlighting as counselors.
 
The duo Van Zant, whose "Help Somebody" evokes the homespun wisdom of a
"hillbilly scholar" grandfather and a 93-year-old grandmother.

If you're going to be imparting wisdom to your listeners, you should have
some life experience to draw from. That explains "Help Somebody,"
four-minute song in the imperative mood performed by a 99-year-old named Van
Zant. Actually, those 99 years are split between two Van Zants: Donnie, a
founding member of .38 Special, and his brother Johnny, the lead singer of
the reconstituted Lynyrd Skynyrd. (A third Van Zant, Ronnie, the original
leader of Lynyrd Skynyrd, died in 1977.) As Van Zant, the two brothers
recorded a pair of Southern-rock albums together, then cannily switched
genres for the country album "Get Right With the Man" (Sony Nashville).

Van Zant's country makeover required a shift (though not a huge one) in
sound: fewer bluesy guitar solos, more shimmering organ. It also helped the
duo capitalize on its age and legacy. Much more than rock 'n' roll, country
music has a place for grizzled veterans, wise elders and proud throwbacks;
in "Help Somebody," the two play all three roles.

For extra authority, the lyrics evoke the homespun wisdom of a "hillbilly
scholar" grandfather and a 93-year-old grandmother; channeling these ancient
spirits, the Van Zants deliver messages small ("Never let a cowboy make the
coffee") and big ("If you wanna hear God laugh, tell him your plans"). But
the advice that really matters comes in the couplet that supplied titles for
both the song and the album: "Help somebody if you can/ And get right with
the man." To underscore this point, a gospel choir makes an unexpected
entrance near the end, suggesting an even higher authority than the
grandparents.

Another hit advice song comes from a rookie, the 32-year-old singer and
songwriter Bobby Pinson, whose debut single is a list of don'ts called
"Don't Ask Me How I Know." (audio clip) The song comes from Mr. Pinson's
debut album, "Man Like Me" (RCA Nashville), and it has a big country-rock
chorus separating verses quiet enough to show off the singer's slightly
ragged voice. (In the video, he also shows off a very ragged cowboy hat.)

Instead of pretending to be wise beyond his years, Mr. Pinson coyly hints at
what he's seen without saying it; when he sings that title phrase, it's hard
to tell whether he's bluffing. And the lyrics shift between the specific
("Don't quit your high school football team halfway through the season") and
the general ("Don't rush off the phone when your mama calls - you ain't that
busy"), which helps keep didacticism at bay. You can never be sure whether
he's singing about his life or yours, or neither.

On his new single, Brad Paisley performs a similar balancing act. In 2003,
Mr. Paisley released the hugely popular album "Mud on the Tires," which
included both the easygoing title track and "Whiskey Lullaby," a duet with
Allison Krauss that must be one of the grimmest - and most memorable -
recent ballads in any genre.

In "Alcohol," the first single from his forthcoming album "Time Well Wasted"
(Arista Nashville), the advice is purely implicit. Mr. Paisley sings a
first-person narrative in the voice of alcohol itself; the result is a
lilting ballad that mainly sticks to comedy while hinting at tragedy.

The chorus begins in mock-heroic mode: "Since the day I left Milwaukee,
Lynchburg and Bordeaux, France/ Been making the bars lots of big money and
helping white people dance." But a few lines later, Mr. Paisley sounds a bit
more bittersweet: "I can help you up or make you fall/ You had some of the
best times you'll never remember with me/ Alcohol." This is the most
appealing kind of advice song: a sneaky one, with a narrator - a liquid
narrator, in this case - who refuses to pick sides.

And then, finally, there's Alan Jackson, the country singer who has a hit
with a witty pseudo-advice song that could be a sly rejoinder to the other
three. The video for "The Talkin' Song Repair Blues," from the album "What I
Do" (Arista Nashville), begins innocently enough: a man's car breaks down
and he visits a mechanic; over a sparse groove, Mr. Jackson talks the verses
and sings the chorus.

Then things get weird. Turns out the mechanic is also an aspiring country
star, and he recognizes the singer (who isn't, as it happens, portrayed by
Mr. Jackson), saying, "Ain't you that famous songwriter guy?" The mechanic
serenades our beleaguered protagonist and asks for advice.

Instead of delivering some platitudes about how we've all got dreams, our
mischievous narrator gets all technical, paraphrasing the mechanic's jargon.
"Your whole melodic structure's worked itself loose," he explains, and it
gets worse. "You've got a bad safety problem with/ That dominant chord with
the augmented fifth/ Just see how dangerously high it raises you up?" And
Mr. Jackson's voice suddenly swerves toward falsetto to illustrate the
point.

Those other advice songs all depend on singers who can sound like sages, and
on listeners willing to believe that singers have something to say; willing
to believe that a singer can become a character. Maybe that's why it's so
much fun to hear Mr. Jackson deflate this whole enterprise, suggesting that
a songwriter is just another skilled technician, no more trustworthy than a
car mechanic. At the end of the video, the songwriter leaves the mechanic
working on his car and hitches a ride with a friendly driver who turns out
to be Mr. Jackson himself; they zoom off together, singer and character side
by side.