Right by Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs

ISBN-13: 9781602580602 / Angielski / Miękka / 2011 / 245 str.

Jewly Hight

Opis

In this day of digital delivery, more and more popular music arrives to its listeners in downloadable bits, giving away very little about where the songs come from or who is behind them. At the same time contemporary popular culture, with its ancestry-excavating Web sites and television shows, reveals that people are craving answers to those very same questions about themselves. Right by Her Roots is a book for this moment, a thorough and thoughtful exploration of the bodies of work of eight groundbreaking artists who acknowledge, in their songs and in their lives, their relationships to their roots--both musical and personal. Jewly Hight, a highly regarded and spiritually-savvy music writer, delves into the journeys and styles of eight of the most distinctive voices in Americana music: Lucinda Williams, Julie Miller, Victoria Williams, Michelle Shocked, Mary Gauthier, Ruthie Foster, Elizabeth Cook, and Abigail Washburn. Hight proves there is much to be gained from digging into the oeuvres of singers and songwriters who put something of themselves and their pursuits of meaning into their music. What she unearths, through vivid original interviews and perceptive analysis of their spirits, sounds, and styles--not just their lyrics--is rich insight into what animates their work and how they view and experience the world. Giving music-making women the serious attention they deserve but rarely receive, Right by Her Roots is an especially important and engaging account.

Spis treści

• Lucinda Williams: Life and Death Matters
• A three-time GRAMMY winner, daughter of a former poet laureate and an Americana archetype. To put it another way, the most influential and cathartic literary southern-folk, rock-and-blues confessor of her generation.
• Julie Miller: Heart to Heart
• The deep, empathetic, emotional center of Americana songwriting, who is a coveted song source for discerning mainstream country singers. She and singer/guitarist husband Buddy Miller are widely regarded as the Queen and King of their genre.
• Victoria Williams: Seriously Free
• A Louisiana-born, California desert-dwelling, jazzy alternative folk-rock pioneer whose unfettered approach to singing and songwriting has a way of confronting and dissolving even the strongest inhibitions.
• Michelle Shocked: True to Conscience
• An intrepid and sharp-witted American roots music sojourner who has fought against the currents of the music industry to follow her social, political, and spiritual convictions. In the process she has become the head of her own small record label and a devoted member of a black church.
• Mary Gauthier: Outsider Art
• A folk-country singer-songwriter respected not only for the quality but the heft of her work. She unflinchingly, though not at all unfeelingly, speaks of and to people on the margins of society, identifying with them particularly through her own experience of being orphaned.
• Ruthie Foster: Don't Be Shy about What You've Got
• A Texas singer-songwriter partial to blues, spirituals, and soul. Possessed of a big voice, she teaches life-affirming boldness by example, in the spirit of her mother, grandmother, and the caught-up, celebratory church services of her youth.
• Elizabeth Cook: Staying Down-Home, Getting Somewhere
• A regular on the Grand Ole Opry, born with a voice for hard country and also drawn to the rawer sounds of rock and roll. As affectionate toward and sustained by her humble familial roots as she is determined to do her own thing beyond them, she writes in a way that embraces both with keen humor.
• Abigail Washburn: The Joy of Joining In
• A clawhammer banjo player whose warmhearted embrace of American old-time music, Chinese folk music, and sympathetic musical collaborators aims to stir communal connection... and leads to the occasional international diplomatic role.