[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the introduction for more background.
Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou
In response to a query from Elwood about what kind of music the bar usually has, a charater from The Blues Brothers famously replies “Oh, we got both kinds: we got country and western!” This is meant to be a joke. The joke is supposed to be that “country and western” is really only one kind of music. But, perhaps oddly, the real punch line, coming some 15 minutes later or so, is that the Blues Brothers band ends up just playing the theme from Rawhide over and over: a tune which is decidedly western ... but definitely not country.
Because, you see, country music and western music are actually entirely different. Country music is from the eastern United States: it is mountain music from the Appalachians. Westeran music is exactly what it says: music derived from the westward expansion. Country is the music of coal miners (and their daughters); western is the music of cowboys. But the most important difference between the two is that I hate country music: it’s one of only two kinds of music that I really can’t handle.1 Western, on the other hand ...
When I was a kid, I had a few albums of my own; they were mostly Disney albums, such as Winnie the Pooh or The Aristocats or The Haunted Mansion. But, for some weird reason, I also had a hand-me-down copy of this Lorne Green album, which included songs like “Bonanza” and “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” Western music, to me, has always been about cowboys camping on the endless prairie, singing songs with a vaguely lonesome air, as the tumbleweeds go rolling by ...
The genesis of this mix was Chris Isaak’s soft western ballad “Blue Spanish Sky.” I first mentioned Isaak way back on Smokelit Flashback I—
It’s a slow sad spanish song;
I knew the words but I sang them wrong.
The one I love has left and gone
Without me ...
Surely there must be other songs out there that I liked in the present, I thought, that would remind me of pleasant times in the past listening to Lorne Green?
At the time, I was deep into True Blood, and its theme song, “Bad Things,” was too slinky and echoey for me to consider it properly country (though Jace Everett is certainly a country singer). But when Everett isn’t supplying a country twang almost too much for me to bear, he drops into a sultry bass that gives you the shivers. The electric guitar counterpointed with the steel guitar, combined with the Hammond organ, also gives it a decidedly uncountry feel. I also thought of Firefly’s opening theme, which is almost country, but with just enough blues and western to rescue it. Then I thought of the extremely oddball song “Dakota,” from Wire Train’s third album, the one which was such a departure from their early, almost-British-sounding jangle-pop. And no song moreso than this one, which is lonely and haunted, starting out soft and then bursting forth, but still somehow downbeat. And then I think I remembered “Underneath the Bunker,” by the absolute masters of jangle-pop, R.E.M. It’s s bit more upbeat, but still has some of that Latin influence,5 and the weird, processed vocals which provide our volume title. And then ... then I was sort of stuck for a long while.
This mix may have had the longest “stewing” time, from initial idea to being declared sufficiently done. I’ve added songs here and there, as I found them: “Ghost of a Texas Ladies’ Man” by Concrete Blonde (a bit silly, but fun), or “the sadness of the witch” by Falling You (the rainstick really sells the western angle), or “Parking Lot” by emmet swimming (purely on the strength of the steel-guitar-adjacent stringwork by my friend Erik6), or “Ghost song” by hands upon black earth7 (more rainstick and other Native American percussion and chanting). When I finally decided to pick up the ultra-classic Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, I discovered (or perhaps rediscovered) “Gold Dust Woman,” which seems to fit perfectly here. When I discovered Myles Cochran,8 I was quite enamored of “Wait a While,” and I think it spent a bit of time as the potential mix opener. But then I found “Big Sky” by the Reverend Horton Heat, normally known more for psychobilly, but actually spanning a pretty electic range of styles.9 Something about the guitar work in this instrumental really screams western at me, even though it’s almost certainly the fastest song on the volume.
Other not-too-surprising candidates include Meat Puppets, Iron & Wine, House of Freaks, and Mazzy Star. In the case of the Seattle ostensibly-grunge band, “Roof with a Hole” is one of my favorites of theirs, and the lyrics (e.g. “the roof’s got a hole in it, and everything’s been ruined by the rain”) sell the lonesome vibe. With the folk-adjacent Sam Beam vehicle, I think it’s the banjo that qualifies it. The Richmond duo’s amazing album Monkey on a Chain Gang contains several tracks which could work here; after some thought, I went with “Long Black Train,” where Johnny Hott’s fantastic toms give the song a rolling beat that perfectly embodies its title. Finally, there are many great choices from the Santa-Monica-based shoegazers, but their biggest hit “Fade into You” gives us some great steel guitar, tambourine, and a particularly lonesome vibe.
[ I Have Water, I Have Rum ]
“Wait a while” by Myles Cochran, off Marginal Street
“Bad Things” by Jace Everett [Single]
“Gold Dust Woman” by Fleetwood Mac, off Rumours
“Good Times Gone” by Nickelback, off Silver Side Up
“Firefly: Main Title” by Sonny Rhodes [Single]
“Blue Spanish Sky” by Chris Isaak, off Heart Shaped World
“the sadness of the witch” by Falling You, off Touch
“Ghost song” by hands upon black earth, off hands upon black earth
“Passage Three” by Steve Roach, Michael Stearns & Ron Sunsinger, off Kiva
“Dakota” by Wire Train, off Wire Train 10
“Roof with a Hole” by Meat Puppets, off Too High to Die
“Long Black Train” by House of Freaks, off Monkey on a Chain Gang
“Parking Lot” by emmet swimming, off Arlington to Boston
“Ghost of a Texas Ladies' Man” by Concrete Blonde, off Walking in London
“Underneath the Bunker” by R.E.M., off Lifes Rich Pageant
“Teeth in the Grass” by Iron & Wine, off Our Endless Numbered Days
“Fade into You” by Mazzy Star, off So Tonight That I Might See
“Taqsim” by Stellamara, off Star of the Sea
“Feels Like the End of the World” by Firewater, off The Golden Hour
“Malagueña salerosa (La malagueña)” by Chingón, off Mexican Spaghetti Western
How about the less likely choices? Well, Nickelback shouldn’t be entirely unexpected: their alt-metal, “post-grunge,”11 style is western-adjacent, and they hail from Alberta, which is Canada’s prairie country (directly north of Montana, in fact). “Good Times Gone” contains a lot of bendy, echoey guitar work that fits in very nicely here, and Chad Kroeger’s vocals contain just enough twang to sell it without crossing into country territory. Plus it just rocks.
Kiva, the album by 3 big names in ambient music (Steve Roach, Michael Stearns, and actual Native American Ron Sunsinger), consists of very long Native-American-inspired ambient pieces, separated by shorter bridges named “Passage One” through “Passage Four” (and concluding with “The Center”). “Passage Three” is a piece that I really felt captured some of the feel of the wind on the wide, flat lands of the American West, and I thought it made a good transition into the whistling, wind-like opening strains of “Dakota.”
And then we have the closing stretch. After “Fade into You” fades out, I thought that “Taqsim” from the normally Balkan-leaning Stellamara,12, with its lonely stringed instrument (I believe it’s an oud), made a perfect bridge into Firewater’s “Feels Like the End of the World.” Firewater’s insanely good The Golden Hour was the result of Tod A. spending three years abroad, absorbing the musical styles of Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The jangly guitars here and the overall melancholy air of the lyrics really cemented its place on this mix, despite being probably the furthest away from properly “western” music on this volume.
And that leads squarely into our closer, “Malagueña salerosa” by Robert Rodruiguez’s Chingón. This song is one of the most well known mariachi ballads, and it demands that the lead singer (in this case, Alex Ruiz) hold a note for what seems like foreve
Next time, let’s go back to the 80s. I kinda like it there.
1 The other, as I’ve mentioned before, is opera.
2 As is “Kings of the Highway,” actually, which is the track of his that I used on Smokelit Flashback.
3 More like the sax breaks you might hear on Moonside by Riverlight.
4 Though not to love it, unfortunately.
5 I’m guessing habanera, specifically, though I am no expert on the Latin American musical styles.
6 You may recall that Erik of emmet swimming was the first employee of my software company.
7 Another Magnatune find; I first mentioned them back on Smokelit Flashback IV.
8 First mentioned back on Rose-Coloured Brainpan I.
9 To prove it, note that the good Reverend has appeared thus far on Moonside by Riverlight, Porchwell Firetime, Cantosphere Eversion, and even Yuletidal Pools.
10 Normally I prefer to link to a page where you can give someone money for the music. However, this album doesn’t appear to be available anywhere in that way, at least in digital form. If you’re into CDs, you can get it from Amazon, but I suspect I’m in a distinct minority on that score these days.
11 Still find that label meaningless, but it’s common.
12 First encountered on Shadowfall Equinox I but since seen on volumes III and IV of that mix, as well as on Apparently World.
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