Country Music Talk

For whatever reason, country music hit its financial stride during the seventies. With Willie Nelson issuing no less than four classic (there were others, but we’re talking about stone classics) during the decade and Merle Haggard reconfiguring the general populace’s perception of the genre, it was a good time for the music.

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Jason and the Scorchers have been working out an equation balancing aggressive rock tones cribbed from seventies bands and traditional country stuff for just about thirty years. For the most part, the band works out what it had in mind – and relatively easily.

Each of the ensemble players possesses untoward amounts of musical ability as recognizable in its rock presentation as its straight country stuff. At times, the band pushes tempo to the breaking point, frequently finding itself referred to as the forbearers of alt country and cow punk. And while that’s well and good, it’s pretty easy to figure out that Mike Ness and Social Distortion were recording in this general arena (that group favored punk over country, but the mix is still there) at least three years before the Scorchers were on fire.

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Deciphering Americana occasionally gets bogged down by the fact that people seek out whatever gets deemed authentic. Of course, the difference in one’s ability to play banjo has nothing to do with whether or not one was properly trained, or if the instrument was picked up over time and learned by watching and listening intently. There is a visceral manner of performance that some simply can’t capture, but that again might be as prevalent in music classes as it is in informal jams.

George Pegram, though, is generally viewed as an authentic banjo player – whatever that means. More importantly, he most likely perceived himself to be an American and attempted to relate that through his performances and the works he choose from this country’s song book.

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It’s odd to think that more than any other genre, country and bluegrass have offered up stars in pairs or in the configuration of a family. The Carter Family ostensibly laid the foundation, and the songbook, for subsequent generations. And while Bill Monroe made his name fronting a band, it was his earlier work with his brothers that allowed for his following success. In that band, the Foggy Mountain Boys, he fronted though, was a guitarist and fiddler that would leave his employ and gain a wider renown than even Monroe.

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