I've spent a little time in
Florida and a little time in
Tennessee-that's the extent of my experience with the South. (Unless you count the Roots reruns that I've been catching lately on PBS around
2am.) After seeing
Florida native
Jim White and
New Mexico transplants,
The Handsome Family play Sunday night at
The Ark in Ann Arbor, I have a new appreciation for all the ghosts and history that make up the South's swampy, sticky back story. All of these musicians play truly, I mean really, stripped down county. When I use the word country I'm not referring to "put another nickel in the jukebox and we'll do another Kansas City Shuffle", I mean "let's sing about abandoned trailers and killing your lover because it's only human."
Jim White's music is simple. Basic 3/4 or 4/4 country drum beats back his very simple guitar lines and chords often affected with tremolo and deep reverb. He sings his past really. White grew up in the Pentecostal community of Pensacola, Florida, worked as both a surfer and a model in Italy for a short time and then began writing music. In a 2000 interview White shed some light on his background and why his lyrics all come from the place he calls home.
Well you see, it's a deeper culture for those viewing it on the outside, but to the people participating in it, it's simply living. That's different. You don't notice the gems as much I think when you're caught up in the midst of it. You can't notice how pretty a river is... if you're 6 feet under the water drifting along. If you’re flying in an airplane over it and you look down, you say 'what a magnificent river.' Well I never got a chance to say 'what a magnificent river' until I left home and traveled all over the world and then, from a great distance, looked at my home and thought
"God what a beautiful place, let me go back there." And now that I'm back there, I appreciate it. But I don't know that the people who are here really think about it much.
His live performance was an equal mix of music and storytelling. While watching White on stage I couldn't help but think of the VH1 program storytellers how the rather intimate concert would have made a perfect episode. Between songs White would drift into stories ranging from where he was when he wrote the last song or why other folk musicians might look down on him for using a "Japanese orchestra" to loop guitar lines and vocals instead of using a full band. Whenever a story would make its way into a song, the room would take on the feel of an abandoned car on a dusty southern highway with the radio still on and the driver's door open. As I have seen few folk musicians play, White's performance was a rich experience, leaving me with a sense that I'd visited his home for a short walk down a path he knew well, walking along behind him with everyone else in the room.
Imagine any bar south of the Indiana border. Imagine then someone dropping some coins in the jukebox and a few bars of twangy guitar pouring into the room . . . and then a male voice sings, "This is why people OD on pills and jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. Anything to feel weightless again. Those poor, lost indians-when the white men found them, most died of TB; the rest went insane. In our motel room you're drinking Slice and gin, reading Moby Dick on the other bed." Imagine that and you're thinking of The Handsome Family. Husband and wife duo Brett and Rennie Sparks formed in Chicago and have been releasing some of the most basic yet deeply disturbing and comical country music since 1995. In honesty, there's really noting interesting about the music, it could be created rather easily with an old guitar and drum machine. Many of the songs do include a steel pedal guitar which when added to the live performance gave the room the feeling of old cabin with a kerosene lamp lightly burning.
The Handsome Family's talent shines in their lyrics, written mainly by Rennie, a former fiction writer. Most of the songs revolve around the common themes of death, murder, drug overdose, excessive drinking and dead animals. These off themes, when set to basic country western music create such a strange feeling that I couldn't help but stare at the musicians as they played and sang thinking, "they travel around the country singing this stuff and what the hell does their house look like?" I have a feeling I was not the only wondering these things. It's as though being drunk and evicted at the same time would be a perfect few hours spent prior to seeing The Handsome Family play live-and I guess that's why I enjoyed it as much as I did. Looking over the tops of ten or so beer bottles in a cold dark room in February next to some good company watching a grown man sing, "I had nothing to say on Christmas day when you threw all your clothes in the snow. When you burnt your hair, knocked over chairs, I just tried to stay out of your way. But when you fell asleep with blood on your teeth, I got in my car and drove away," was truly a good cap to a winter weekend. Yeah, their jokes got old and I could play songs just as well, but dog-gone-it, they're just such interesting people.
Music is often more about a musician's personality, history and a specific place, whether that place is where you fall in love or get sick on too much wine. The back story the concert told was well-worth the long drive and the $7.50.
I haven't posted any free samples because you should really buy music from these two truly original artists.
