From the Archive: 420 bad desire
Punch Brothers, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
There’s something uniquely exhilarating about bluegrass music, beyond the stomping and the lightning fast runs. Other genres can be equally exciting to listen to, but none of them invoke such a visceral reaction in me, the uncontrollable desire to let my face break into a wide grin. I didn’t grow up on country music, so it’s not nostalgia or familiarity—it’s more like I can feel the energy pent up in the music entering my body. It feels inspiring and full of potential, floods me as if I were about to run a race.
I got to see Punch Brothers for the second time a few weeks ago. They are arguably the best bluegrass group performing today, a five-piece band led by musical prodigy Chris Thile. When I saw their set at Hardly Strictly in 2019, before I had ever heard of them, I was enthralled by the virtuoso talent displayed onstage, so much prowess huddled around a single microphone. I became a fan instantaneously.
My favorite Punch Brothers song is “My Oh My.” There are others in their discography that display more of their individual talents, that go faster and harder, but none of them hit like “My Oh My.” The breakthrough moment is when the chorus comes in after the defining riff with bowed double bass where it hadn’t been before. It feels like flying:
The rest of the show was incredible, but nothing matched that moment. A few came quite close: Paul Kowert doing a bass solo so slow and so in time that the whole band came in perfectly in sync, Noam Pikelny opening his mouth for the first time to reveal a deep, rich baritone, the encore performance of “Julep” for which I snuck up to the front row. It was impossible to look away from them, five men playing their hearts out in a display of talent and synchronicity unrivaled by any band I’ve ever seen.
You get the sense when Chris Thile is talking that even his speaking voice is pitched, that his innate musicality runs through everything he does. He is always performing, with ease and pleasure, but performing nonetheless. His speech lilts like song, his hands are always poised on his instrument, worn high up around his chest, his movement on the stage is graceful and energetic. At only forty years old, he’s already a veteran of the industry, a musician’s musician. He released his first record at age thirteen, then formed the wildly popular band Nickel Creek with the Watkins siblings, now each a force in their own right in the bluegrass world. He then went on to release some solo records, form Punch Brothers, and play in Goat Rodeo, as well as host the longstanding live variety show Live From Here. Every time I’ve seen him perform, I’ve been in awe.
I don’t listen to Jason Isbell very often, but I see him on Twitter all the time. He occupies the niche of leftist country musician, and his timeline is mostly taking shots at his conservative peers in the industry. I like him for this reason, aside from the fact that he wrote a song as brilliant as “Only Children:”
And are you still taking notes
Hydrocodone in your backpack
Maybe these words will hold the beast back
And will you read me what you wrote
The one I said you stole from Dylan
Over-encouraged, only children
It’s strange how deep a parasocial relationship it’s possible to develop with an artist whose Twitter you follow. I only just recently started checking the app with any frequency, mostly in an attempt to grow the readership of this newsletter. The byproduct of that effort is that I see a lot more of what I can only presume are the inner thoughts of my favorite musicians, people whose opinions I care about by default. I don’t know these people at all, and yet I feel like I know them. I have a strong conviction that Phoebe Bridgers and I would be friends, but that Kacey Musgraves might find me a bit too square. It’s nonsensical and entirely futile to speculate, but I can’t help myself.
I’ve been following the Spotify-Joe Rogan-Neil Young drama closely; as a Neil Young fan with twenty-something of his songs appearing across my six hundred playlists, I have some real skin in the game. Fortunately for me, the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young discography has remained intact, I’m sure due to some contractual loopholes. Unfortunately, Neil Young’s request to remove his solo music from the service was granted:
Calling out the biggest streaming service in the name of morality is just another notch on Neil Young’s belt, alongside other examples in a long and storied history of taking stands for what he believes in. This most recent drama, regarding vaccine misinformation on Joe Rogan’s podcast, isn’t just virtue signaling either; Neil Young is a survivor of childhood polio. His open letter stated: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” It gets spicier: while this situation has been unfolding this week, his collaborator and friend Joni Mitchell also elected to pull her discography from the service.
Seeing as Joni Mitchell might actually be an artist that makes more than a penny per year off of Spotify streams, her rescinding her catalogue might actually cause quite a stir. It’s possible that this protest will have a domino effect and something might positively change about streaming services. It’s also possible that in a few weeks these discographies will be quietly reinstated.
Last week, I wrote about how having a subscription to a streaming service is an unprecedented privilege with the potential for creating great joy. But Joe Rogan aside, services like Spotify have tons of issues, ranging from environmental impact from their massive servers to their abysmal payouts for plays. These apps have changed the way that we think about and value music, as well as reshaping the financial landscape for working musicians. I highly recommend How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt as a primer for the history of music consumption. But if you’re pressed for time, you could also opt to listen to “Everything is Free” by Gillian Welch and extrapolate the details from there.
Another Neil Young fan here. Sad to see the whole incident around Spotify but glad that Neil Young and other's are taking a stance.
Your post brought back some memories. I went to the same college as Noam Pikelny (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). Before he was famous I remember I used to go to small bars to him play. I think either he or his brother worked with me maybe at a computer lab, can't remember. There was a cool scene of bluegrass and banjo rock around Champaign Urbana. Another great band that used to come by is yonder mountain string band. I also didn’t grow up on country or bluegrass music but oddly enough I find solace in it. Maybe it is the string instruments (banjo and guitar) and universal theme of love and loss.
I like to think that "Blowin' Smoke" era Musgraves would've been fun to take :15's with. Shit jobs are always easier to endure when you have a partner in crime.
And I'd like to add myself to the "I-shouldn't-like-bluegrass-but-here-we-are" crowd. As already noted, the universal themes of love and loss are a draw. But so too is the undercurrent of faith running in most songs. Not necessarily faith=religion, but the more abstract/overarching idea that things are gonna be alright.
I don't know if the Rogan/Spotify situation is going to turn out alright, but I'd like to think it will. The discussion is focused on artists vs. the platform, but that's a symptom of a larger issue; namely, why have we allowed these platforms to get so big that there aren't a lot of viable options for most artists?
For the Youngs and Mitchells (and Lofgrens), the financial calculus is pretty easy. For most everyone else, going to a place like Tidal means swapping better pay for less reach. On the user side, it's a steep drop in available selection.
In an ideal world, platforms like Bandcamp would match Spotify's scale, and by default each would be forced to compete with one another. In the meantime, regardless of which side one might land here*, Spotify is playing by the rules, and Rogan is abiding by their T.O.S.
For his part, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek issued a statement yesterday:
https://newsroom.spotify.com/2022-01-30/spotifys-platform-rules-and-approach-to-covid-19/
*I haven't been a fan of Rogan since he was on NewsRadio and my music collection existed in the physical world, but here we are.