Can Country Music Ever Be Small-G, "gOTHIC"?
Those of you that know me well, will know that I have quite an eclectic taste in music and I have been thinking about this question for some time. I'm not sure if I have actually come to a conclusion myself, but I thought that if I put something "out there" it might help me crystalise my thoughts?
So Can Country Music Ever Be gothic, with a small 'g'? Can Gothic ever be considered country?
In thinking about this I have feel I also need to widen out the term Country to include the wider term 'Folk'. Here in the UK we came relatively late to country & western, bluegrass etc, but we do have a tradition of folk music, so for my UK-based evidence I need to refer back to this point.
I guess what I am trying to argue is that all musical genres, draw upon others for inspiration and that although the simplified Gospel - Folk - Bluegrass - Country - RocknRoll - Rock - Goth time line is not really up for debate, there is sometimes a more direct connection that creates a short-circuit, something which I have been considering ever since I saw the word 'gothic' used to describe Lucinda Williams.
So, Exhibit A - Lucinda Williams
From Wikipedia: Lucinda Williams (born January 26 1953 is an America rock, folk, and country music singer and songwriter. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she was named "America's best songwriter" by TIME magazine in 2002.
From a customer review of her 2003 album, World Without Tears on Amazon, “Lucinda Williams is a woman of constant sorrow.”
Surely a good starting point as a definition of a goth? But as Exhibit A.1, I would like to submit the lyrics to one of the tracks on this album, "Those Three Days". I would argue certainly small-g "gothic", some of which (I was thinking of the scorpion sections) you could imagine Andrew Eldritch croaking out with the Sisters of Mercy?
Lucinda Williams – Those Three Days (World Without Tears
2003)
You say there's always gonna be this thing
Between us days are filled with dreams
Scorpions crawl across my screen
Make their home beneath my skin
Underneath my dress stick their tongues
Bite through the flesh down to the bone
And I have been so fuckin' alone
Since those three days
You built a nest inside my soul
You rest your head on leaves of gold
You managed to crawl inside my brain
You found a hole and in you came
You sleep like a baby breathing
Comfortably between truth and pain
But the truth is nothing's been the same
Since those three days
Exhibit B - Johnny Cash's Cover of NIN, "Hurt"
It doesn't come more country than Johnny Cash, and it is a testament to the original song writing that it transfers so effortlessly to Cash's style of singing. But surely this is the greatest piece of evidence of gothic music being country, and vice versa as I'm sure many Nine Inch Nails fans now own a copy of this, and many Johnny Cash fans now at least have one NIN track in their collections?
While we're on the subject of "Legends of Country and Western" consider Exhibit C: Strawberry Switchblade cover Dolly Parton. Perhaps a bit "tongue in cheek", but again, a reasonable transition?
Exhibit D: The New Model Army. I have talked about the NMA on Closet Goth before, and whether they could be consider Goth or Not? I think that they are certainly gothic with a small-g, but if you consider the lyrics, some of the melodies and their attitude there is an awful lot of "folk" influence. The tracks, "Small Town England" and "Spirit of the Falklands" deal with issues prevalent in folk music throughout the ages, and I think the following sums up this often wistful, but with a hard edge, harking back to a better time and place?
(Heaton/Sullivan) 1987
The time I think most clearly, the time I drift away
Is on the bus-ride that meanders up these valleys of green and grey
I get to think about what might have been and what may yet come true
And I get to pass a rainy mile thinking of you
And all the while, all the while, I still hear that call
To the land of gold and poison that beckons to us all
Nothing changes here very much, I guess you'd say it never will
The pubs are all full on Friday nights and things get started still
We spent hours last week with Billy boy, bleeding, yeah queuing in Casualty
Staring at those posters we used to laugh at:
Never Never Land, palm trees by the sea
Well there was no need for those guys to hurt him so bad
When all they had to do was knock him down
But no one asks to many questions like that since you left this town
Ch: And tomorrow brings another train
Another young brave steals away
But you're the one I remember
From these valleys of green and the grey
You used to talk about winners and losers all the time - as if that was all there was
As if we were not of the same blood family, as if we live by different laws
Do you owe so much less to these rain swept hills than you owe to your good self?
Is it true that the world has always got to be something
That seems to happen somewhere else?
For God's sake don't you realise that I still hear that call
Do you think you're so brave just to go running to that which beckons to us all?
Ch: No, not for one second did you look behind you
As you were walking away
Never once did you wish any of us well
Those who had chosen to stay
And if that's what it takes to make it
In the place that you live today
Then I guess you'll never read these letters that I send
From the valleys of the green and the grey
Published by Attack Attack Music/Warner Chappell Music Ltd
Again from Wikipedia, "The band had a "dust and death" image, associated with characters from Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" and often wore cowboy clothes with a weather-beaten look during photo shoots."
There is also quite a significant 'folk' influence in some of their early material, and the track Power, on the "From Gehenna to Here" compilation, 2001, features an almost full-blown hill-billy guitar riff.
In Summary:
The evidence is flimsy and circumstantial in many cases. I'm not even sure the case stacks up? But I like a good debate / argument and I would be interested to hear anybody else's views on this, if only to help me clarify my own thoughts, one way or the other. DISCUSS.
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