Fiddles Chasing Chickens
October 26th, 2009 | 10:00 am est |
Read the rest of this entry »
A somewhat forgotten footnote these days, string bands in their time were an indispensable part of rural community life, and these bands were particularly suited for live shows, rattling off reels, quicksteps, and waltzes for dances where the only rule was to move your feet. Within that framework, however, there was room for variety, including galloping gallows confessions (like Kelly Harrell’s “Charles Guiteau,” the first-person story of the man who assassinated U.S. President James Garfield in 1881, complete with fiddle blasts from the great Posey Rorer), surrealistic lyrics (try making literal sense of any version of “Cotton-Eyed Joe”), and country blues lyrics dressed up with fiddles and banjos — whatever worked, as long as you could hear it across the room or yard and dance to it. Often the songs were fitted with floating verses that allowed the bands to shorten or lengthen a tune to fit the dancefloor flow, and the best of these bands could turn as one on a dime, and being acoustic, they could literally play anywhere, anytime, and for as long as needed.
Perhaps sensing that moving on was a predominate American response to solving a whole host of life’s problems, and recognizing that the long haul trucker was a close cousin to the river boat gambler, 
Trace Adkins - 
Bobby Bare - 
Dierks Bentley - 
Glen Campbell - 
Hayes Carll - 
Carlene Carter - 
Rodney Crowell - 
Lefty Frizzell - 
Bobbie Gentry - 
Merle Haggard - 
Rebecca Lynn Howard - 
Alan Jackson - 
Toby Keith - 
Hal Ketchum - 
Robyn Ludwick - 
Skeets McDonald - 
Frankie Miller - 
John Michael Montgomery - 
Willie Nelson - 
Buck Owens - 
Brad Paisley - 
Reckless Kelly - 
Sugarland - 
Mack Vickery - 
Porter Wagoner & The Wagonmasters - 
Hank Williams - 
Lee Ann Womack - 
The Decoder Ring tunes in some of the best songs from the week’s releases, whether they’re brand new albums or reissues of vintage music. October brings us some new comps of classic unreleased material from Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan. The Streets, The Pretenders, and Oasis resurface, and the tireless Jay Reatard proves that he can write and release a career’s worth of singles in less than a year. Meanwhile, Marnie Stern shows off some finger-tapping pyrotechnics that would make Eddie Van Halen blush. 
Jerry Reed had a way with a corny joke and a complicated guitar. Both gifts were instrumental in turning Reed into a star, probably because they both came so naturally to the Georgian Guitar Man. That quick, easy touch wound up downplaying his instrumental virtuosity, making that intricate fingerpicking seem like something anybody can do — and nothing could have been further from the truth — while emphasizing the goofy, infectious humor that helped Reed make a smooth transition from recording star to an all-around entertainer, popping up on TV shows and movies all through the ’70s. Of all those, he was of course best known as Burt Reynolds sidekick Cledus “Snowman” Snow in Smokey & The Bandit, a film that rivaled Star Wars at the box office in 1977, the kind of success that makes a superstar out of supporting players. And so it was with Jerry, who now was known to more people as an actor – or better still, a personality – than a musician, and not just any musician but one of the greatest guitarists of the 20th Century. For most musicians, losing their core identity as a player would be a disservice, but for Jerry Reed it somehow didn’t matter. Sure, Jerry wasn’t as good an actor as he was a picker or songwriter, but he had the same personality on camera that he did on record — a back-slapping, chicken-picking, gregarious, stubborn redneck that was the best drinking or fishing buddy you’d ever have.
