Taxonomizing a New Genre: The High Lonesome
Interviews
By Elizabeth Nelson
What is the High Lonesome sound? Most historians associate the coinage with the music of the bluegrass titan Bill Monroe, whose keening twang and tales of love both hard-earned and hard-lost do seem to represent a kind of genre of one. But if the notion of the High Lonesome sound is meaningfully inextricable from Monroe’s music, it has persisted since he’s been a long time gone. Charlie Daniels released an album called High Lonesome in 1976, and Randy Travis did the same in 1991. Both were great, but you wouldn’t call either of them traditional bluegrass by a longshot. I thought a lot about the term when I was writing and recording last year’s Paranoid Style release, The Interrogator. It seemed to me that the High Lonesome thing was not a genre as such but an essence, something about which the former Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart might say: “You know it when you hear it.” The video we’re debuting today is for my song “Are You Loathsome Tonight,” which was my own attempt at capturing the ephemeral feel of High and Lonesome. Did I succeed? My own belief is yes, but let’s bring in an expert on this kind of thing.
Genius songwriter, ace guitar slinger, and tireless music historian Chuck Prophet is an expert. Yeah, that’s right—we don’t skimp at Southwest Review. In the interest of running this particular voodoo down, I decided to pitch him on some songs I think have the High Lonesome feel, and see how he responds. At the end, we’ll play my song and the new video and both agree it’s great. This is going to be fun. Let’s get into it.
James Carr’s “Dark End of the Street”
Elizabeth Nelson: This is Carr’s 1967 recording of Dan Penn and Chips Moman’s epochal composition, as haunted in its forbidden love as Lou Reed’s “Romeo Had Juliette.” Everything is preordained. “That’s where we’ll always meet.” “Time’s going to take its toll.” “They’re gonna find us.” I almost don’t know how to process how great this song is. All the guilt is so delicious. I nearly literally ran into Dan Penn backstage at a showcase thing in Nashville recently, which might be my favorite celebrity sighting ever. Do you think this counts as High Lonesome?
Chuck Prophet: Dan Penn refers to this song as a “sneaking around song.” What my theater-nerd friends might like to call a trope. (Am I using that word right?)
ANYHOO, I have written with Dan Penn a few times. Sometimes he’ll open up about the old days, when Dan and Spooner Oldham were young men writing for Rick Hall, who was probably the adult in the room at only a couple years older. Rick Hall, their publisher who had them on something like a thirty-five-dollar-a-week salary, used to toss them a Billboard magazine and say why don’t you write “follow-ups” for all these artists with hits and we’ll pitch them. You know, that’s how “Work With Me Annie” was followed up with “Annie Had a Baby.” Or “Peggy Sue” became “Peggy Sue Got Married.” That kind of thing. I don’t remember who Dan Penn and Chips Moman wrote this for, but the James Carr version really started something. And yes, it’s High and Lonesome all the way. And as for High and Lonesome trivia. That is Dan Penn singing the high harmony there. High and Lonesome? I’ll say. When there’s a love triangle, somebody’s always high and dry and sneaking and hiding in shadows. The kind of situation where you pick up your shoes and carry them so as to not make any noise and get caught somewhere you shouldn’t be. There’s always enough pain to go around at the dark end of the street.
NOTE: Interestingly, Dan Penn always had another motive. He told me his real goal was that he wanted to get in the studio and hear his song coming through the big speakers. He engineered some great records himself—like “I’m Your Puppet,” for example.
It’s a lonely avenue when you are left out in the cold. High and dry. And Lonesome. To add to the mystique, even though the song was written by Dan Penn and Chips Moman, it’s often credited to Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. Spooner told me The Flying Burrito Brothers credited it as such on The Gilded Palace of Sin LP and Richard and Linda followed accordingly. For Spooner it’s a case of mistaken identity. So, yeah . . . it’s hard to see on the dark end of the street. The facts all get mixed up.
Duke Ellington’s “Reflections In D”
EN: Do you know this? It’s from 1953’s Piano Reflections, which is kind of what it sounds like: Ellington doing stripped-down versions of some of his originals (and Billy Strayhorn’s “Passion Flower”) with minimal backing. It’s a strange album. The longest track is just under four minutes, and half of them are under three. The mood is offhand, the stakes agreeably low. And then halfway through he drops this thing, which pretty much tears my head off and my heart out every time I hear it. It’s one of those instrumentals that seem for all the world to be telling legible stories without words. From the oddly halting, descending opening figure, it’s filled with portent and yearning. It sounds wounded and hopeful all at once. Recorded thirteen years after Rodgers and Hart’s “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” and thirteen years before “Here, There and Everywhere,” it seems to channel the former and conjure the latter. It also reminds me of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No.1” from 1888 or something you might hear on the second side of Sister Lovers. It just kind of drifts off after three and a half minutes, but by then you know you’ve heard something true and beautiful and exhilarating and sad and about the wonderful, terrifying joy of our fleeting lives. That’s very High and Lonesome to me.
CP: I hear ya. Emotional stuff. Starts out so polite. Like a doorbell ringing or something inviting you in. Then it’s all, “Have a seat,” and the chords enter and start telling some kind of story. Ellington was a self-taught weirdo. And here’s this piece. Hiding in plain sight. Very cool.
People describe Ellington as aristocratic. And yeah, I can see why—because the Duke was an impeccable dresser out of the gate. Formal. Top hat and tails formal. But here? This is something different. He’s not quite naked. But yeah, I can almost picture the man here in his pajamas. Or at the very least at the piano with his tie loosened a bit and his collar undone. Maybe a tracksuit? Nah, don’t think so.
This is a unique recording, for sure. A solo performance from a man who made his name as a bandleader. A maestro extraordinaire. But this recording is something else. It’s intimate. The bandleader alone at the piano. You hear his touch on the keys. And can almost hear him breathing. This may be as close anyone could get to really knowing the musician. And the man.
High and Lonesome. Sure. They say Ellington was addicted to the road. And that’s as High and Lonesome as it comes. When the applause dies down, it’s just you and the big fat holes in your life. The gig comes with a particular isolation. A lonesome lonely isolation. In later years, he was out hemorrhaging money with a band he couldn’t afford reportedly owing the IRS a half a million dollars. Maybe because when it comes to the road, for some people the worst thing you can do is stop.
Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen’s “Seeds and Stems (Again)”
EN: I guess this one is pretty close musically to the original Bill Monroe idea of High Lonesome (with a special emphasis on High) but let’s not get bogged down in protocol or procedure. These freaks were from Ann Arbor and this track came out in 1971 on their LP Lost in the Ozone. This would have been around the same time that the MC5 and the Stooges were prowling the same region. “Seeds and Stems (Again)” isn’t anything like that. The opening piano riff is pure Burrito Brothers. This is a sad song. A man’s woman has been stolen. His shoes too. His dog died—yesterday—and his home is being foreclosed on. And he has pretty much no good weed left—again. We know from the title that short supply has been a persistent issue. Everything is broken. I love this band and song. Do you know them? Do you agree that this passes the High Lonesome test?
CP: Bill Kirchen from Commander Cody is a buddy of mine! Did you know he and Iggy Pop were in the same graduating class at Ann Arbor High School? They played talent shows together. Bill says Iggy was the shuffle drummer king of Ann Arbor. Anyway, as far as “Seeds and Stems” goes, let’s just go to the source, shall we?
[At this point in our conversation, Chuck calls Bill Kirchen. After some small talk, they get to the heart of the matter:]
CP (to Bill Kirchen): Your song “Seeds and Stems”: was that written with a straight face?
Bill Kirchen: I don’t think we were snarky about it, although I think we knew exactly what we were doing. I always thought BR549 and some of those guys were a little smarmy about their love of country music, like, “Isn’t this precious?” Anyway, we had just heard this great record by Dallas Frazier called “I Hope I Like Mexico Blues,” and so Commander Cody wrote “Seeds and Stems” to be a straight country weeper like that.
CP: Would you consider “Seeds and Stems” High and Lonesome in any way?
BK: Sure, it is, that’s exactly what it is. It’s a High and Lonesome. That’s an interesting phrase that always makes me think of bluegrass, but yeah. It’s a country drinking song about pot. That’s exactly what it is.
Chuck Prophet’s “Red Sky Night”
EN: This is one of your tunes from your new Cumbia record Wake the Dead. That whole album is a masterpiece, but this song in particular makes me shudder every time I listen. It feels like something that could be on Van Morrison’s No Guru, No Method, No Teacher. From what I can tell: A person is at home, and suddenly home isn’t home anymore. It’s hard to identify, but something has changed. What would it mean to seriously relocate? “We’ll be gone by the morning / Under cover of a red sky night / We’ll catch a break in the weather / We’ll be running, we’ll be traveling light.” To me there is nothing more High and Lonesome than not feeling at home in your own hometown and having to leave with a quickness. Care to speak on this?
CP: I co-wrote “Red Sky Night” with Aaron Lee Tasjan and Kim Richey around Kim’s kitchen table in Nashville. I’ve written with Kim for years. And we’re easy company. Which isn’t always productive. You can get too comfortable. You can lose that killer instinct that it might take to wrestle a song to the ground. So I was happy Aaron Lee Tasjan was game to do some three-way writing. I think he literally lived across the street from Kim in East Nashville. Kim and I sat up a little straighter with Aaron in the room.
When I write with Kim, I often think of her singing it. And man, can she sing. So natural. Early on, someone described to me Kim’s singing. That it’s like breathing to her. Often she’ll carve out the melody. But in this case, she threw that title out there and I just started into sha-la-la-ing. And those first couple lines just came out of my mouth.
Kim’s got a lot of songs about taking the wrong path, the wrong road, or the wrong dude. And songs full of that trying-to-get-to-the-other-side-of-town wanderlust. But, ultimately “Red Sky Night” turned into a song that worked best with me singing it. Subconsciously maybe that’s where it was headed the whole time. As much as I love living here in San Francisco, the Cool Grey City of Love, New Mexico with its fried eggs and country ham does have its appeal.
I’m not sure what you’d call this groove. It’s not a cumbia. Probably a bolero. For me the real stars of the show on my recording are ¿Qiensave?. They come from a family of nine brothers. They always sound so soulful singing together, and there are at least four of the Cortez brothers singing into one mic here. Also, the Santo & Johnny C6-tuned lap steel drenched in reverb played wonderfully by James DePrato is practically another character in the song.
The Paranoid Style’s “Are You Loathsome Tonight?”
EN: So this is the Paranoid Style song with the new video courtesy of Bar/None Records. I guess I was thinking of “Pale Blue Eyes” or “Kangaroo” or whatever, which goes to demonstrate the state of my mind. I had come to wonder if traveling down any highway at all wasn’t an implicit act of compliance. But as you know from Robert Earl Keen, the highway never ends. Anyway, weigh in on this. High and Lonesome?
CP: It’s kind of like what Bob Dylan said, “You’re going to make me loathsome when you go.” Yeah. Loathsome. Elizabeth Nelson coming down court. Passes the ball to Floyd Cramer. And Floyd passes it to the dobro. All the while advancing the ball. Elizabeth is like a bird of prey swooping in. Rebound! Rebound! Rebound! They say the highway never ends. But that’s not true. The highway ends but the ROAD goes on forever. I love this song. And the words pushing it all along. More is revealed on each listen.
I AM JUST GETTING STARTED. DID YOU SAY THERE IS A LYRIC VID I CAN SEE?
Elizabeth Nelson is the singer-songwriter for the Paranoid Style, and a regular contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Ringer, The New Yorker, and other publications. Her latest LP, The Interrogator, is out now on the Bar/None Records label.
California singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer Chuck Prophet’s most recent album is Wake the Dead, a collaboration with Cumbia group ¿Qiensave?, released through Yep Roc Records.
More Interviews