Way Back In The Hills....

Listening to bluegrass makes me feel like a child again; it stirs up a deep sense of nostalgia that other genres of music don't manage to do for me on a consistent basis. Disco makes me feel like dancing, the blues bring me down, jazz makes me feel mellow or cool, and rock? Rock is harder for me to narrow down because it inspires many different feelings in me depending on the lyrics and tone of the song. But bluegrass is easy to define.

If you knew me, you wouldn't peg me for a bluegrass fan. As a general rule my preference in music, whatever the genre, is lyrics-based. I listen primarily to the words first and consider songs as poems set to music. I'm not a fan of the hick mentality, and I certainly don't cotton to Christian music. Bluegrass is at its heart everything that I don't like and yet, it calls to me. The ex used to tease me about it because it was so incongruous to my ethos. Much bluegrass music is at the very least gospel-tinged if not seriously religious. I know that, but I can't explain it -- when I listen to bluegrass the religious aspects of the genre don't make much of an impression on me. I don't even really hear it because it feels so 'right' springing from this 'from the dirt' style of music. Something about the banjos, the mandolins, the picking of the guitars and the harmony of voices blending lend themselves to singing about the divine anyway. It's rugged and markedly individualistic even as it conjures up friends and family, love, and a place to hang your hat. It's a basic form of song from the heart and soul. Uplifting even when it's sad or lonely. It makes me sit and tap my toes and smile. It makes me ache for the Midwest of my youth and the times I sang along with my dad when he played his guitar. It makes me remember.

I'm not a fan of today's alt-country at all but I enjoy much of the old steel guitar stuff. Whatever the genre I like authenticity and for me, when it comes to country it doesn't feel authentic if it's borrowing from other genres. If you're going to be country, be country. Embrace it, invest in it, play it like it comes off the back of a hay wagon with three or four boys picking guitars and fiddling. Country has lost much of that, dipping its toes in the blues and slowing it down or diving into the rock waters and speeding it up. In bluegrass, that back in the hills feeling remains.

I don't think I've ever featured a song on my blog but there's a first time for everything. I should probably do it more often. I don't have the lyrics for this one so you'll just have to listen to it right here. It's Paul and Pap Wilson singing "Way Back In The Hills," a song written by Bob Amos and performed originally by Front Range. Enjoy!