It wasn't long after I'd sent out my most recent mix that I got a response.
"I didn't like that 'Break My Heart' song. Too twangy."
My response was diplomatic. "Sorry you didn't like it. Thanks for letting me know, though."
Meanwhile, the voice inside my head sputtered, "Philistine! That song's amazing!"
The offending song was Caitlin Cary and Thad Cockrell's drop-dead gorgeous reading of Cary's own "Please Break My Heart", and as far as I was concerned, it was (and still is) an inspired blend of aching, lonesome, sympathetic harmonies. But obviously, I'd let my enthusiasm get in the way and I'd dropped a heapin' pile of twang where it wasn't welcome.
Personally, I thought the song sat pretty well between the Jayhawks' "Two Hearts" and Six String Drag's "Guilty". Granted, neither of those songs suffers from twang deprivation, but let's face it: if heaven lives up to the hype, the angels will boast harmonies like Mark Olson and Gary Louris.
But that's what you get when you enter the thorny territory of twang, much less try to share it with others. I'd been doing that for a while, slipping stray bits of twang onto my mixes. Partly, it was boredom — after you've made your share of mixes, you start consciously trying to amuse yourself — but I'd also spent a couple of years getting back into the stuff. I'd realized that rebelling against the Hee Haw episodes of my youth, soaked up while my grandparents babysat me, was a serious error in judgment. I'd realized that country held a lot more than camp (although Hee Haw ages awfully well, and I'll gleefully be able to sing every word of that "Doom, Despair, and Agony on Me" song until I'm in the grave). So as I was starting to appreciate the countrified side of the fence, I was also trying to share what I found.
This, as it turned out, required more strategy than I expected. In fact, it was like playing a game of Operation, only instead of hearing a loud buzz when your hand slipped, you'd encounter cries of "Aiiieee!!! Country! It burns! It burns!" It was surprisingly easy to overplay my hand. You'd think my friends would rejoice that I'd relented in my quest to fit Tom Waits onto every mix (sample responses: "I had nightmares!", "He sounds like a troll under a bridge", and "Try that again and you'll find out all about a 'Murder in the Red Barn'!"). But no.
One friend, after receiving a female-focused effort, told me to "go ahead, buy the Minnie Pearl hat, get the sex change, and just get it over with." Another responded, "I felt like I'd woken up in the woods from Deliverance." Yet another: "I felt like I got to hear Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel's wedding mix!" Ever colorful, my friends, with thankfully no regard for my feelings.
Through trial and error, then, I learned a few things that might help others who embark on this admittedly minor quest. Admittedly, these lessons came hard to me. I've been making mixes since the tape-deck days, and I've gotta say, I think I make pretty good ones — as long as you don't mind mopey moodybutt epics that would make Morrissey seem like Barney the Dinosaur. Thankfully, I'm not like Rob from High Fidelity, bound by a set of mix-making rules that would make a Marine drill instructor blanch. But a general strategy never hurts.
Realize Your Limitations
Straight off, admit to yourself that you probably won't get anyone to replace their Celine Dion or Sting CDs with Hank Williams or Jason & the Scorchers. If they're that far gone, there's really no helping them anyway. So be realistic, and merely hope that your friends will begin accepting twang with the same tolerance with which they might greet their jovial but slightly off-kilter uncle at Thanksgiving.
Hit 'Em With a Little Bit at a Time
The easiest path here is to pick artists who aren't country, but who have a touch of twang in their voices, who can blur the line a little bit. For example, Neko Case isn't country... well, OK, she's alt-country... OK, she's arguably country, but her powerhouse voice holds just a hint of that nasally country twang while her songs lean towards a noirish sensibility, as if Chris Isaak were scoring The Sopranos. Likewise, a singer like Clem Snide's Eef Barzelay has a voice that sounds like his head's one big nasal passage (and that's a good thing — it's a perfect match for his literate, slightly bookish songs), while Richard Buckner's throaty Southern croon holds plenty of enticing shadows for your friends who flirt with a little darkness.
Rock Out
Why hit them full-force with the pedal steel right out of the gate? There are plenty of bands that roughly approximate a twangy feel, but which still sound like rock bands. Likewise, there are acts with ample twang that occasionally turn things up to 11. Start with the Old '97s, a band who's always had a good amount of rock bounce and who can really get things swinging with a romp like "Up the Devil's Pay" or "What We Talk About". Or how about Southern Culture on the Skids? Throwing everything from swamp boogie to surf guitar to go-go dance rhythms into a single pot, SCOTS epitomize the raucous party band that never sounds like it comes from any one genre. Recommended tracks include "Camel Walk", "Daddy Was a Preacher But Mama Was a Go Go Girl" and "Greenback Fly" — songs that get some serious retro boogie going. The little-known pair of Buddy and Julie Miller can get surprisingly loud. Buddy, longtime guitarist for Emmylou Harris, often feels the need to crank things up; his wife Julie, known for more delicate fare on her own discs, seems game to holler right along. Try out a song like "Somewhere Trouble Don't Go" — that song's an unrelenting drum-slammin', guitar strummin', fiddle-sawin' freight train.
When in Doubt, Go for the Classics
If someone doesn't like Patsy Cline's "Crazy" or Marty Robbins's "El Paso", you probably don't need to be keeping their company anyway. Chances are, your friends all grew up hearing those songs and more when they were kids. If it fits the mood of the mix, hit the nostalgia button. If you don't want to go with the tried-and-true songs, these artists also have plenty of great, lesser-known tunes. I was recently impressed by Cline's lonely "Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray" and the spry honky-tonk vibe of Robbins's "Singing the Blues".
And in case you need a subterfuge — well, OK, it's all a subterfuge — keep the following in mind:
Flanking Maneuver #1: Cover Versions
The recent surge in the alternative rock world's appreciation for its countrified ancestors has yielded some surprisingly strong results. As far back as 1992, Uncle Tupelo dipped into the traditional songbook for an awe-inspiring version of "Moonshiner". More recently, Calexico gave Tom T. Hall's "Tulsa Telephone Book" a decidedly Southwestern flavor, while the White Stripes concocted a swirling, slightly unsettling take on Dolly Parton's "Jolene" that sounds like there might be some witchcraft lurking in the story. An excellent one-stop shop for strong covers by bands your friends probably already like is 1999's excellent Gram Parsons tribute, Return of the Grievous Angel. Beck and Emmylou Harris's "Sin City", Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield's "$1,000 Wedding", Wilco's "One Hundred Years from Now", Whiskeytown's "A Song for You", Gillian Welch's "Hickory Wind", Sheryl Crow and Emmylou Harris's "Juanita" — heck, just buy your friends a copy of that album and save yourself the trouble of having to choose. There are even some covers that have been completely wrested from their authors, in much the same way that Jimi Hendrix took "All Along the Watchtower" away from Bob Dylan. Any bluegrass fan will tell you that Del McCoury now owns Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", or that Johnny Cash is now forever linked with Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" (in fact, Cash's American recordings are another veritable goldmine of covers).
Flanking Maneuver #2: Emmylou Harris
Country's answer to Michael Caine, Harris is everywhere: the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, a recent album with Mark Knopfler, threaded through the aforementioned Parsons tribute like a guardian angel, not to mention her own albums, which are often a wonderfully eclectic mix. And let's not forget that she was Parsons's compatriot and muse back in the day. Or that she's provided backing vocals for folks like Ryan Adams, Elvis Costello, and Neil Young. With a voice as crisp and clear as a stream in winter, Harris pops up in surprising places. I'm half convinced that she actually exists as some kind of guardian goddess/spirit of twang, appearing from the ether whenever someone needs to really nail a song. If your friends appreciate her in the least, she's right there willing to introduce them to at least a dozen lesser-known acts.
Flanking Maneuver #3: Celtic Music
Any budding musicologist can tell you all about country music's roots in Celtic music and the Scots-Irish tradition. It's a lot more fun just to listen to Celtic music, and genre-ambassadors/stretchers the Chieftains have recorded several albums with country musicians, such as 1992's Another Country, 2002's Down the Old Plank Road: The Nashville Sessions, and 2003's Further Down the Old Plank Road. It's even more fun, though, to unleash the Pogues on an unsuspecting set of ears. Shane MacGowan's whiskey-pickled vocals might take my friends a little too close to Tom Waits's junkyard, but there's no denying the fun lurking in the Pogues' ragged fusion of punk and Irish folk. Plus, MacGowan liked to cross borders himself. Just give a listen to "Turkish Song of the Damned", which opens with tortured howls and a manic arrangement that's half Celtic/half Middle Eastern, before MacGowan barges in with:
I come old friend from hell tonight
Across the rotting sea
Nor the nails of the Cross
Nor the blood of Christ
Can bring you help this eve
The dead have come to
Claim a debt from thee
They stand outside your door
Four score and three.
Not only is it perfect choice for a Halloween compilation, but it's also a great lead-in to just about every supernatural-tinged metal song I can think of.
Flanking Maneuver #4: Hit 'Em With the Poetry
Country music's always been known for clever lyrics (a recently discovered favorite is Porter Wagoner's 1956 "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry (For Tomorrow You Cry)"), but there are some real poets out there on the fringes. If your listeners lean toward darkness, isolation, and drink, Richard Buckner's tailor-made for their tastes (sample ambiguous lyrics: "Your braided hair's been pulling us into our lives" and "I looked inside the ring we wear and read myself to sleep"). Oh Susanna's "The Bridge", which teems with images of drowning, caged birds, and hunters, is one of the least-heard masterpieces in recent memory, and Suzie Ungerleider's voice has plenty of that keening, high lonesome sound. As for a legend and modestly self-described "minor poet" like John Prine, you've got about 30 or 40 songs to choose from, although "Mexican Home" sets the scene:
It got so hot, last night, I swear
You couldn't hardly breathe
Heat lightning burnt the sky like alcohol.
Flanking Maneuver #5: Get 'Em to Like an Artist Before They Hear the Twangy Parts of the Catalog
If you go with Prine, start with the live versions of his stuff (1988's largely solo acoustic John Prine Live is the place to go). Too much of Prine's early stuff suffers from the country sounds popular at the time, and the studio version of even a classic like "Mexican Home" can be a little grating. The same goes for Townes Van Zandt. There are plenty of examples, though, of bands that followed their muses so completely that they transcended their genre. That doesn't mean that they went off into left field and never came back, merely that they went with the vibe the song dictated. Son Volt's "Ten Second News" drips with the twang in Jay Farrar's voice, but it draws you into a picture of bleakness so complete that the word "country" just can't contain it. James McMurtry's "Angeline" is a complete portrait of weary stasis, with a simple, unadorned arrangement and loaded lines like "your daddy's old harness still hangs in the barn" and "dresses fit tighter with spring in the air".
Conversely, you can hit plenty of bands that wouldn't be caught within 10 miles of Nashville, but which can serve your purposes. These days, it seems like young bands get a pedal steel guitar before they even find their sense of ironic detachment, so from the Shins to Magnolia Electric Company, you can find that high lonesome sound in abundance, hidden behind Crazy Horse-inspired chords or lying in wait beneath perfect pop hooks.
Getting your friends to appreciate a little twang can be a daunting task. At its worst, it can be like Sisyphus trying to shove a bale of hay up a hill, only to have it tumble back down when he reaches the top, aggravating his hayfever in the process (talk about someone who should be singing "Doom, despair..."!). But you're only looking for little victories, here. With some patience and persistence, your friends' initial reactions — "Eeeeewwww" — will ease into "I liked the lap steel on that Matthew Sweet song 'cause it didn't sound like country" and then into a furtive "What's this I hear about a new Johnny Cash disc?" Finally, on some distant horizon, you'll hear those magic words: "Man, that Patty Loveless record kicks some serious ass!"
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