Robert Plant and my part in his renaissance: CD Review Robert Plant and the Band of Joy

And so Lucinda Williams became my gateway drug to the whole alt.country/roots movement that was in lots of ways reinvogorating music world wide, especially, I suspect, for that older demographic of which I was part.

Of course, the big breakthrough was the soundtrack for the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou?, an album (and associated video) that mainstreamed what was already a thriving and immense subculture, though subculture undersells it.

I’m trying to provide a timeline for how this music swept over me, but it isn’t really possible. Suddenly it was there, at the forefront of my musical consciousness, and I immersed myself in it. To find out friends were, at the same time, going through a similar experience, was a great and surprising discovery that added to the thrill of it.

The artists came tumbling into my consciousness. Vic Chesnutt, Buddy and Julie Miller, Hem, Liz Durrett, Whiskeytown, Son Volt, Lambchop, Nico Case, The Hanson Family, and on and on and on, including, sitting above them all, that two-piece band called Gillian Welch.

The fact that I happened to be living in the US at the time certainly helped me appreciate the music, and it was great to be able to visit Nashville and New Orleans and the Appalachians and the Smoky Mountains and other places that were the home of this music.

Though the highlight of this particular adventure was, by fluke and by far, arriving in Nashville at the same time Lucinda Williams was playing there, at, of all places, the legendary Ryman Auditorium.

I’d still say that concert was the best show I’ve ever seen.

This is pretty much the seat I sat in for that concert, and Al Gore was sitting behind me

So if that’s the ‘completely unpredictable’ part of the equation, where does the ‘inevitable’ bit come in?

It seems inevitable that this music found an audience in my particular demographic because, when you look at the music we were listening to — that Jones Generation who discovered sixties music in the seventies — it is easy to see that a lot of it was built on the very roots music that I have been describing.