My wife tells me she wants to read all the books but doesn’t have enough time. Stop and think about that for a minute. All the books. She isn’t talking about not having enough time to sit down and read each day or each week. She is talking about her lifetime. I feel the same way about music. I want to hear it all, but there isn’t enough time.
I love discovering new music and exploring discographies and related artists. I love sharing my discoveries with other people. If you think about it, it’s a strange thing to take pleasure in - passing along new music to others. I didn’t write the songs. I didn’t play on the recording. I had no creative impact or influence whatsoever, and yet there is pleasure in discovering and in passing it to others. Weird huh?
This is a post about music I did not discover but was passed along to me. As you might imagine, writing a music blog lends itself to having people pass music to you. And if you’ve been reading this and have been holding back, please let this be your open invitation to send me your favorites.
This came up because a friend of mine sent me an album that I can honestly say I wish I could go back and experience for the first time again. So, that is where I will start.
Dale
Last week my friend Dale sent me an album by The Waybacks called Full On The Hill. They, and some of their friends (Sam Bush, Jim Lauderdale, Jerry Douglas…), performed the entirety of Tom Petty’s Full Moon Fever at the 2018 Merlefest in Wilkesboro, NC. Now that I’ve been digging into their discography I realize this is something they’ve been doing each year at Merlefest starting in 2008. The first time they did Led Zeppelin II, and they have also covered other classic albums including Led Zeppelin IV, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Sticky Fingers. As I’ve worked my way through most of their discography this week, I’ve realized that The Waybacks are far from a rock and roll band - assigning a genre is a little tricky, but they have a fiddle if that helps. Anyway, until this week all of this was unknown to me. So, thank you Dale for sending it to me (he may or may not read this).
Matthew
Some of my friends like Matthew and Dan (below) have turned me on to so much new music it’s hard to know where to start. But, today I’m thinking about that summer evening when we went to someone’s house in Uptown and hung out in their empty living room. (All but one roommate had moved out and taken all the furniture.) Matthew put on The Folk Implosion’s One Part Lullaby and called it his summer album. That has always stuck with me and I’ve often looked for something new and appropriate in order to deem it my “summer album.” I still love this album and will usually put it on in the car on one of the early days of summer when I can put the windows down without freezing or burning up.
Dan
Dan’s musical tastes range from exactly the same as mine to completely opposite. There are things he loves that I can’t understand and I believe it is the same for him regarding me. Then there are the things I love but didn’t know until Dan showed them to me. One of those is the album Making Mirrors by Gotye. Gotye, aka Wally De Backer, wrote and recorded this fantastic album that gained critical acclaim and international success and an accompanying world tour, then just went back to being the drummer in a band called The Basics (also a pretty good band). Due to the success of his single “Somebody That I Used to Know” it’s possible I would have heard of him on my own, but far before he got 2 billion views on YouTube, Dan found it and passed it to me.
Marie
Ok, so this is a bit roundabout, but is no less true than any other I’ve highlighted here. Before we got married I hated country music, but she loved it. I loved her so I put up with it, but over time I started to like some of it. As I’ve detailed here in the post “Alt-Countr” I found some of those elements I liked in the more contemporary country she was listening to. So while it isn’t one specific artist or album, she gave me the background I would need to appreciate artists like Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, and Zac Brown Band. And for that I thank her (I know she reads this because she’s my wife and biggest supporter).
Josh
There is absolutely no reason I shouldn’t have loved The Allman Brothers from birth other than that I just hadn’t really heard anything other than the songs they played on the classic rock station. I think it’s safe to say that The Allman Brothers is his favorite band - at least it once was. And it was during our time as college roommates that I got to hear stuff I had not heard before. His dad even gave me a copy of At Fillmore East which some consider to be the best live album of all time. Since that time I’ve bought many of my own Allman Brothers albums and I even forked over the cash for the box set of Dreams. This is a band that will continue to be in constant rotation. Thank you Josh for opening up that door and shoving me through it.