February 17, 2021
A sign reads, “Studio Closed Due To Covid” at the Trap Music Museum in Atlanta, Ga., 2020. (Photo by Paras Griffin / Getty Images)
Creativity blooms in solitude, or so we believe in our weakness for the trope of the artist as a singular figure tapping the magic well of inspiration to make works of art. James Joyce, in
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, said he needed only three things to be equipped to write: silence, exile, and cunning the first, an attribute of solitude; the second, a means to achieve it; and the third, a tool for its exploitation.
20 from 2020 – the New Music that Helped jazzpolice.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jazzpolice.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Hello dear Music Clubbers!
I’m writing from pandemically wrecked Nashville, at the moment I put fingers to keyboard the epicenter of the worldwide pandemic. Which, as you can imagine, has me cringing in a corner when I’m not lashing out, virtually, about the deep cultural crises that have pushed America, and particularly its various heartlands, here. (I recommend the two trenchant albums the Drive-By Truckers released this year if you want to know more about that.) Yet as I place my latest order for curbside-pickup groceries and anticipate my daily dog-led three-mile walk virtually my only venturing forth since March I’m seized with the perverse desire to not mourn but to celebrate one aspect of this hellish year. Inspired in part, Lindsay, by your generous reading of Bob, Bruce, and Tay’s polishings of their own iconic facades, I’d like to declare 2020 the Year of Archival Awakenings: a time when, despite or maybe even in dialectical tension with the politically motivated
Charley Pride. Photo: Joseph Llanes. Courtesy of 2911 Media.
Several summers ago, I took my high school best friend, who was going through a divorce at the time, to see Charley Pride in concert at Nashvilleâs Ryman Auditorium. I say âconcert,â but in reality, it was one of those Grand Ole Opryâstyle revues in which a few artists play two or three songs a piece and then call it a night.
The bill was long, sundry, and strange. It included the songwriter Jimmy Webb (âWichita Lineman, âMacArthur Parkâ), the country music hall-of-famer Connie Smith, a three-year-old mandolin player, an indie rock band from New Zealand, Glen Campbellâs kids, and Eric Church, who was joined on stage by Chris Stapleton and Little Big Town for a cover of the Bandâs âThe Weight.â