So, today is the anniversary of the first man walking on the Moon (On This Day website info on it), and with the last shuttle flight just recently I found myself reflecting on the many songs inspired by the US space efforts…here’s a few of them, any others you can think of, put in the comments:
I don’t belive in reincarnation and the chronology is a bit off as their time on earth has some overlap, but darned if Nell Robinson doesn’t sound like a reincarnated Hazel Dickens on her new album On the Brooklyn Road, a celebration of rural life and the music that comes from it.
Named after the road leading to her family’s rural Alabama farm, the new disc includes not just songs but some spoken interludes from members of the Robinson clan, giving the proceedings a ‘field recording’ quality even though the audio is pristine, not scratchy and hissing in that Alan Lomax archival way.
Robinson herself has a clear, uncluttered voice. At 50, she’s only been performing for four years, so she’s late to the musical party, but her half-century of experience comes out through the songs like the dust on that red clay farm road goes airborne every time a truck or tractor drives over it. Emmylou Harris, Iris Dement, Hazel Dickens, and Mike Cross are good starting points for musical comparisons, but Robinson’s relative inexperience serves to render her performances with little in the way of contriviance or affectation. Musically the tracks vary from placid, stark folk to near-Cajun romps such as the playful “Don’t Light My Fire,” and the subject matter is sometimes humorous and often drop-dead serious as on the alcoholic denial of “I’m Brilliant.”
Robinson is becoming more well known, and the guest list here reflects that increasing stature. Rob Ickes (Blue Highway) and Jim Nunally appear on a cover of Loretta Lynn’s “I’m a Honkytonk Girl,” and John Reischmann and the Jaybirds serve as a backing band on several songs.
In Robinson’s hands even well-worn tunes such as Hank Williams’“I Saw The Light” and gospel staple “Turn Your Radio On” are enjoyable and fresh, while her gentle take on the Elvis Presley classic “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You” is reverent in all the right ways. For fun, there are also two yodeling-style tunes from The Henriettas, which is her and Cary Sheldon’s tribute to the 1930’s sister act the DeZurik Sisters. Nell Robinson, The Brooklyn Road
With last week’s ‘farewell show’ from local indie-pop band CherryCase, the trickle of musicians leaving Columbia, SC for Nashville, TN has become if not a flood, a definite trend. In addition to Jake Etheridge and Taylor Desseyn of CherryCase, the young yet very talented Haley Dreis is also relocating this summer; she’ll be teaching violin and pursuing her music full-time. Last year, another accomplished local songwriter, Hannah Miller, made the move.
Haley Dreis (photo by Clayton Bozard)
They join a cast of Columbia and South Carolina expatriates already established in Music City to varying degrees. Taylor Bray, who played in several area bands during his tenure in Columbia, is working in the studio business there, while Charleston singer and songwriter Amber Caparas has been there a year or so as well. Camden native Patrick Davis is a well-entrenched presence in Nashville with hit song credits by Pat Green and Jason Michael Carroll (“Where I’m From”) and cuts from Darius Rucker and others, while Christian songwriter Laura Story (“Mighty To Save,” “Blessings”) has also been there for a while. Reach way back into SC music history and you’ll find artists such as Rob Crosby, who had several hits as an artist and still works as a writer, and Mark W. Winchester, onetime bassist for Columbia’s Rockabilly 88 who has played with Emmylou Harris and the Brian Setzer Orchestra in addition to a few indie releases on his own.
Patrick Davis
A few local artists leaving for the greener avenues of Music City doesn’t make an entertainment brain-drain, of course, and the opportunities available in a music town like Nashville will always draw the really serious players no matter what South Carolina audiences do. For the rest, there are plenty of ways to make music and stay right here in Columbia, or Charleston. The list of well-known acts staying put may someday start to outstrip the ones jumping ship, even. Chaz Bundick and Toro Y Moi started the indie-rock buzz going, and Coma Cinema is keeping pace. Down in Charleston, the guys in A Fragile Tomorrow actually moved INTO South Carolina from up north to increase their music-making opportunities. Danielle Howle continues to tour internationally from her Awendaw, SC home base, and last time I checked even Darius Rucker still lived in Charleston, not Nashville.
Here’s hoping that even our now expatriate artists at least come back often to visit and play the occasional gig here in South Carolina, and if they ever want to come back home, they’re welcome to any time.
