Perhaps the most significant event for Americana music in 2024 did not actually occur during the past 12 months. It took place decades ago in another era, the exact date and time long lost in the exaggerated history of popular music.
For this was the day that a frustrated young wannabe named Kris Kristofferson landed a helicopter at the home of one of the biggest names in country music, Johnny Cash, in a spectacular attempt to convince the Man in Black that he should listen to a recording of songs he had written.
So, when Kristofferson died on September 28 at the age of 88, one of the first episodes recalled from his life was not the songs and lyrics that made him famous, but the fact that the former Army pilot actually landed a chopper on Cash’s property northeast of Nashville. As it turned out, the great man was not home at the time. But the rest, as they say, is still history.
For Kristofferson - one of the great singer-songwriters of his generation and indeed one of the finest lyrical wordsmiths in modern music – would actually end up collaborating with Cash in country’s most popular supergroup, The Highwaymen, along with legends Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings.
And perhaps the most heart-warming tributes to Kristofferson came from Cash’s daughter Rosanne, who, as it would happen, was one of the last stars to perform in public with Kristofferson - at Nelson’s 90th birthday concert at the Hollywood Bowl in April 2023. In a special essay for Rolling Stone, she too reminisced on the now-famous helicopter encounter.
“That story about him landing a helicopter in my dad’s yard to deliver a demo tape of songs? True! He adored my dad, and deferred to him in every instance. He thought Dad could do no wrong. He forgave his bad behaviour, instantly. ‘He’s a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he’s stoned.’ Weren’t we all.”
She endearingly added: “Kris was my firewall of love and personal history. He was one of the few people left on the planet who knew me as a kid, and one of the few people I knew who loved me without me having to earn it.”
A Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Kristofferson spurned academia for the military and he gained his wings with the U.S. Army. But his first love was music and to get his foot in the door, once he left the military, he landed a job as a janitor – as you do – in a Nashville recording studio from where he hawked his compositions to the likes of Cash.
Kristofferson had a rich gravelly voice, which he never lost. Just listen to his distinctive raspy vocals on “Closer to the Bone,” the wonderful title track from his twentieth studio album, released when he was 73. But it was the words he wrote to the melodic music he composed that will be his defining legacy. A trawl through the lyrics of his biggest song “Me and Bobby McGee” – made famous by old girlfriend Janis Joplin – no better illustrates his craft in clever language manipulation.
There is the mid-couplet rhyming:
With them windshield wipers slappin’ time
And Bobby clappin hands
A classic single-word play:
Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free
And then the clever interface with antonyms:
And I trade in my tomorrows
For a single yesterday
In fact, there is hardly a Kristofferson composition – whether it be “Sunday Morning Coming Down” or “The Pilgrim, Chapter 33” - without some lyrical invention.
It seems somewhat fitting - if not sadly so - that Kristofferson’s death came in the same month that the Americana Music Association (AMA) marked the 25th anniversary of its founding. For Kristofferson himself is one of the great pioneers of the genre, given the big names across all forms of music who put their own distinctive mark on his songs, whether it be Joplin, Cash, Grateful Dead, Jose Feliciano, Darius Rucker, Olivia Newton-John or Charley Pride. The list is endless!
The AMA used its annual awards show at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville to celebrate the anniversary and to its credit, it did not shy away from confronting the one major issue – that of its own identity – which has been the elephant in the room since its inception when a bunch of music executives got together in Austin, Texas, to lament on the fact that country radio was not playing the type of music they wanted to hear.
This year’s annual Lifetime Achievement Awards only served to illustrate the broad definition of Americana music – if it ever has been clearly defined! At one end on the honourees list was gospel/blues (Blind Boys of Alabama and Rev. Gary Davis) while at the other end was the rockabilly-Californian sound (Dwight Yoakam and Dave Alvin). And somewhere in the middle, sat pop-rock/country (Shelby Lynne and producer Don Was).
Alvin, an acclaimed lead guitarist and founding member of the L.A. roots-rock band The Blasters in the late ‘70’s, has long been a sceptic of the term Americana. And he was the first to admit this with a somewhat embracing award-acceptance speech: “I have to admit that I’m not quite sure what the term Americana truly means,” he began. “But perhaps the vagueness of the definition of Americana is a good thing? The fact that an oddball, outsider, bar-room blues guitar basher, sad-songwriter like me, who not only loves blues and rhythm and blues but folk, rockabilly country, doo-wop, psychedelic bands as well as jazz, from New Orleans to the avant-garde, can find a home in the open-minded world of Americana, is an incredible thing that I treasure.”
In fact, Alvin’s inclusion in the Americana fold probably had a lot to do with his musical collaboration in recent years with popular Texan singer-songwriter Jimmie Dale Gilmore, who, in contrast to Alvin, has always embraced Americana. As it so happened, his original band, The Flatlanders, was originally cited by the Americana founders as a perfect example of their new brand.
Fittingly, it was Gilmore who presented Alvin with his Lifetime Achievement Award. And this all occurred shortly after the pair had released their second album together, TexiCali, six years after their first, the acclaimed Downey to Lubbock. In fact, TexiCali would include probably the best Americana duet of the year, a stunning version of the tearful lament “Death Of The Last Stripper.”
Alvin co-wrote the song with Texan Terry Allen and his wife Jo Harvey Allen and it was first recorded by Terry Allen in 2020. But Alvin and Gilmore’s version is made even better by their slow, almost recital treatment. Their alternate vocals on the saddest stanza are heart-stopping.
Jimmie:
We found a number on some paper in her purse
And that was the number that we called first
Dave:
Oh but nobody answered every time we tried
We’re the only ones in the world who even know she died
It is no surprise that “Death Of The Last Stripper” is a must-have on the pair’s current promotional tour.
Alvin and Gilmore were not the only Americana veterans to deliver long-awaited albums in 2024.
In November Yoakam released Brighter Days, his 16th studio album but first in nearly a decade. And his first since becoming a father for the first time, at the age of 63. It was very much a collaborative project, with a number of co-writes, including the title track which is co-credited to his four year old son Dalton who has a cute vocal cameo at the end.
Another long-awaited original album came from Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings who released Woodland in late August. It was the first album of songs written by Welch in 13 years and the first of Rawlings’ material since 2017. It was the tenth album the pair have collaborated on, but only the second actually attributed to the pair. It appears the policy is to name albums to reflect who sings lead. So, as you might expect, each divvied the lead vocals among the 10 tracks.
The significance of the album lies in its title Woodland. For it was named after the historic Nashville studios the pair have owned since 2002. The building was severely damaged by a deadly tornado which swept through Tennessee in 2020 and pair have spent much of the last four years rebuilding the studios and replacing technical equipment lost in the disaster.
So, the album marks a revival by Welch and Rawlings in many ways. Its promotional single “Empty Trainload Of Sky” – on which Welch takes lead – is straight out of the old Welch/Rawlings songbook and reached number two on the Americana Radio Singles Charts, with Woodland also hovering around the top of the weekly album charts. Add to that, a nomination for “Empty Trainload Of Sky” in the Best Americana Performance at the 2025 Grammys.
One veteran who never leaves you waiting for a new album is 91-year-old Willie Nelson and he again delivered in 2024. Last Leaf On The Tree was his 76th solo album and his eighth release since 2020 and the title track – a Tom Waits cover – has a wonderful stanza that truly reflects Willie’s everlasting life: The autumn took the rest/But it won’t take me/I’m the last leaf on the tree. And Willie’s son Micah, who produced and, somewhat, masterminded the album would describe it as “his father facing death with Grace.”
As with many Willie albums, he and Trigger (his faithful guitar) put their stylistic trademark on a number of covers, including a whimsical take on the Keith Richards ditty “Robbed Blind.” And his treatment thrilled the Rolling Stones legend: “I’m particularly blown away because he has included a song of mine called ‘Robbed Blind’ which is strange because when I first wrote and recorded it, I wondered what Willie could do with it,” Richards said. “Now I know. Funny how things go round.”
Someone else of Keith’s era has also ventured into Americana. In November, Ringo Starr – yes that Ringo from The Beatles – released two singles from his upcoming album Look-Up. One them “Thankful,” co-written by Starr, features bluegrass legend Alison Krauss, who, of course, still tours with another rock ‘n roll superstar from the 60’s Robert Plant. And just to justify the Americana imprint on the early-January release, the album is produced by producer/performer extraordinaire T Bone Burnett who not only wrote many of the tracks but recruited some of the finest young talent in Nashville to perform with the pop legend - among them Molly Tuttle, Billy Strings and Larkin Poe.
Tuttle’s arguable claim to fame in 2024 is that for the second year in a row she was snubbed by the AMA at the annual awards, not getting at least one nomination in any category. And this despite the fact that in the past two years, she, and her band Golden Highway, have not only won the Best Bluegrass Album award in successive years at the Grammys, but in the previous year Tuttle was the first bluegrass artist to get nominated for the all-genre Best New Artist Award. Somewhere during this period, she was also listed at number 222 in Rolling Stone’s 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. And, all the while, she and her band have been playing sold-out concerts across America.
Yet none of this was recognised by the Americana Music Association.
To be fair to the Association, it did choose someone from Tuttle’s generation as
the standout star of Americana in 2024. Sierra Ferrell deservedly won the top AMA award, Artist of the Year. For Ferrell has had a phenomenal 12 months. And it could get better in the new year for she is, by far, the most-nominated Americana artist at the 2025 Grammy Awards with four nominations – Best American Roots Performance (“Lighthouse”), Best Americana Performance (“American Dreaming”), Best American Roots Song (“American Dreaming” co-written with Melody Walker) and Best Americana Album (Trail of Flowers).
Trail of Flowers gave the 36-year-old West Virginian another award - Album of the Year - at the Americana Awards. It is her fourth album and the second released by Rounder Records – the first two were independent releases – and was co-produced by two big names Eddie Spear and Gary Paczosa. The album reached 106 on the Billboard 200 and won wide praise for reflecting Ferrell’s musical eccentricity across all brands, from old-timey and bluegrass to funky honky tonk! Rolling Stone listed it number one on its 30 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2024.
Though not one of four singles originally released from the album, the beautiful “Lighthouse” is the standout track. And it has been made even better by an alternate acoustic version which Ferrell later cut and eventually got an outing as a single. Listening to this version is an acute reminder that Ferrell spent her formative music years
busking on street corners, from Seattle to New Orleans, and, in between, playing in truck stops and boxcars.
Now that might not beat flying a helicopter to the home of a superstar, but it sure is an intriguing - and honest - way to get recognised. And an interesting contrast for what was to come!
Paul Cutler
Editor Crossroads – Americana Music Appreciation
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