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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Yes Depression
\When people listen too intently to too much music, they stop being able to appreciate the simple pleasures of beautifully complex melodies or vivacious beats. To HearSay, these kinds of melodies and beats are the stuff of good music, and they’re lacking in the work of most contemporary singer-songwriters, a.k.a. Americana artists. These acts are too damn major key, too damn earnest, and too damn serious even when they’re trying to be light-hearted.
Take the distinguished Jay Farrar, who’s playing the Aardvark on Wed, March 12, with Brain Henneman from the Bottle Rockets. (A show, BTW, unprecedented in this ol’ Cowtown.) Farrar is pretty much one of the gods of the No Depression movement of last decade; in fact, No Depression magazine, around which the cult of No-D revolves, got its name from an album by Farrar and the inimitable Jeff Tweedy as members of the group Uncle Tupelo. No one artist did neo-traditionalist angst, sculpted with cracked hands and worn with bittersweet denim, better than Farrar. He deserves whatever accolades can be thrown his way.
Which doesn’t mean we can’t rag on him a little. See, for HearSay, genre music always seems to be a bit lacking in depth. (HearSay’s favorite rap sounds like jazz, its favorite folk music sounds like rock, etc.) It’s too ... lucid. Straight-ahead Americana, even with the heaviest rock vibes, typically comes off as background noise — which probably explains why NPR employs heavy doses of Americana between news segments. (Or it could be the self-righteous NPR nation, with its Birkenstocked hippies and penchant for passing off palaver as “news,” that pisses HearSay off.) There’s not one Farrar song HearSay’s ever heard that swings or, inversely, breaks the heart. Technically, his music is without peer; emotionally, it’s stilted and arid.
That said, you may wanna get your grubby mitts on tickets to this show before it’s sold out. Who knows when another major player’s ever gonna play Fort Worth again?
Dr. “Fun” Scott
One of the better things about singer-songwriter Scott Copeland is his sense of humor. Take these “jokes” from www.scottcopelandmusic.com: “If I was a caveman, I wouldn’t lose so many lighters”; “Kids wouldn’t be so afraid of the dark if they had to pay electric bills”; “If all guys drove the same car then girls wouldn’t know who to go out with”; “If you ever feel like nobody likes you then you are probably an asshole”; and “I take drugs because I’m bipolar because I take drugs.” You can catch him in full throttle on Charter Cable Community Cable Television 31, when a documentary about him, Westside Stories: Scott Copeland, airs Sun at 2:30pm, Mon at 3pm and again at 10pm, Thu at 7:30am and 6pm, Fri at 9:30pm, and Sat at 10:30am.
Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
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