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The Grammys
Category: Music
Most Sunday nights, I'm usually playing my fiddle at the Fais Do-Do at Tipitina's, with Bruce Daigrepont. However,
Bruce went to Denmark without us, so I spent my night off watching the Grammys. I missed my friend, Chris Chandler,
who was playing at the Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, but I'm sure he'll forgive me for this one. Growing up, I used to watch the Grammys every year and dream of winning one. Now, it's beginning to look like
the only Grammy I'm going to get to see is on TV. I'm really happy for Irma Thomas to finally win one after all these years. Maybe there's hope for me yet. I'm happy
also for Ludacris (I thought the dig at Bill O'Reilly was funny), although the Runaway song reminded me of when I was
15 and I had just learned that Emmylou Harris song about being free to be bad or good and "going 'cross the country
singing loud and can, one of these days," and my dad heard it and said, "Don't get ideas." Unlike the young girls
Ludacris and Mary J. Blige were singing about, I had a daddy who worried that I was going to run away from home. Of all these, I am most incredibly happy for the Dixie Chicks. If all those NARAS voters were really trying to make a
statement, for free speech, and against Bush and his war in Iraq, well, they made it. I like to think that they were also
voting for a great song and a great record.
I bought Taking the Long Way a few months ago at one of the last still-locally-owned record stores in Baton Rouge. It is, indeed, an excellent record. (My own choice for Album of the Year is actually Little Animals by Grey Revell, along with (maybe, just maybe) Adieu False Heart by Ann Savoy and Linda Ronstadt. Springsteen's Seeger Sessions and La Musique by the Pine Leaf Boys would round out the Top Five, but Taking the Long Way is most definitely in my Top Five for 2006).
"I'm Not Ready to Make Nice" most certainly is the Song of the Year. It has everything a songwriter aspires to, or should: it's incredibly well-written, the zingers are all in the right places, it's socially relevant, and it's brutally honest. I don't think I'd want to go through the hell that the Dixie Chicks went through to end up with this song (I'm saying this as a Katrina survivor, which was another kind of hell), but I aspire to write songs with this kind of no-holds-barred honesty and truth.
I first saw the Dixie Chicks on my first trip to the Kerrville Folk Festival, in 1990. They were great then. I mean, they could really play. The fiddle and banjo work blew me away. They were a quartet back then.
Next thing I knew, it was eight or so years and a couple of personnel changes later, and I was on a plane coming back from overseas, and there they were on video with a hit record. A few months later, my boss, Mr. Daigrepont, was talking about how his young daughters wanted to see Britney Spears, but he wanted to take them to see the Dixie Chicks, because they could play their instruments.
Then, the whole flak about their comments about Bush happens, suddenly, Clear Channel takes them off country radio. The Dixie Chicks and O Brother Where Art Thou...that's pretty good company. Oh yes, and most folksingers. But I digress. Of course, I didn't mind them criticizing Bush or the war in Iraq. I figured that if anybody had the right to talk about Bush, it was another Texan. Besides, if it was good enough for the late, great Molly Ivins, then why not the Dixie Chicks?
I remember being on tour with the Malvinas last year, meeting this otherwise polite fundie guy, who was curious about our trio. Next thing I knew, I was hearing comparisons to the Dixie Chicks, and he started talking about how it wasn't right that the Dixie Chicks criticized Bush "on foreign soil." I pointed out to him that they said what they said in London, and Britain is Bush's biggest ally in the war in Iraq. He was polite, but he couldn't respond to that one.
Last night, watching the Grammys, my friend Jan and I were cheering on the Chicks, and hi-fiving when they won. My only regret was that I let my NARAS membership lapse, so I couldn't vote for them myself. Membership in NARAS is expensive, but I'll save my rant about the Recording Academy for another time.
I hear that a few Clear Channel stations are starting to play the Dixie Chicks again. Good. I hope they keep playing them. We'll see if they do. Even if they don't, it doesn't matter to me. These women showed tremendous courage in the face of rejection that would have ended most careers, along with withering criticism, and even death threats. Some would remind us that free speech, especially about those who would lead us, matters most at times when that speech is most unpopular.
For music people, whether or not one ends up winning a golden statuette of an early-20th century listening device, ultimately, it's the music that matters most: in every era, music reflects the times we live in, and at its very best, transcends them.
10:55 AM
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