Songs of the Outlaw | Mockingbird

“How Did You Find Me Here?”: American Music’s Love-Laden Legacy (A Conference Breakout Primer)

by Ethan on Apr 10, 2012 • 1 Comment

“200-proof lovin’ is all the proof I need.” –Jason & The Scorchers

One of Mockingbird’s deepest wells is the life-giving fount flowing from all forms of American music, from Elvis to Johnny to Michael to Axl. From the folk-lineaged prophecies to the jukebox-empty-bar country confessional to the anthemic rock-throb of a power ballad, to the synthy-moog-loving distortions of desire, American music has had a something in common, and it’s why we can’t help but keep writing about it, looking to it, singing it in our cars. It’s not that it just so happens to be what we love to listen to,…

Songs of the Outlaw: Yours, Mine, and Billy Joe Shaver’s “Serious Souls”

by Ethan on Feb 16, 2012 • No Comments

Kris Kristofferson is known to have said that Billy Joe Shaver may be the greatest living songwriter, the Hemingway of songwriting, but also that, if life were TV, he’d be on at 4 A.M. He has written songs for Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, George Jones, Patty Loveless, the Allman Brothers; Waylon Jennings used his songs for most of Honky Tonk Heroes, Willie Nelson has made a name with his songs. He’s legendary, but paradoxically hidden. As if he had a knack for it, some privately premeditated scheme to lay low–like Jesus or something–he managed to work behind the…

Death / Forgiveness / Music / Suffering

Songs of the Outlaw: Waylon Jennings on Why It’s So Hard to “Lay It Down”

by Ethan on Jan 23, 2012 • 2 Comments

You may have heard this before. When Waylon Jennings was getting his start in the late 50s, touring with the “Big Bopper” J.P. Richardson, Buddy Holly, and Ritchie Valens, he elected to take a chartered bus on a cold, 300-mile drive to Fargo, giving up his plane seat so that another of the crew could fly, who at the time had a flu. Leaving the boys at the airport, with a note of good-natured bravado he told Holly that he hoped “your ol’ plane crashes.” This was what happened, the infamous “Day that Music Died.” The plane crashed, and three…

Forgiveness / Music / Suffering

Songs of the Outlaw: Waylon Jennings, 1000-Mile Ramblings, and the “Freedom to Stay”

by Ethan on Jan 5, 2012 • 4 Comments

Waylon Jennings, or “Hoss,” or “Waymore,” is the original Nashville Rebel. When he wasn’t allowed to have long hair, or play his own guitar in recording sessions, or use his own band in recording sessions, he did it anyways. Nashville recording giants, moving into what later became known as the Countrypolitan Nashville sound, the variety of pop-country still teeming in Nashville to this day, what with the orchestral sets, choral backdrops, and slick-crooning lead vocalists expected Waylon to follow suit, and Waylon simply said, “You start messing with my music, I get mean.”

It was at this fork in the road…

Forgiveness / Music / Suffering

Songs of the Outlaw: Merle Haggard’s Rock Bottom Rescue in “How Did You Find Me Here?”

by Ethan on Dec 12, 2011 • 2 Comments

As we’ve said before, we’ll say again, if anyone knows about compulsive meandering, if anyone characterizes the triumphs and tribulations of going it on your own, it’s the American outlaw. It’s a unique approach to rebellion, one that’s openly translated freedom as independence, the open range the sanctuary, the “Big City” that won’t “turn me loose and set me free.” This thus leads the cattle-calling rambler anywhere and, anywhere, nowhere. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that all of the Outlaw songs–from Johnny to Willie–are in one way or another connected to this notion of “getting out.”…

Law / Music

Songs of the Outlaw: Hats, Nails, and Merle Haggard’s “Ramblin’ Fever”

by Ethan on Nov 30, 2011 • 6 Comments

This post begins a long-overdue (and potentially endless) series on the gems of country music’s Outlaw variety, which was initially predicated on the raw, coarse, and unyielding boot-scuffing that had been lost in Nashville’s popularizing of country music in the 1960s and 70s. With the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, and Merle Haggard, Outlaw country sought to do exactly what they believed country music was always meant to do, from the days of Gene Autry and Jimmie Rodgers, which was, in short, exactly whatever they wanted to do. With louder guitars than Nashville, meaner songwriting…