Steve Young and the Music That Got Away
When the musician Steve Young died on March 17 I read through a number of nuanced obituaries about his life with equal parts of interest and regret. Interest because Young was an country-rock-folk artist whose spirit threaded his way through the music of artists I deeply respected and admired, regret because I had never sat down and listened to one of his records. Hell, I had barely heard of him and I consider myself well-schooled about the hard-worn musicians who weave their ways through Folk, Country, Country-Rock, alt-Country and whatever it is that is ``Americana.’’ Well, here was the guy who wrote “Seven Bridges Road,’’ and “Montgomery in the Rain,” and he had marched through like a ghost under my watchful eye. That kind of thing drives me crazy.
My disappointment only grew as I worked my way through Primal Young, (Appleseed, 2009) one of the few albums that appear to be widely available on streaming services. Here laid out before me were Young’s contributions to Greil Marcus’s ``Old Weird America,” a land that exists as a mythological and magical place where artists such as Robbie Robertson, John Prine, Dylan, Michael Hurley, Doc Watson and Van Morrison have used their songs to advance the country as myth, dreamscape, hard-worn reality, a series of unfortunate events. Young’s “Workers Song (Handful of Earth) can sit alongside John Fogerty’s “Fortunate Son’’ and ``The Year That Clayton Delaney Died,’’ swings with simple urgency and was proof that Young not only wrote as good as anyone, he also could cover artists as big as Tom T. Hall as well. But he seems to have been so much more. The records are out of print, the songs covered by others who have made them their own. What I can hear is that he was a troubadour, a writer who moved from genre to genre with great wit and skill. They called him the creator of “Outlaw Country.” There were few limitations, it seems, between his explorations of Scottish reels and hillbilly songs and road-raging drinking anthems and the gospel.
Most of the songs on Primal Young belong to what Robert Christgau once said are filed in the category called ``Ah, that’s great, what giant of music wrote this? And then you find out that the giant is the person that you’re listening to.’’
Nominations in this category include Los Lobos’s “Evangeline,’’ John Hiatt’s “Have a Little Faith in Me,’’ and John Doe’s “Cryin’ But My Tears are Far Away.” There are many others. These are not standards, the way a Cole Porter song might be considered a song for generations to enjoy, but rather tunes found in the wilderness, an object, the way Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” was brought forward and slowly worked its way into the unconscious. Wasn’t this here for ever and ever and ever?
To me, “No Longer Will My Heart Be Truly Breaking,’’ easily fits into this category. It is at once stately, with a gospel shuffle, framed by a ringing guitar, and resonates with the sense of a life deeply lived. I immediately drew a mental connection to my feeling upon finding Bill Fay’s “The Healing Day” from Life is People (Dead Oceans, 2012). Where did this song come from, I think? Hasn’t it been here for ages?
In “No Longer,” his voice is often strained, pushing against the upper registers of what a man of his age can achieve. But the strain is important, it makes the argument. There are backup singers to give succor and relief. He has seen the chaos, he’s lived that life. Over three minutes and forty five seconds he is observant, his own judge and jury:
`I don’t know how long it’s gonna be in coming
I don’t know how long it may be taking
But my deliverance is promised now
No longer will my heart be truly breaking’
This is Sam Cooke, telling us “A Change is Gonna Come.” This is Van Morrison in “Listen to the Lion.” And Mavis Staples in “You Are Not Alone.” And Otis Redding in “Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song).” It is the sound of hope beat down with regret and burned by the ravages of time. A thirst for release.
I sat listening, taking this in and thinking again, WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? and wondering again why this kind of music hadn’t passed through my hands when I was working at a record store, instead of the 44th copy of some flavor-of-the-month. I learned long ago not to denigrate other people’s tastes at the risk of looking foolish — I only live to feed my own. But I still have regrets about things that I commanded as great and the things that eluded me.
Elvis Costello’s “Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink” had the same effect on me as I worked my way through his hundreds of pages of memoir, lost in one artist after another that I might have had some familiarity with but had not gotten to. Costello’s listening is so generous, so expansive that I couldn’t figure out in a pre-streaming age how he could have found so many ways to take so much in. I remembered that I had once heard Elvis Costello take over KFOG in San Francisco for a few hours — they had foolishly allowed him to play whatever he wanted — and so for a magical period he was free to spin Muddy Waters and Jimmy Waters and the Beach Boys and Hank Williams Sr. and all the while making the owners uncomfortable with the idea of Free Form Radio.
It was commercial money out of their pocket but musical gold to me, a brief moment where they stopped playing what was popular and a moment when Iwas able to hear things like regret, distance, shame, love and hope all communicated through an obscure three-minute song and placed next to each other like some used books on a shelf. I’ve chased that aching refrain over and over through AM and FM and vinyl and CDs and into the streaming age. The search is always the same — to find that moment which unlocks the soul within. There is a harmony in this: for a brief period between musician and listener — your naked emotion will become my reception. And vice versa. It’s a strange equation that only unlocks from time to time like some passcode. It isn’t a guarantee — often it will reveal itself only then to pull away and vanish into the gloaming.
I hope dozens of Steve Youngs still lie ahead, undiscovered country yet explored. Recently they include Vic Chesnutt, Archers of Loaf, Crooked Fingers and Throwing Muses — artists that I missed and all part of my recent listening. And of course, if all hope is lost, I can start working on The Fall.
And have you heard Aoife O’Donovan’s “Donal Og”? Well Sir, you’re missing out. That’s right here, right now. A dreamscape. Another beautiful contribution. That passcode has unlocked.
Did Elvis Costello get to Steve Young before I did? He probably did, the savvy bastard.
