Apples and Ham

One of the things I live for in music is putting two things together, what I call connecting the dots. I love that feeling of discovery when you recognize an obscure (or sometimes not so obscure) allusion in a song, especially to another artist or a song of old. This happens a lot, but two of my favorites of late came from a Gillian Welch song and another in a Scott Miller song.

It's no secret that I think Gillian Welch is one of the best singer/songwriters around. Her newest album though, Soul Journey, has gathered some flack for being "less about songwriting." I don't have the critique URLs handy because, well, I completely disagree. Okay, I do agree, her new album IS less about songwriting, but who cares? They're missing the point. This new album is more about having fun playing the music. The entire album sounds like a late-night musician jam. The kind of thing that happens after several musicians have played their own gigs and the audiences are all at home at sleep. The musicians creep off together to someone's living room or front porch, and they play for themselves. That's why I enjoy this album so much.

Well anyway, one of the worst critiques blasted her for including the phrase "Peaches in the summertime/Apples in the fall" in her song Wayside/Back in Time, my favorite from her new album. (I can't find the article anymore, dammit... I really wanted to link to it.) The writer said it was (and to be fair I'm paraphrasing from memory) "this sort of trivial lyric that shows that Gillian isn't even trying on her new album." Well it just came to my attention, from the Tim O'Brien and Chieftans' cover of Shady Grove, that those are classic lyrics from that classic song. It's an allusion, dumbass. Suddenly that part of the song made so much more sense, and I think, made the reviewer look stupid. I wish I'd known that when I first read that review.

The second dot connection was from one my favorite Scott Miller songs, Amtrak Crescent, a train song about a passenger train that runs from New Orleans through Alabama and Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, all the way up to New York. He says a line, "There ain't no ham like the Birmingham, to make a fella wanna stay in Alabam." (I, of course, being a true UT alumnus, always sing it "to make a fella wanna get outta Alabam.") I thought it was something he'd made up, but no, it's an allusion to another train song, Orange Blossom Special. Actually, Orange Blossom Special could be said to be the train song, performed by many, but this time by Bill Monroe. One of Bill's Bluegrass Boys shouts it out between lines. "Where are you gettin' off this train?" "Birmingham, Alabama! There ain't no ham like the Birmingham!"