A Strange Kind of Country - Haunted By American Dreams

Ages and ages ago when I was a freshman in high school, my youngest uncle -- only eight years older than me, made my brother and me a mixed tape. He called it A Strange Kind of Compilation, after the first song in the mix -- Peter Murphy's A Strange Kind of Love. This was my first real taste of college music... ahem, "alternative" music, and I loved it. It was the first time I'd heard Sarah McLachlan, Nine Inch Nails, Kate Bush, and the Innocence Mission among many many others -- long before they were famous. I think it might have been the first time I heard my favorite Cure song, Just Like Heaven. To summarize -- it was a damn good mixed tape, and it had a lot to do with my developing musical tastes over the next several years.

I had the idea to put together an Americana mixed CD for my uncle a few years ago. I've thought about it, and thought about it, and well -- sometimes it seems the more important something is to you, the longer you put off doing it.

Last year about this time I got the idea to make the mix rather dark and creepy -- sort of an Americana Goth thing. I'd been listening to a lot of Neko Case, and I was amazed by her talent for tying together the feeling of the American road -- dusty and dark, with sex and spookiness. For the literary minded among you, think of her as the William Faulkner of Americana music, but Vulcan-mind-melded into Marilyn Monroe's body. Or something... hmmm.

Anyway, I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone -- put together a mix of spooky Halloween/October songs, and at the same time make it an inviting Americana introduction to an old-school college music fan -- someone who's unlikely to immediately like our twangy sound, but would appreciate the dry loneliness of these songs.

I worked and worked on the mix last year, but it just wasn't coming together. It languished. This month, however, I picked it back up, filled in some new songs, removed some that weren't working, pounded and hammered out the order, and voila -- A Strange Kind of Country -- Haunted By American Dreams.

Turn down the lights, pour yourself some whiskey, and say the Lord's Prayer, my friends. This one will scare the High Lonesome right out of you.

1. Things That Scare Me by Neko Case. Let's start this mix out right. This song sets the tone for the entire collection -- lonely, haunting, dangerous. From the images of the ravens haunting her through school -- "Where they tellin' me to run?" to the "hammer clicks in place, the world is gonna pay..." Basically, don't fuck with Neko. She'll mess you up, man. This song gives us our subtitle, "Haunted by American dreams."

2. Deep Red Bells by Neko Case. How can a song about the Green River Killer, a serial murderer who terrorized the Pacific Northwest for so many years, be so beautiful and deeply sensual? Only Neko can do this. Her bloody image of "a handprint on the driver's side, it looks a lot like engine oil, and tastes a lot like being poor and small..." is one of the most haunting things I've ever heard. (The inset image is Justin Hampton's homage to this song, including a bloody red pickup truck driven by the killer himself.)

3. Black Soul Choir by 16 Horsepower. "Every man is evil yes, every man's a liar, unashamed with a wicked tongue, singin' in the black soul choir." This song is a haunted coal mine, thick and black, with the axe swings and hammer poundings of lost souls resounding through its chiseled passageways, its breath thick with soot and cigarette smoke, lungs filled with ash. And it's Stacy's husband's favorite song in the whole wide world. If you know Big G, you know that alone is enough to scare you.

4. One More Cup of Coffee by the White Stripes. An old Bob Dylan song redone as a slow dirge with an echoing, ancient pipe organ sound on the Hammond. "One more cup of coffee, 'fore I go... to the valley below..."

5. Black Jack Davey by the White Stripes. This song, which I think is traditional, has been done by everyone. A couple of notables are a few guys you've never heard of -- Bill Monroe and Bob Dylan. "C'mon c'mon my cold black horse, you're skinnnier than the grave; I'll ride all day and I'll ride all night, and I'll overtake my lady..."

6. The Time of the Preacher by Johnny Cash. From the first pounding guitar chords, straight into a solo acoustic guitar, you know this is going to be a song about comparison and contrast -- about juxtaposing the heavy metal over the twangy country. In short -- it's all about Johnny Cash. A country artist among no other... one who's not afraid to rock your ass off. There is some ugly, ugly, distorted guitar on this one, folks. No lie. It's a song, written by Willie Nelson and sung by the Man In Black himself. It's about the comparison and contrast of being an honest faithful man, who's confronted with a terrible betrayal, and resorts to violence. "It was the time of the preacher, in the year of '01, now the lesson is over... and the killin's begun..."

7. Does My Ring Burn Your Finger by Buddy Miller. I've written about this one before... "When I gave you my heart, it wasn't what you wanted, now the walls say your name, and the pictures are haunted." It's about the betrayal I understand the best -- that of a woman to a man. "Was there something in the past, buried in a shallow grave... did you think it was too far gone to save?" The horror-movie phrasing of these simple lines... words that can be read two ways, doesn't give you as many chills as the spine-tingling Julie over Buddy harmonies. "Now its just me and the night, and I'm so broken-hearted... I just wait in the dark here for my dearly departed." Pet Sematary anyone?

8. Dancing With the Women at the Bar by Whiskeytown. Arguably my favorite Whiskeytown song, this one is less supernatural and bloody but more lonesome -- haunted by the night and the bottle. "My daddy saw the moon, heard the sound of the strip, it called out his name... and it called his son's name too." This one is straight-up country and as much steel guitar as you can get... but slightly other-worldly, like the moon and the strip of bars are characters with a life of their own, conspiring against poor mortal men such as we.

9. Caleb Meyer by Gillian Welch. If you've never heard this song, you need to stop what you're doing right now and go buy it, download it, borrow it, whatever. (Don't steal it!) But listen to it. This is perhaps the spookiest Bluegrass song ever, and friends -- that's saying a lot. Bluegrass and old time are chock full of ghost story songs, and this one takes it all. Nellie Kane, a common heroine from old time and Celtic songs, is approached in the middle of the night by the local moonshiner, Caleb Meyer. Caleb attempts to rape Nellie, but is killed by her instead. "I drew that glass across his neck, as fine as any blade, I felt his blood pour fast and hot, around me where I lay..." This song is a plea to his vengeful ghost, "Caleb Meyer your ghost's a gonna wear them rattlin' chains, but when I go to sleep at night, don't you call my name..."

10. The Devil Had a Hold On Me by Gillian Welch. Again Gillian is strumming her banjo... she doesn't often do that, but when she does, like in Caleb, it's chilling. I can't quite figure out what it is that she's doing... I mean it's basically just old time clawhammer banjo style with a little bit of a guitar strum to it, but somehow it sets that spooky mood. "I turned my head, and I could see, the Devil had a hold o' me..."

11. Life Worth Living by Uncle Tupelo. It's not exactly a spooky song, I guess, but its lonely acoustic sound fits so well with this mix. Its theme of dejection, sorrow, and drinking yourself to death fits nicely, however, with the overall morose temperature of this mix. "Looks like we're all lookin' for... a life worth livin', that's why we drink ourselves to sleep... that's why we pray our souls to keep..."

12. Waiting Around to Die by the Be Good Tanyas. An old Townes Van Zandt song done right... soulful and quiet, it's barely there at all. You feel you could just breathe a little harder and blow this cloudy, misty song away like a puff of smoke. It's insubstantial. This song speaks of a broken family, a rambling gambler, betrayed by and betraying those around him, finally finding oblivion in loneliness and drugs... "I got a new friend at last, and he don't steal or cheat or drink or lie, well his name is codeine, and he's the nicest thing I've seen, and together... we're gonna wait around to die." It's a sad, sad song, but so beautiful in it's simplicity. Townes' writing is of course genius, but the Tanya's treatment of it brings this powerful song to a new height.

13. Hex by Neko Case. A return to our patron saint of Haunted Americana, this song tells of a spurned lover's vengeful spell against the man who used her. "When the stars in the sky begin to fade, do you tell yourself don't be afraid, it's just the night that's dying?" She blots out all life from him, everything but her own pain. "My voice is all that you'll hear..."

14. Complainted'vn Matelot Mourant by the Avett Brothers. This song is too creepy to listen to at any other time than this mix. Period. It's not really a song as much as a performance piece. It's a winding, meandering tune with no lyrics. The song starts slowly, low, and creeps itself up into a crescendo of pounding and scraping special effects, finally ending with a ghostly chorus of moans and then screams. It is Creepy. Seriously.