Tumbleweed
Clay Greenberg
Kinkajou Records
2000
10 tracks
Notwithstanding what some industry folks with vested interests may tell us, genre definitions are pretty hard to pin down. Even across the big picture, it's sometimes hard to tell if a song is country or rock and roll, classical or jazz or pop. Within traditional and so-called roots music, there are probably as many camps as there are songs. Each one of us has his or her idea of exactly what is in the tradition and what is not, what is folk and what is contemporary. Ask ten people and each will give a different definition of what is folk music.
Considering music drawn strictly from the Anglo-American community, my view is that this folk music has two hearts, two central cores. One is sweet, formal, and probably upper-class however much it may claim to not be. Here we find those pretty ballads and love songs like "Greensleeves" or "Sweet Mountain Thyme" with their lilting English melodies set beneath English and sometimes Scots-Irish lyrics. The other is more of the people, tends to derive more directly from Scots-Irish sources and is more often the source of American folk musics called variously folk, hillbilly, country, western or other names.
Within this context, I would consider many so-called singer-songwriters not strictly to be folk singers. What they do is acoustic sung poetry over music without much, if any, connection with the traditions that many of us consider essential to folk music. Rather, these people are writing non-mainstream songs that they hope will at some point become popular music.
Clay Greenberg is what I tend to call a cowboy singer. Although I mean this as a compliment, some artists are offended that I call them cowboy singers. They shouldn't be. It's from these and other working class figures that the most powerful folk music in Canada and the United States has evolved. The original words and music crossed the ocean from those distant islands with our disposessed cropper ancestors. Once here, it transformed to carry tales of the fisheries, of the mountains and the plains, of working men and women across the country. Later, it moved from the countryside to become the music of labour and of protest and justice. And it lives on today.
But enough of the soapbox....
Here's what I like about Clay Greenberg's songs. He keeps things simple. The music features simple melodies that actually do sometimes sound like cowboy songs and always have the folkish feel to them. The words tell simple tales in simple language. There's no attempt here to be excessively poetic or to drown the listener in metaphor. This is down to earth country music. This is what I think. Whether or not Clay Greenberg will agree is another thing.
Does anyone besides me remember Henry Gibson? His humourous bits of poetry on Laugh In were, nonetheless, poetry. "The House Song" conjures up an image of Gibson reciting one of his terse poems. "The House Song" has that same down to earth feel, not too serious, not too deep, but somehow important all the same. Instrumentally, the song could be termed almost hillbilly or perhaps skiffle with its bright, jumpy rhythms. This is perhaps the song on this release that's the most fun.
The first song on Tumbleweed, "Whenever I Fall Down" has an intro that makes the listener wonder if Greenberg is about to play "Wildwood Flower" but then slips into medium tempo country and western shuffle. The lyric is simple and homegrown, the sort of thing you might have heard from Wilf Carter or early Hank Snow or most American country singers in the first half of the last century. This song is perhaps the purest example of why I think of Greenberg as a cowboy singer.
"Leavin'" has a solid backbeat that's very contemporary, but the melody and instrumentation that ride that rhythm track is pure American folk and the lyric has a very traditional feel. On a more modern note, this song also has the modern folk feel of songs like "Amanda" from Don Williams, although the theme is very slightly different.
The title song, "Tumblewood Blues" has the most folkish feel of any song on this release. Greenberg's vocal interpretation is pure folk, mournful and drawn out, and the instrumental maintains the mood set by the vocal. The lyric is one of those depressing tales we seem to have inherited from our Irish ancestors and still love to hear. Even those occasional Hank Jr. guitar riffs can't break the spell of this song's powerful folk ambience.
Thanks to the input of Jo-el Sonnier's accordion, "I'm so happy I Don't Have a Gun" has a Cajun, almost Zydeco feel to it. The lyric here doesn't seem to work as well. This could be because it's all in first person and might have worked better in third person (like, say, "Don't Take Your Guns To Town" or "Coward of the County"). It could also be because the performance seems just too happy given the subject matter.
"The Pure Heart Blues" is pure American folk music. From as early as Jimmie Rodgers through Hank Williams and right up to the present day, American country singers have been writing and performing these simple melodies and heartfelt lyrics. This may not be the best of the genre, but it's still a fun little blues sure to wake up the audience at the local folk club or country bar.
While some of the songs on Tumbleweed do contain purely contemporary elements, most, and certainly the best among them, have a distinctly traditional feel in both the music and the words. Whether they go back to Kenny Rogers and Don Williams or reach back to Jimmie Rodgers and earlier, these songs bring with them a sense of our rural roots and of the music our ancestors brought with them from across that broad ocean.
For more information on Clay Greenberg and Tumbleweed, go to Kinkajou Records.
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