Project 1- Conference Draft

Finding Region while Lost on the River

            “About an hour away from the city.”  When people describe where they are from, they often boil it down to an arbitrary time to the nearest city.  Yet a place is more complex, it is not a set of coordinates or a zip code, it is a collection of traditions and a cultural history.  A place is defined by the shared folklore and practices that the residents hold dear and choose to perpetuate, whether they are a set of religious beliefs, a scary children’s story, or a genre of music.  In Kansas City, Missouri, one of these defining factors is the blues, specifically the Kansas City blues, and the defining history associated with them that has shaped their modern day city.   When The New Basement Tapes released their album, Lost on the River, they used lyrics written and locked away for years by Bob Dylan and critics began to compare the album with Dylan’s previous work.  What they fail to look at is a rather surprising aspect of the album, the way it connects with and comments on the Kansas City region.  It is known that Lost on the River has obvious connections to Bob Dylan, but it also connects to the history and culture of Kansas City, and using the technique of critical regionalism it can be seen that this album is a testament to the culture of Kansas City, even if the artists responsible are outsiders to the city.

In order to look through the scope of critical regionalism, a definition of region must first be reached.  As Douglas Powell remarks, “a region is not a thing so much as a cultural history and ongoing rhetorical and poetic construction,” (Powell 6).  In other words, the cultural history of a place must be researched and examined in order to allocate something as a region.  An example of this is Kansas City, a metropolis located on the Missouri River, which separates its namesake state and Kansas. It has a rich history of jazz and blues, especially during the Great Depression when it seemed like the only town that was thriving, due to its vibrant music scene and free flowing liquor, which was rare at the time.  This music scene can be added to many other aspects of Kansas City: their barbeque, fountains, and city market to distinguish the richly defined region of Kansas City. Now that region has been defined, the concept of regionalism must also be given attention.  Regionalism is a way of creating art that refers to and utilizes the history and culture of the region it is created for.  It is more advanced than creating something familiar, it should invoke feeling of home while simultaneously remaining modern, and critical regionalists analyze the contemporary world to see if this balance is effectively achieved.

For some critics, the origin of the artist being analyzed must first be questioned before his interpretation can be counted.  This is true for Keith Eggener who writes “when one individual’s image of identity is projected onto the nation, it is important to scrutinize the background, beliefs, and aspirations of that individual and his or her advocates,” (Eggener 232).  Eggener is deeply concerned with rejecting outside interpretations that romanticize the region and promote globalization and cultural appropriation.  He believes that picking the consciences of the true residents in a region is the only way to synthesize authenticity. Powell is less concerned with “whether a particular version of region is valid or invalid, authentic or not,” but rather “whose interests are served by a given version of region,” (Powell 7).  He is interested in what an interpretation says about a particular region and why it says that, based on the cultural history of the region.  This debate has created a rift in the acceptance of critical regionalist theory, and by looking at Lost on the River, a decision can be made regarding the importance of artist origin.

Lost on the River is a unique album in that its influences cross paths from all over the American music scene.  The artists involved in this project, aside from Bob Dylan, have backgrounds in folk, classic rock, psychedelic rock, and gospel and soul, yet they combine forces to create an album that closely resembles the Kansas City blues.  But what exactly makes Kansas City blues unique?  While “the blues” may seem like a ubiquitous genre, there are several nuances that very specifically distinguish those that hail from Kansas City.   Deciphering these are important, as Allison Calder says, “One of the things that neoliberalism seeks to do is to iron out nuance, to insist that the world is the same for everybody. Specific places introduce nuance because of their unique make up” (Calder1).  Kansas City blues are characterized by an unpolished and imperfect sound that is derived from the nightlife history of the KC.  When musicians played jazz clubs night after night they would not bother to bring sheet music, rather they would play “head arrangements”, which were loosely memorized songs with semi-consistent riffs that were passed down through the history of Kansas City (Schoenberg).  It is this imprecision and freeness in the music that is culturally significant to KC; spontaneity at this level does not take place in a city like New York where the blues are a more sophisticated and calculated art form.  Perhaps the most significant nuance when looking at Kansas City is the way the city looked when jazz thrived there during the 30s.  The city became the place to be if you were a blues musician because of the creative energy and disregard of laws attempting to restrict alcohol and set curfews.  Songs would often last for several hours into the night as musicians would solo over repeating chords and backgrounds for long periods of time.  Competition was fierce and Mary Lou Williams is quoted that no matter how much experience a player had  “when they came to Kansas City they found out how little they were playing” (Schoenberg).  But for a player who consistently worked the clubs, the experience was like no other and the collaborations that bloomed in the clubs defined a style of music that is still referenced today by artists like The New Basement Tapes.

A good place to start examining The New Basement Tapes and Lost on the River’s regional basis is the third song, appropriately named “Kansas City”. It is a bluesy rock tune that that is driven by a strong electric guitar background riff, a chorus featuring the line “And I love you dear, but just how long, can I keep singing this same old song, I’m going back to Kansas City,” and a distorted guitar solo.  It has a reverberant sound, as if it were recorded in the basement of a club, and the overall product does not seem “too perfect”, like much of today’s music. Even though T-Bone Burnett (the producer) could have easily turned out 20 polished and flawless songs, he left the recordings slightly rough, and doing this adds to the quality of the album, much like hearing a song live in a club rather than a three-time remastered version.   “I’m going back to Kansas City” is a line that people speculate was Dylan’s attempt to say that he is going to step away from the craziness and pressure of his immediate rise to fame and relax.  This is exactly what he did in 1967, using Kansas City as a metaphor for his secluded home in Woodstock, NY.  But why did he choose Kansas City?  He chose it because of the freedom in the music and the way that Kansas City attracted all the talented musicians back in the early-mid 20^th century, anchoring it as an incubator for future genres like Rock and Roll. Buck O’Neil, a Negro League baseball player put it best when he said “The sky was the limit, anything you were big enough to do and could afford, you did it. You could do it in Kansas City,” (Schoenberg).  It is interesting that Dylan did not ultimately record this song because it allowed The New Basement Tapes to move forward and create their own modern version of what they interpret the Kansas City blues to be. The debate can go on if this is still Dylan’s song or if The New Basement Tapes can claim it, but ultimately it doesn’t matter to the region of Kansas City, as they can claim it as a new piece of regional culture now, one that drives the blues forward with an updated energy.

When artists would jam together in Kansas City, the energy they infused in the music came from the intense collaboration.  The bassist Gene Ramey puts it best when he said artists “didn’t just have to learn how to play a solo, but had to learn how to team … [how] to breathe at the same time” (Schoenberg).  The process used to record Lost on The River followed a similar concept.  Once Burnett acquired Bob Dylan’s lyrics, he brought together a group of uniquely talented musicians, none of whom had worked together before, to the recording studio. He let the artists collaborate in a room and through this open ended process, they are were to produce an album of modern blues hits, one that harkens back to the culture of the KC region.  Instead of a dimly lit jazz club at three o’clock in the morning, the New Basement Tape’s jam sessions were held in a recording studio with the only guide being a set of lyrics and the ideas of five accomplished songwriters. This is why almost every song is very simple stylistically.  For example, “When I Get My Hands On You” features only a slow drum beat, a repeating plucked riff and a singer.  Similar to the pure jazz freedom experienced in late night jams, Lost on The River has a very free and unique sound to it, derived from the jam sessions that it mimics.  Just as soloists would play over the same chords for minutes on end, and much like the same song could last for hours due to the different interpretations of the musicians, Taylor Goldstein, one of the musicians on the album said “I thought we would all show each other our different versions of the same songs with the same lyrics and then we would all pick certain versions to chase down” (Jones).  While it does reference those early morning club scenes, the album still sounds modern, due to the fact that it was recorded in a professional studio, and this falls in line with critical regionalism, a modern piece of art that has roots in a region’s culture.

For artists that could not make it in the Blues scene however, their experience of Kansas City was much different.  As Claude Williams put it, “Kansas City was different from all other places because we’d be jamming all night. And [if] you come up here … playing the wrong thing, we’d straighten you out” (Schoenberg).  This “straightening out” was not an easy process and it is the theme of the 19^th track, “Six Months in Kansas City (Liberty Street).”  The lyrics follow a man who descends on the streets from “the old religion” but who “possessed no magic skill.”  This refers to a new artist in Kansas City trying to make it, who has a musical background that turns out to be nothing special when compared to the multitude of others who know the style better than him.  The chorus relays the hardships of a starving artist, “Can’t find no room and board…cause a man to rob and steal…are you ready to admit defeat”.  This hardship is an interesting aspect of the cultural history in Kansas City, because it can be extrapolated to other features of the region.  If there is one thing that the residents of Kansas City hold with more reverence than the blues, it is Kansas City barbeque.  The people of Kansas City consider themselves hard working folk and they prefer their BBQ to be robust and hearty.  They take pride in it because they consider it to be working man food. Thus the tone of this song (which is emotional and unrestrained) and its lyrics feel at home in the context of Kansas City and the album once again comments on and modernizes the region.

The set of lyrics from that song are one of the few that were recorded twice in two completely different styles.  The 5^th track of Lost on the River, “Liberty Street,” use the same lyrics in a completely different style.  While the 19^th track has influences of gospel and blues and throws the vocals to every member in the band, the 5^th track is a piano ballad featuring only a singer and background harmonies.  Having this song twice emphasizes two things, the first being that its message and story about Kansas City is powerful and pertinent to the album.  The second thing it emphasizes is the broad range of style that can be used to represent Kansas City.  By straying slightly away from the classic KC blues sound, they bring the sound into a modern capacity. By emphasizing tangential sounds, Lost on the River avoids romantic regionalism and stands as a distinct piece of regional culture.

Nevertheless, as much as this album may seem to reference Kansas City, Dylan’s outsider influence cannot be ignored.  While Dylan played frequent shows in KC, he is not known to be a local, and his ideas about the region could be considered coming in from the outside.  For some, this inauthentic knowledge of a region can discredit someone from creating a truly a regional piece.  While Powell is not concerned with who defines the region, as long as it is considered in analysis, Eggener’s main criticism with the application of Critical Regionalism is that “a single correct regional style is implied, or imposed, sometimes from inside, more often from outside ‘the region’”(Eggener 230).  Because this album avoids romanticism and stands on its own as a genuine piece of art, it avoids “imposing” anything on Kansas City, rather it makes its observations and lets the user be affected by its style and lyricism. The album undoubedtly draws influence from and attempts to imitate and modernize the history of Kansas City, and it achieves this even without the direct influence that Eggener stresses. It is rooted in history and deviates enough from direct nostalgia to justify interpretation as a piece of regional art.

When the New Basement Tapes first met at the recording studio there existed only a box of scribbled musings from one of the greatest musicians in modern recollection.  They set out to create a new vision that deviates and stands out from the breadth of Bob Dylan’s work, and what they created was a new testament for the rich culture of Kansas City.  Lost on the River takes the night-long jam session that became the cornerstone of KC blues and transforms it into a collaborative and immersive process that results in an impressively unique album, despite the lack of authentic origin.  The New Basement Tapes take their guitars and mandolins and electrify them in a modern attempt to bring renewed energy to the streets of Kansas City.  Dylan’s lyrics poetically describe the hardships of a musician trying to make it in KC and reinforce the hardworking values of people that live there.  Through critical regionalism Lost on the River finds its home right on the banks of the Missouri in Kansas City.

Comments