Southern Rock Farm Report

Railroad, PA ? When yankees like you asked me about the Southern thing, I used to send y'all to Faulkner and Hank. But those guys are getting kind of...old: like half a century.

But now I've got something that explains the whole deal perfectly, truly, deeply. You got to get aholt of Southern Rock Opera (no label: try milesofmusic.com) by the Drive-By Truckers. At the risk of writing a blurb: this is a profound, coherent and important work of art. I reviewed the thing briefly last time out, but now you get the essay version.

Southern Rock Opera is about Lynyrd Skynyrd and Southern rock. It's about alcohol and cocaine. It's about growing up in Alabama in the 70s. Now, it might occur to you that writing a two-hour rock opera about Lynyrd Skynyrd is not the very best idea that anyone ever had. And I might actually have agreed with you before I heard Southern Rock Opera. I hate rock opera as a form. Tommy was just bombastic claptrap. And let's not even talk about the loathsome early works of the loathsome Andrew Lloyd Webber.

But Southern rock is in revival, under the aegis of young outlaws like Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker (and never really died: listen to Travis Tritt). The style was primordially the invention of the Allman Brothers, who came out of Georgia playing an electrified country blues and jamming at great length. By the mid-70s there was a bevy of bands in related veins, including Molly Hatchett, the Marshall Tucker Band, .38 Special and above all Skynyrd.

Duane Allman, the Brothers' great slide guitarist, who also played with Aretha Franklin among many others, died in a motorcycle accident. And just after the release of Street Survivors in 1977, Skynyrd's lead singer Ronnie Van Zandt and others died in a plane crash. So there was a vine of semiromantic doom wound around the music.

Street Survivors, though its songs have been trivialized by endless repetition on classic rock stations, was a masterpiece, one of the best dozen or so records in the history of rock. Southern Rock Opera makes constant references to it, not only in the lyrics, but in the playing. A song like "Women Without Whiskey" is as good as Southern rock has ever been.

But what the thing is really about is growing up with music as one's central preoccupation, growing up with music as the engine of your identity. Southern Rock Opera tries to do for Bama what early Springsteen did for Jersey: make a typical youth there into the stuff of epic. But where Springsteen essentially invented his own vernacular, the Truckers are able to use the sounds of the era to evoke it with precision.

And by the end one realizes that they have told a truly epic story, the story of "the Southern thing." There are meditations on race and George Wallace, on football, on the goodness of Southern people and their pain.

The South is the object of both romance and revulsion to Northern folks, and one thing that's not always realized is that there's a lot of good folks down there just trying to live their lives in a decent way. And the obsessive focus of Northerners on Southern race relations is in part a massive support for self-delusion. I've lived in Richmond, Nashville and Tuscaloosa, and race relations there were far better than in my hometown of Washington, DC. Or in Baltimore or Philadelphia.

And the South is the source of the world's popular music: blues, jazz, rock and country. Southern Rock Opera constructs a romantic vision of the South in its own way, but one that is also realistic, that's focused on the problems and above all on the everyday life of real people. That's precisely where the work's transcendent quality originates: in its depiction of everyday life in the South.

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Let us now praise Hank Williams Jr. I know, I know, Lisa, you despise him. You think he's a caricature of a good ol' boy. One of my favorite albums of last years, the Yayhoos' Fear Not the Obvious, described him as a "monkey with a gun." And no one could possibly live up to that name: the name of the best songwriter of the 20th century.

But Hank Jr. has earned his own iconic status. Along with maybe George Strait and Ricky Skaggs, he was the best country artist of the 80s. Songs like "A Country Boy Can Survive" and "I'm for Love" were beautiful anthems of redneck culture.

The Almeria Club (Curb) is Hank Jr.'s best album since then: extremely direct and basic blues ("It's the root of all music," says Hank) and country. I don't know whether the man has sobered up or what, but damn he sounds good. He's taking on the role of senior spokesman for trad country, along with George Jones, but that doesn't prevent him from doing a little shtick with Kid Rock, pointing out that "in country music you just can't use the f-word." I swear to you on my mama's biscuits that this is a great album.

If, on the other hand, Hank Sr. were still around, he would not only be extremely old, he would sound like Wayne The Train Hancock. A-Town Blues (Bloodshot) is traditional to the point of pretending it's 1951, but either way Wayne flat gets it. He can be moving as hell ("Life's Lonesome Road") or funny as hell ("Miller, Jack, and Mad Dog," an anti-drunk driving theme). I didn't realize people could still play pedal steel like that.

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Please don't lose this next album under the heaps of praise I'm giving others. Lonesome Bob's Things Change (Leaps) at first seems like a novelty record, and a great one. It features fine and funny country songs such as "I Got Away with It," "Heather's All Bummed Out" and "It'd Be Sad If It Weren't So Funny." But then you begin to realize that these songs are beautifully constructed, and that there's actually something touching under the humor. And then the real songs on here begin to kick in, songs like "Dying Breed" and "Weight of the World," which are as beautifully written and movingly performed as country music has ever been.

Allison Moorer sings beautiful harmony vocals. I think the name "Lonesome Bob" is a bit unfortunate, though funny as hell, because it will tend to get him dismissed. But he could be played on mainline country radio or on Americana, and he can definitely be played on your car stereo. And as he is, you will realize that country music is still something true. Lonesome Bob is the 21st-century Hank.

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Okay, I know you're wondering hard, as I am, what a good country/Southern rock band is doing in Philadelphia. And you're probably wondering obsessively, as I am, why they're called Naked Omaha. But not everything in God's universe is subject to rational explanation, now is it?

Plus, when it's time to put something on, these questions are irrelevant. What matters is how it sounds. And Belt (no label: try milesofmusic or nakedomaha@juno.com) sounds damn good. Real good. Fucking good.

First of all, the singing, by Dan DeLeon and Paul Edelman. Can I ask y'all a question, Naked Omaha? Is like Dan DeLeon from Bama or something? 'Cause he kinda looks like an Italian from Philly. But Lord he sounds Deep South. And what essentially means the same thing: Lord he sounds good. And there are potentially classic moments like "Mind for Murder" ("lately the mornings are coming much too early"). Obviously, contract or no, this is a major-label act, and should be signed immediately.

Hadacol, which is named for the alcoholic brew that sponsored Hank Sr.'s concerts, plays in a similar alt.country vein, but with more eclecticism. Ian MacKaye, the lead "singer" of Minor Threat, now of Fugazi, once claimed quite sensibly that "death is not glamorous." Unfortunately, that is not true. That's why you'd name your band after the booze that killed your idol. That's why you'd sing and sing about Ronnie Van Zandt, as in Southern Rock Opera. That's why Hadacol would sing, "You can't break me; I'm already broken."

Be that as it may, Hadacol can handle anything from straight Southern rock ("All in Your Head," the national song of my obsessive jealousy) to honkytonk ("Another Day," an understated summary of the human condition) to bluegrass (?!). Check the playing on "Little Sadie" if you don't think this shit is serious.

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I know that you read me religiously. You simply cannot live without your Farm Report. In your own quiet and dignified way, you worship your Farmer Crispy. And even so, you're getting sick of me telling you how great Alan Jackson is. And yet, even though I am about to tell you again how great Alan Jackson is, you cannot stop reading. Really, you cannot. You might think you can now put down that New York Press. You might even think you could recycle it right now, tear it to shreds, throw it in the fire. But you cannot, can you? I have tremendous power over your submissive little self. I am fucking in charge of your eyes.

Alan Jackson, Drive (Arista). Because he's done it so often, so well, for so long, it's almost hard to appreciate how great it is, how it still gets on the radio even though it's real. This thing features the okay 9/11 instasong "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)." But it also features Alan in every one of his veins, from perfect country he wrote himself ("Work in Progress") to the Cajun mode, with a squeezebox back there in the mix, that's worked so well since "Little Bitty."

Okay, you can stop reading now. I release you from my thrall. But I do not release you from your obligation to buy the Lonesome Bob album. Now go.

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