Austin City Limits is now streaming the 2011 Americana Music Festival Honors and Awards show on its website. The show has been edited down to 56 minutes, so it’s more variety show than awards show, but the music is consistently compelling.
Tag: The 2011 Americana Music Festival
TV holds key to growth of Americana music
The Avett Brothers at the Americana Awards show
By Ken Paulson
Television is a very big deal to the Americana music community.
For years, the Americana Music Association has worked to establish the genre with the general public, and TV is the key.
Any medium that can make Snooki a household name should do wonders for Buddy Miller.
That’s why news that WNPT, Nashville’s public television station, would broadcast the 2011 Americana Music Festival Honors and Awards show , and that Austin City Limits would do a show of highlights, was so welcome. A broader audience would finally see what Americana music was all about.
Yet the early results were discouraging. That initial live broadcast from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville showed large expanses of empty seats early on, due to a late-arriving crowd. Unbelievably, the opening graphic noted that the evening was dedicated to the memory of “Jim” Hartford rather than John Hartford. And then early in the show, transmission difficulties meant audio and video drop-outs during performances by Justin Townes Earle and Elizabeth Cook. Ouch.
Things were better for a rebroadcast two days later, although the length of the show was apparently longer than the original estimate. If you have a TiVo, you didn’t see a dazzling finale.
But the good news is that the music overall was stunning, the performances passionate and even the presentations were well-paced. Austin City Limits should find it relatively easy to mine the two-plus hour show for an hour’s worth of great music, drawing on performances by Robert Plant, the Avett Brothers, Jim Lauderdale, Lucinda Williams, Emmylou Harris, Miller, Cook, Earle and more.
That kind of quality exposure will build awareness of Americana, but will also amplify the sales pitch to prospective music festival sponsors.
My guess is that Austin City Limits, scheduled for Nov. 19, will edit out acceptance speeches, which may be just as well. The message relayed by Mumford and Sons thanked “the Nashville community,” which is exactly what the Americana Music Association doesn’t need. Americana needs to be seen as a vibrant worldwide genre, which just happens to have an office in Nashville. National television exposure is critical to making that happen.
Celebrating the music of Muscle Shoals
The 2011 Americana Music Festival began last night with an event that illustrates the genre’s greatest strengths: outstanding performances and a respect for what has come before.
The 90-minute concert celebrating the Muscle Shoals sound was equal parts energy and nostalgia, with legendary figures like Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Jimmy Johnson and David Briggs sharing the stage with some of Nashville’s most soulful vocalists.
With Webb Wilder on hand as MC, the evening walked through the history of FAME Studio and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, from soul to pop and rock.
Highlights were plentiful. From Jonell Mosser’s take on “Dark End of the Street” to Mike Farris’ “I’d Rather Go Blind” to Jimmy Hall’s “Land of a Thousand Dances,” singers delivered faithful, but moving performances. Special treats: Candi Staton’s “He Called Me Baby” and Dan Penn’s “I’m Your Puppet.”
Billy Burnette performed “The Letter,” which was recorded in 1967 by a young Alex Chilton and the Box Tops at FAME. Oddly, he did the live Joe Cocker arrangement that came three years later.
The show closed with Burnette kicking off an all hands-on-deck performance of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The song belongs in the “Played Badly at Weddings Receptions Hall of Fame,” but proved to be a vibrant and fitting close.
(Pictured: A scarce Muscle Shoals anthology.)
Preview: Americana Music Festival 2011 in Nashville
The 2011 Americana Music Festival lights up Nashville this
week, bringing a remarkably diverse and talented range of artists to the city’s venues.
And of course, it also prompts the question: “What is
Americana music?”
Peter Cooper of the Tennessean took a stab at it in 2003:
American music is “country music that is too rooted and true for contemporary country radio programmers. Twangy music that draws from blues, folk and rock forms. Music with smart and
literary lyrics that can be more layered and “difficult” than most
radio fare. Or maybe it would be simpler to say that what they mean is ‘Johnny Cash Music.’
Not bad. That description holds up well today. The biggest change over the years has been a broadening of the genre by the Americana Music Association and radio programmers, inviting more alternative folk performers and storied rock artists into the tent.
That means you’ll see country legend Connie Smith at 9 p.m.
at the Rutledge and emerging folk duo The Civil Wars at the Cannery Ballroom two hours later. You’ll hear the rootsy Knoxville band the Black Lillies one night, and Bobby Keys, saxophonist for the Rolling Stones the next.
Among the performers scheduled for the Americana Music
Festival, which runs from Oct. 12-15:
– The Jayhawks
– North Mississippi AllStars
– Elizabeth Cook
– Keb’ Mo’
-The Bottle Rockets
– Foster and Lloyd
– John Oates
– Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison
– Marty Stuart
– Blind Boys of Alabama
– Blackie and the Rodeo Kings
– Hayes Carll
The highlight of the week is the Americana Americana Honors and Awards Show, scheduled for the Ryman Auditorium on Oct. 13. The show recognizes the best in Americana music and always features stellar performances. This year the show will be broadcast live
for the first time on Nashville Public Television. An edited version will be featured on Nov. 19 on Austin City Limits.
Ticket information for the week’s showcases available at the Americana Music Association website.
You’ll find schedules for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday on Sun209.