EUGENE CHADBOURNE ON COUNTRY
Interview, Part IV by J. Vognsen
(December 2021)
Also see Part I and Part II of the interview
PSF: The "Coltrane Medley" (1993: Strings) you mention is one of the first examples I can recall of hearing you playing the banjo and it really struck me as something completely unique. It remains a personal favourite!
By now there are numerous other examples of you bringing the banjo into uncharted territory, such as covering Dead Kennedys' "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" (2008: Think 69) and a number of hip-hop and rap tunes, or recording the music of Bach (2002: German Country And Western) and most recently Olivier Messiaen's Catalogue of Birds.
I'm wondering if those come about as creative challenges - to see if you can make it work - or does it simply seem intuitively natural to you to perform that music on the banjo?
EC: Most of the time I am challenging myself in this endeavor to bring different kinds of pieces I love to the banjo. I was never alone in this as there has been lots of activity over the years trying to expand the instrument and the types of bands it is usually featured in i.e. bluegrass into different styles, to surprise, delight, sometimes horrify the audience.
This creation of conflict you know is something I get off on. But it is so ripe in this particular field because of all the conservative leanings, causing all kinds of reactions. I participated in a Winnipeg Folk Festival event which featured a reunion of The Blue Velvet Band... quite a popular and mainstream bluegrass band whose singer Jim Rooney was/is active in Nashville as a producer. Jim approached me and called me "Dr. Chadbourne" and it turned out his daughter was a fan. Anyway, this group played one song at every event I heard them at during that festival, a slow and boring cover of "No Expectations" by the Rolling Stones that I thought at the time the original album came out would have been considered a pretty hip cover choice for a bluegrass group. But by now, it was considered lame. People were looking around and saying "They have a reunion and choose to play this? Over and over?"
The funniest example though before I get back to my own work was driving in a car with Tony Trishka, on a small tour. We are listening to the NPR bluegrass show, Back Porch Music. The disc jockey plays a bluegrass version of a Sting song. We look at each other, it is such a shitty song to begin with, just as true as "you can't go wrong with good material" is "you can't make gold out of shit." The best part was afterwards, the disc jockey comes on and says he got so many calls complaining about "playing that kind of material" that he promised here and now, never to play something like that again, "I will stick to recognizable bluegrass!" Tony said "That sums up why I hate the bluegrass scene."
Well, with a Sting cover or whatever it might be, and my daughter Lizzie has been throwing stuff like Katy Perry and Taylor Swift at me, or I am on the road with Schroeder or solo and adding new songs every day. I always try to see if the song or piece will work on the banjo. The main reason for something not working on the banjo is, I probably mentioned before, if you need bass notes and sustain for something to work, it is not going to happen on the banjo. But trial and error is always needed to determine if it needs those elements, for example both the Black Sabbath covers I do worked out great on the banjo--"War Pigs" and "Paranoid." Well, the first one is half the audience and drummer anyway. "Paranoid," like "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" has all the elements of what makes for an amusing cover on the banjo, and by that I mean, it makes people laugh and they often end up liking it more than the original. In the case of the one you mention. it seems in some parts of the world because the Dead Kennedys don't tour and not that many other bands cover the song--it is covered by the fake band in the great horror movie Green Room (see it if you haven't!!). So my version is the version they know.
Also this decision means, hey I am not competing with Randy Rhodes for my version, someone all the fans of the song hear in their head. "Little Wing," on the banjo, that's nice because the chords work and you are not competing with Hendrix. Other Hendrix material I am happy just to wail on electric guitar, it is all just personal taste in the end.
The rap stuff in some ways is the easiest because you start out with almost no musical material to worry about learning or transforming. "One More Road to Cross" had an actual riff--that was amazing, an aberration, I remember my kids barely recognized an electric guitar when they heard it on the radio by that time. Sometimes that material gets more musical, and by that, I mean chord changes, a piano part, not just a drum part and a simple set of samples. In that case, I remember the piece by Usher, "U Got it Bad." I liked that because it had a guitar solo on it, that was unusual. But then I worked it up with my daughters and their friends as well, a whole little vocal group. For a while, it was a fun part of the set but when we tried to bring it back later it didn't work. Lizzie and I have been messing around for a long time with another one. I never can remember the title, I think it is J Lo and... I am not sure of the stud... "My pride is all I have." "Pride is what you had little girl, I'm what you have." It is back and forth conversation, ridiculous. We have fun with it. "Danger!" by Mystikal is one of the best- the lyrics are all bragging about how big the audience is. It is great to play when there is no one in the place or when it is packed. It is a G7 chord, a little riff, nice chorus.
Figuring out the banjo parts for these numbers is a challenge, I have to admit.. I tried for a long time with "Pop My Trunk," which was from this school of ultra-slow down bass lines. From the listener's perspective, getting the reaction "Oh he is playing a really weird hip hop number!" All you need is the lyrics really, but getting a rhythm going on the banjo is a necessity, something that repeats because these pieces are all about repeating elements, something that suggests the tune.. I was just looking at "When Doves Cry" because the sheet music was in a book I have. Now that is Prince, a different style, more like learning a James Brown or Marvin Gaye number. I learned "Counting the Days" with Schroeder- that is a great piece of music with jazzy chords and the most pessimistic lyrics ever, but I play it on guitar! This "When Doves Cry" chart had these pretty sophisticated chords, Fmaj9 plus 11augmented chord with a side of wasabi, etc., and then I put the record on and all you really hear is this thud, big reverby sound. Is somebody playing that chord? I had to give up on that.
I heard Ralph White playing some covers on the banjo. He really relied on the lyrics, and everything the sound of his voice suggests, and wasn't trying to play the original chords of the songs.
"Dock of the Bay" turned out to be a great cover on the banjo! We were playing it at a soundcheck near Naples, at a club by the dock, and some sailors came off a boat to see where it was coming from. They recognized the version from a distance.
The biggest challenge is obviously classical music. Jazz I can get into especially if there is a band, but that is a style where it is nice to play bass lines. Even when you have a bassist playing with you, the lack of sustain makes it difficult for them to hear what note I am playing. I would have to say, I have listened back to live gigs with bass players and wanted to throw them out the window. But I don't blame them, you can't hear a thing. I had this strange time sitting in with Nels Cline's band in LA. When it was over, I heard the bass player complaining: "You didn't tell me HE was going to sit in. I couldn't hear the banjo anyway."
Classical I can do solo---I do the Satie arrangements with small ensembles. I got my first Bach book for reading practice on guitar and one day I started trying the banjo with it. Two things were revelations- what I call the "Bach" tuning where I raise the high D string to E, then I am able to read on four strings identical to those four strings on the guitar, otherwise even that small bit of transposition was slowing me down. I decided anytime I saw the note G in the score, I would play the G drone string. That added a strange harpsichord element that some of my friends such as Paul Lovens complimented me on. The CD of Bach pieces was out on a small Canadian label for some years. Then the Donaueschingen Festival contacted me about performing a banjo version of the Goldberg Variations, whatever I wanted to do with it.
This is one of the major avant garde festivals and many album covers flashed before me. It was a big deal, the best example of a challenge... it was one of many events at the festival, different curators were brought in to create small mini-series. I was part of an evening of miniatures that would be performed three times in a local venue that in itself had an amazing history regarding the way it was put to use by first the Nazis and then the occupying forces.
I worked really hard on this and considered it basically impossible to get anything to sound right in the way that someone would say "Oh the Goldberg Variations!," it is not like there are rap lyrics or a riff everyone knows. Even when I thought I had captured the feel of a certain passage, there was no chance on earth anyone would recognize it. I weaned it down to the performance requirements and noticed I was using rejected school papers for my notes, several pages about what happened in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII. I used some of this as cues during a part involving sound improvisation with balloon effects that I planned to insert.
Basically this went well for me, although at least one person approached me and said it was a horrible disaster. There was very little social interaction at this festival, I hardly saw anyone that was not involved in the performance. An opera singer did a reduction of a famous opera, singing a lot of the voices, this was marvelous. I felt sorry for the percussionist who planned a solo version of a Stockhausen piece for 9 percussionists. The Stockhausen estate reached out and stopped this from happening, they said it was not allowed, you had to have 9 people to do the score.
So whatever I might choose to do with the banjo or guitar with country music, at least nobody has reached out to stop me--yet!! And I am grateful.
PSF: It seems to me that most often when you perform country material it is in the form of cover songs, and that your own original compositions are more stylistically ambiguous.
First, I guess I should ask if you think I'm right about that? And if you do, is there a particular reason you don't write in the more traditional country formats?
EC: I thought about this for a few days but don't really have time to do an accounting of all the original songs recorded by me and how they might be classified as to genre, particularly country. You are probably right, if there is any predominant style it would be ambiguous or what I call 'folk rock,' then there are a batch of songs that are more hardcore, heavy metal or whatever.. Some of them mix genres within them as you know.
From the earliest batch of originals that were done by Shockabilly- "Hattiesburg Miss," I would classify as a country song. Prior to that all published original material was in the jazz or avant garde instrumental category (for some years I managed to get "The Rake" officially classified as classical so it would collect a higher royalty rate). And when I started the country band, it was, as you said, all covers.
On the Country Protest album and Country Music From Southeast Australia album, these two came out simultaneously on different labels and were my second and third titles under my own name after Shockabilly broke up. First was The President Is Insane...
"New Car Song"... for sure a country number done in the Roger Miller style
"A Bottle Labeled Losers" I would always mention as a country number, done in the Ray Price shuffle rhythm.
Much of the material on SE Australia... "Bully Song," "I'm Sorry That I'm Sorry," "My Gas Tank Runs on Booze"... I would call country or with country elements, Bully Song more of the folk rock style. All that meant to me is that the chords and structure could be as open ended or experimental as any pop or rock music, both acoustic instruments were featured more, but not exclusively so there could be harder edged rocking out possible.
"My Gas Tank Runs on Booze" is one of a few small packets of songs that were actually written to be submitted to country and western music publishers---so in this case they would have to be defined as country. I actually can't remember who this first set was submitted to... the flip side to this proposed country single was something like "(You Could Have had Me) For Free." It was about some woman winning the lottery so she was going to dump her husband finally. But from his point of view, I actually tried to do this for the Country Protest album, with the Red Clay Ramblers on the same session as "Medley in C" and the other stuff they did but we could not get a feel for it. In fact, one of the players just stood there with his hands at his sides, he said he couldn't "think of a single note to play on that one." Later, he said "With that one song you were getting more into a Nashville style, Countrypolitan stuff, the Ramblers don't really do that." So that is more proof of having written a country song, maybe this was kind of like a Don Williams song.
I do remember the next circumstances because they were funny. I got a phone call from a guy who said he was working at Tree Publishing in Nashville, of course this is the publisher of much of my favorite material! He said they were looking for new songs for a Merle Haggard record, so that was how I wrote "Land of Use to Be." I thought that would have been a magnificent song for him. Is it country? I would say so. I also sent "My Gas Tank Runs on Booze." When I followed up, I learned the guy that called had no status, he was a janitor! And this was something he did when he got a phone number of a musician he liked. I learned he did it with Bela Fleck. This is pretty funny on its own but I also add in the special status being a janitor at that publishing firm has had in country music history. Kris Kristofferson had that job and tried to use it as a way of getting Johnny Cash to listen to his songs.
Finally, I would mention the out and out country sessions, "Another Country." The original songs I brought were more either old timey--"Old Piano, Bricks of Gold"--or elaborate and detailed, like "A Little Tunnel or Castle." Are these country songs? I know that I do sometimes think I should make such and such a song I am working on more identifiable country and western... Instrumentation always seems to be the sure fire gambit rather than the nature of the song itself. In general though, I find myself in a period where I am not interested in writing songs, for two general reasons. 1) the challenge of creating something someone would identify as a song with some kind of music that is challenging and interesting to play, that's not insurmountable at all but it always seems that if the elements that made it a song were removed, the music would get to be even more challenging and interesting. But mostly 2), I've grown weary of the whole nature of creating texts for songs, thinking about something to say something about... Lately, only one or two a year feel like they have a lasting value to me... And this repeated experience where I create a text that I think is profound, moving, and then present it to an audience and they look at me like it is a curiosity. I played a new song in Chapel Hill and saw my wife and oldest brother exchange looks after one line of the lyrics, like what the hell is he on about now? I thought, I don't need this, I would rather jam.
PSF: Apart from yourself, the main example that springs to mind of someone who blended country-related sounds with the avant-garde would be Henry Flynt. I don't think you actually sound very similar, but perhaps there is some overlap in interests between you?
You wrote Flynt's biography for AllMusic and also recently recorded his song "Uncle Sam Do" with Sunwatchers and Mike Watt on the 3 Characters (2018) album. But were you aware of his music around the time you recorded There'll Be No Tears Tonight (1980)? Was he ever an influence on you?
EC: Pretty short answer to that one, NO.
I only found out about Henry Flynt later when I wound up reviewing all those CD's that came out. Two different companies in a rivalry with each other, one of them involving John Berndt from Boston, very opinionated about what was the best work and I think also involved in helping Flynt set up a website to post his essays... I might be wrong about the latter. Anyway, during that brief time, I was exposed to all those recordings at once and I have to say I can't remember a note, a pitch, anything about them. They made no impression on me. Whatever I wrote at the time would be the best indication of how the sounds moved me at the time. It is not something that stuck with me or that I turned to in times of necessity, or listened to early in the morning to motivate myself to get up and go work at a newspaper desk in the freezing winter.
I did find out that he was born and raised in Greensboro, and was interested in that since in some cities, one can find plaques or other memorials to famous people. I understand in San Francisco such a thing had to be removed from a house where Janis Joplin lived because too many shreeves were hanging around. Henry Flynt though I don't think anybody has heard of in Greensboro. There is some discussion about who the most famous musician is from here. When I first moved here, it was the country and rockabilly singer Billy "Crash" Craddock, plus the drummer from the Guess Who had retired here, etc.. David Licht had a friend named Carlos- he played and recorded with Julian Lennon. Anyway I was always interested in acquiring such information and of course there was an ongoing, finally resolved, controversy about putting up a statue in High Point to honor regional legends of jazz--Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie. People on the city council fought against it because these musicians were known to "use drugs" and that could be a bad influence.
Okay, anyway, I got into this discussion about musicians from Greensboro with the parents of a guitar student- the father is a sculptor and the mother works for the city. I mentioned Flynt and that he had done experimentation with Appalachian style music and was still being discovered, a bunch of his CD's were coming out. I understood that he lived in Greensboro as a kid and wouldn't it be great to find out the house, the neighborhood. She says "I work for the deed of records and I am sure I can find that information out for you."
Then two things happened. Most notably, I made the mistake of mentioning this conversation to John Berndt, he then mentioned it to Flynt whom he said went through the roof. He was really going to make trouble for me if I found out where his house was.
Well then I really hated his music after that, I thought, 'what a jackass!' Then again his reaction could have been fabricated. I am never sure to think about anything that guy tells me. For several years, he would open up his wallet suddenly and show me a check another musician had written him to pay to press a disc we were all on together. He was just carrying it around, for years. So that was the last I heard about the Flynt/Greensboro connection and the father of the student told me he had issues with substance abuse so he was going to be really heavy about me being "clean" when I taught his son. This is from a background when at least half of my students were showing up stoned, I could smell it on them. Well for sure, this father said he didn't want to smell it on me and I was like "oh, I hate teaching guitar, especially that kind of lesson where the parents are trying to get the kid interested and so it has to be the music the kid likes." Okay, fine some crap rock and roll off the radio. I feel sorry for guitar teachers. We talk about this- they don't even have any good riffs on the radio any more. If you find a student that is into classic rock then you have all this stuff at your fingertips. Let them master "Louie Louie"! But the father was the type that really has a keen nose for weed. One of my daughters is like that- they think they smell it on you whether you have smoked it or not. In my case, they are probably right. Any excuse not to teach guitar though. The lessons didn't continue so I never found out more about Flynt.
PSF: Merle Haggard's music is obviously very important to you. One of your more recent country-themed albums was focused on Haggard specifically: Merles Just Want To Have Fun recorded with Bryan And The Haggards and released in 2013.
How did you begin collaborating with Bryan And The Haggards? And what were your thoughts when approaching the music of Merle Haggard at this point?
EC: I follow a set of rules established by the great studio guitarist Tommy Tedesco when deciding whether to take a job.
1. you will meet someone you will want to meet
2. the music is fantastic
3. the money is great
If it has one of those things, then it is worth doing. Basically, in the case of the project you mention it was #2. Any chance to perform Merle Haggard songs.
Kurt Gottshalk came to me with the idea, among other things he produced a record with Loren Mazzacane's group Haunted House and had coordinated several interesting concert events with me over the years. He had been going to hear this band that was doing jazz versions of country and western songs by Merle Haggard and they had quite a following in one of the West Village bars. I am relying on memory for this... What Bryan of the band told me was that one of his bands had a regular jazz gig and one night, instead of bringing the usual charts they played, he brought sheet music for Merle Haggard songs.
What I would add to the mix would be partially choosing the songs, providing the vocals, impacting the arrangements.
This record was among three I did over the course of a summer and fall in which the studio conditions were practically unbearable. The ultra-portability of equipment people were using allowed them to create a "studio" anywhere: in the case of the Haggard record, it was a big warehouse with some platforms built here and there. There was another room we went into to hear mixes.
Also during this period, I made a second record with the Aki Takase Fats Waller Project entitled New Blues for the Enja label in a suburb in Munich and an interpretation of Don Cherry jazz suites with an Italian band, Arbe Garbe, with whom I had previously worked on fresh versions of my own songs- a band cut of "Roll Over Berlosconi" and a version of the Beatles' "Birthday" that I thought was magnificent. We were at a chateau somewhere near the Slovenian border. They had a sealed off sound room but only that area to play with this band, with horns and a loud rhythm section. I am not sure they could baffle me off. For sure, they couldn't at the Aki sessions. I tried to get the guy to let me record the banjo out in the garden but the engineers were really farty old school guys and not in the good way where they had figured out effective techniques to do something. If I played electric guitar, it had to be turned down to the point where it was inaudible to me. Likewise, the banjo and what all three of these records have in common is my performance was done without being able to hear a single note I played. Luckily, vocals were audible! But I would compare this experience to having a serious conversation with someone where you can't actually hear what you have said.
My interpretation of Haggard was the same as ever, a kind of reverence to the material I am most fond of and in this case a willingness to give other things I had been less interested in playing myself such as "Mama Tried" a whirl.
Interaction with this band was at its best on the western swing numbers. They had easy going rhythm parts and the soloists could stretch out or there could be duet, trio interaction. We really benefitted from one of the reed players- he was very creative and funny. And to wrap up, I would like to mention what happened in the aftermath of this project because it has such typical music business and jazz scene elements.
With every effort such as this there is an underlying hope that it will have "legs'--a life of some sort. The record comes out, the curator of a festival gets interested, an agent books a profitable tour... Sometimes, there is interest in a project for years, but the fickle nature of this scene is working against you all the time.
In the interim between the record being recorded and released, the reed player I mentioned went to work, full time, for one the biggest names in jazz. He would not be available for tours. An agent that had gotten interested in the idea of a tour with this group was quick with the news that this offer had been cut in half because so and so wasn't in the band and that offer had been withdrawn entirely. The tour went down the tubes and apart from one appearance during one of my festivals at the Stone, this combination never worked again.
The situation with the tour reminded me vividly of hanging out with Frank Lowe and hearing him complain because the money he was offered to play in France was going to be negotiated down unless he had certain people in his band. "How dare these motherfuckers tell us who to play with?" he shouted.
One thing about this project is that it is easy to find. I think you can get a copy for less than $2 on Discogs!
PSF: You mentioned earlier Merle Haggard's little trilogy of controversial songs: "Okie From Muskogee," "The Fighting Side of Me" and "I'm A White Boy (Lookin' For A Place To Do My Thing)." The first two seem to get the most attention, but politically speaking I think the last one is actually the most fascinating. Merle's Just Want To Have Fun includes both "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of Me," but would you ever consider recording "I'm A White Boy"?
EC: I don't think so, the lyrics are just really hard to get through..I'm proud and white and I have a song to sing
PSF: I'm not sure if this question will have any connection to country at all, but if you will indulge me, I know that you once performed with the amazing Indian slide guitar player Debashish Bhattacharya. I can't find much information about that meeting anywhere, but on paper it seems like a pretty unusual combination and I'd love to know how it went!
EC: There is actually a connection because with this ensemble we performed "Listening to the Wind," one of my favorite performances ever because it was outdoors at Stanley Park in Vancouver and the wind was always blowing.
Besides the gent you mention, there was also a tabla player. I think related to him, and a sarod player as well as a musician from Iran, maybe that was the sarod, and a Chinese musician... plus a couple of other Americans/Canadians. It was really an amazing experience. I have never heard anyone play as fast as the Indian musicians and they told the best dirty jokes!
PSF: Finally, I'd like to finish by asking you for a few recommendations. Since we've already talked a lot about recordings, I wonder if there are books or movies dealing with country music that you enjoy?
EC: Funny question! I had to look up a few things that I have memories of.
Books and movies are generally a different story. In the former category, you have a much better class of biography without all the bullshit of the typical movie. Movies about music careers I find pretty hard to take, not too many exceptions in my fussy universe. I have read a few biographies over, most recently the Robert Hillburn Johnny Cash book. There are more and more biographies of him and other greats and Willie has his own cottage industry of slim, toilet style books to dip into for anecdotes. The book his sister wrote about their life I like very much. I remember reading a good biography of Ernest Tubb with lots of information and I am still looking for a copy of a biography I was told Lenny Kaye wrote of Waylon Jennings.
When you asked about recordings, live performances of country music I mentioned the ease of watching vintage television clips on YouTube, etc.. On the subject of biographical film treatments or films that deal with country and western music, I thought of a few things. I really did not enjoy I Walk the Line but my daughter Lizzie did. She had a different reaction to the stars (she is a big fan of the lead actress) but I found kind of hard with Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash. Johnny himself has a bunch of great on camera appearances, least of which is the odd Door to Door Madman where he is in his "speed" period and looks horrible. This film always reminded me of the Richard Kern films with Lydia Lunch, they are basically the same film.
I can't recall the name but a "made for TV" film with Johnny Cash as a sheriff investigating a plantation owner (played against type by loveable Andy Griffith) who murders some of his workers.
The so-far-brief film career of Willie Nelson includes Honeysuckle Rose, where he sort of plays himself. It is a rancid remake of Intermezzo but has a few enjoyable scenes as well as the totally acceptable idea of Slim Pickens as a lead guitarist who is retiring.
He had a smallish part in Thief and there is also The Electric Horseman, which I don't think I ever sat through. But you are really not asking about films in which country performers act, but in some cases if they perform a number then it could be of interest. My wife and I were watching Hillbillies in the Haunted House with Lon Chaney Jr. freaking out and it was hard to sit through, such crap, but Ferlin Husky pulled off some good music here and there and was fun to see on screen.
In 1973, there was Payday in which Rip Torn plays a real asshole country singer named Daryl Duke. This was known as a "cult" film in its time and I remember being excited catching up with it. I don't remember anything much about it however all these years later.
I enjoyed a book entitled Crazy Heart about a country singer and guitarist named Bad Blake. The problem with this sort of thing and many music biographies is that the subject really becomes substance abuse, in this case alcoholism, take away the country music and you have The Lost Weekend. However, the book has a really fine section where Blake shows up half out of it for a gig with a local backup band. They are arrogant and try to relegate him to the sidelines, make fun of his picking as corny... but he pulls himself together in the second set and gets into his meat and potatoes guitar style, playing rhythm and lead, Chuck Berry style multiple note runs. It is described very well and for a guitarist, is a fun thing to read.
The film version was a disappointment. it was the first film for Scott Cooper who made much better films down the line, especially Hell or High Water. Jeff Bridges makes for kind of a goofy country singer. What I remember is they soften up the portrait of Bad Blake.
My wife and I started watching a film about the Austin country scene about that guy Licks McGinty or whatever his name is, Townes Van Zandt. It moved at such a slow pace, it reminded me of the comment Evan Parker made about Bill Dixon's use of an echo effect all the way through his set: "everything sounded like a cow pulling its foot out of the mud."
The remake of A Star is Born seems like it was changed to a country singer, at least that was the way it appeared when I watched it (sound off) over someone's shoulder on an airplane. That is about as close as I am willing to get to Lady Gaga unless I get involved in a new plot to kidnap her dogs.
I saw Sam Elliot in that cast but was surprised [that there was] no Robert Duvall, he shows up in almost every Hollywood film about country and western and I believe Tender Mercies, has something to do with country. Maybe or not- maybe they are just on a ranch. I don't remember this film much either.
PSF: I share your dislike of biopics and movies about music careers in general, as they are always so formulaic. The best exception is Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), which I really love.
EC: Oh I am glad you mention that movie because it made me realize I had made a big omission!
Those movies about fictitious characters in music are sometimes good, I really like Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story, when he makes the pretentious art rock record, it is really spot on.
I meant to point out Robert Altman's Nashville as a really great film about America, country and western... so many things... the characters in this film are really great, some of them amalgams of different country stars I guess. Some of the performers, such as Ronee Blakely, had actual music careers. Henry Gibson is hysterical in his role and the scene where he records the propaganda story in the studio ("We must be doing something right to last 200 years") is really hysterical. Have you seen this? It is being re-released this year I read although I think it has always been around.
Writers now are pointing out that the independent presidential candidate in this film has some things in common with Trump. And there was just a piece about an unfinished long lost studio album by Karen Black being released!!