What do you mean by "Country" ?

That Ain’t Country…an explanation of Gypsy Bandwagon’s sound (from my particular point of view).

Gypsy Bandwagon played the French Broad Brewery last night. The crowd was small but appreciative, and grew as the evening went on. I performed my composition, “Stateline”, and it was well received (it did help that the audience was about 50% friends and family members).

The show went well overall. The folks at FBB were nice and gave us a lot of support. We have good hope of playing there on a Friday or Saturday evening sometime in the future. So stay tuned for that!

However, there seems to be a bit of a misconception that Gypsy Bandwagon is a “Country” band. I’ve met with this misconception before, but feel that this would be a good time to address that idea.

First off I have to admit that much of my elementary school years were spent listening to County music. That was the music that my Dad listened to when he got an 8-Track tape player installed in the family car (this would have been in the early 70s).

Also, I have to admit that some of my rejection of Country music was due to simple teen rebellion.

As a child I listened with fascination to just about everything that was played within my hearing. So in spite of my anger against Country as I went into high school, I still had a level of respect for Folk music, and Western music, even as my tastes turned more toward Pop, and New Wave.

You may have noted that I separate the terms “Country” and “Western”, much like the barmaid in The Blues Brothers. I have to admit I continue to roar with laughter at that line, but there’s more than a small element of truth to the statement.

To my mind “Country” music is rife with a level of sentimentality that I find hard to take. There are great scenes of affection that make me uncomfortable, and those scenes are usually coupled with an intense negativity. Add to that the vocal and instrumental stylings known (at least locally) as “swoop and scoop” and I just don’t care much for the genre.

That’s not to say that there are not performers within the genre who I hold in regard. I have always appreciated almost any performer who can make fun of themselves or their milieu, and so I can still enjoy performances by Ray Stevens, Dolly Parton, Roy Clark, etc.

But these are the exceptions.

I think it’s important to point out that within ANY discipline, style, or genre there is a lot of garbage. Plain and simple. Even with many performers and bands there are a good number of songs that should simply never have been recorded. I’m afraid that too often we fail to acknowledge that fact, and happily make the generalization, “Oh, I like such-and-such.”

I have to confess that recently, for the sake of convenience, I have been using the short- hand statement, “I like Punk music.” The fact is, I like very little Punk proper. I enjoy a lot of New Wave bands that got lumped in with the Punk crowd, but since the average 20 something doesn’t even know what New Wave means, I feel compelled to use the other term interchangeably (at least until the conversation gets going).

But I was talking about Country music and why it isn’t the same as Folk or Western. People fail to make the distinction (just as I noted above, relative to Punk and New Wave) between the distinctions that make the genres unique.

I find this particularly annoying in some who would not fail to make a distinction between say, Beer and Ale, Marvel Comics and DC Comics, Toyota and Chevy, etc.

Even during the height of my New Wave period I was still drawn toward bands that had a certain “western” flare. Wall of Voodoo, Lone Justice, and The Talking Heads; all had references to the Southwestern U.S., and I ate this up. They were playing on my childhood love for cowboy heroes. And doing it all without the cornball accents!

Sorry if that last statement was harsh. But that’s just the way I see it.

Some of my buddies never made the distinction, and as such hassled me (as friends do) that I was listening to Country and Western. “NO!” I’d cry, and try to make the difference clear. But, sadly, I wasn’t as articulate back then.

I should also point out that even as Folk music isn’t Country (they may be related a few generations back, but they are not the same), so also are Bluegrass, Swing, Cajun, and Celtic NOT Country.

I’ll accept that Country may be made up of a lot of pieces and parts of those styles, but it takes more than a mess of vegetables and some rice to make Chinese food.

So, while Gypsy Bandwagon may play around Country, I don’t think we play Country at all. If I thought that we did I might be forced to do something drastic.

This is also not to say that other members of the group might not see it differently. Lance I know has a great knowledge of Country music, but I submit that his writing style is more Western than anything, and I can respect that.

Carissa usually talks about being a big Led Zepplin fan (ironically my favorite L.Z. song has to be “Hot Dog”, that band’s parody of Country music), but her training is primarily classical.

My wife, Karin, is also classically trained but enjoys mostly Pop Rock. Even she and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on the subject of bands. We usually enjoy most of the same songs by an act, but differ on how “good” overall that act may be.

And if Gypsy Bandwagon should find itself signed to a Country label, I’m sure I’d adapt. (“You want to pay me good money for this? Okay.”) But for the time being I’m playing “International-Western-Folk-Punk”, and that’s the way it is.