No Depression: Fall 2015- Return to Print

WHEN I WAS A KID, I was in a children's choir that required an audition. It was a very serious sort of thing for a child to take part in. We sang in German and Latin and Italian, songs about the Holocaust and God and other things that children can't possibly understand. Hell, even as an adult I don't understand these things. But it was one of the first places in my life when some teacher, or somebody, clued me in to the notion that music is the place where you talk about things nobody understands. Talk about these same things at dinner with strangers and you're likely to start an argument. But in a song, you can go there — all the way there — and if you sing it from a genuine place, for the right reasons, people will call it beautiful. Everyone will listen. Music is a sneaky beast. The songs we sang in that choir — like the songs I studied on piano and flute were very old and long ago and far away. Most of them were written by men who wore wigs and had buckles on their shoes. When I was 18 (in 1995 — the same year "No Depression" printed its first issue), I formed a folk music duo with my friend Sean, and thus started my life in rootsy music. I didn't even know what I was stumbling into at the time. I was coming from the inspiration of riot grrrls. When "No Depression" originally launched back in 1995, it was committed to a music culture that wasn't willing to be boxed in to any existing marketable style. It was music made by people who just wanted to play for the sake of the music. It was too bad for the marketers if they couldn't figure out what to call it; the scene was moving forward on its own, and ND's founding editors were there to tell its story.