Getting Back on the Moose Track.

You may be stopping by The Topophilian because of a recent profile posted by my awesome alma mater - the University of Wisconsin's Department of Life Sciences Communication. That's nice. Thank you. You may also notice that this blog really has not been updated since July. Surprise! I've been busy! With all the dissertation defending and the packing and the moving and the new position at Unity College, well, there's just not been much time for blogging. This may or may not strike you as a reasonable excuse. I don't care. I'm sticking with it.

Yet, this is a kick in the pants to get back on the horse and keep writing. Though, perhaps, maybe getting back on the moose is more appropriate (and less cliche). Why? Because I saw a moose yesterday. Yes, really. It's in this picture, just barely. It was a juvenile bull moose just trotting down Charles Street here in Belfast. And, yes, I was shocked. Better than a cup of imported EVP coffee at 6:25am on an otherwise average Wednesday. But, I digress. I want to back to writing about this thing called place - place attachment, place meanings, sense of place, space and place. All that stuff. Good stuff.

There is such a strong local food culture here in Waldo County, Maine. So many people connected to the land. Terroir and all that. Many people doing many great things. There's so much to say. I just need to stop being so busy and add this to my list of things to do. I will. I promise. After I re-read that section of Omnivore's Dilemma and set out a lesson plan on Spotify and prep for this People's Climate March trip to NYC. And health insurance. Need to get health insurance. Then. Yes, then. Then I will blog. I will. It offers little in the way of external validation and about as close to nothing as one can get in the way of academic advancement, but I will get back to it. Why? Because other than sitting around and singing and stomping my feet with a hollow-body Gretsch turned up to 11 through a Mississippi-made tube amp with a 16" speaker, it's one of the things I enjoy most. That's what I'll be doing. What will you be doing?

David Dye in Memphis

Another great installment of World Cafe's "Sense of Place" series. This time: Memphis, a city of rich cultural and musical traditions. Stax Records, BBQ, Beale Street, Sun Records, the Mississippi River. Whoa.

And Graceland! 




I enjoyed Dye's "sense of place" Dublin tour in early 2011, accompanied by musician Glenn Hansard. This 'tour' of Memphis is just as fun.

I'm feeling thankful for new media and our ability to "visit" so many wonderful places in the world. There's still no substitute for actually traveling, for getting oneself out of the daily humdrum, but it isn't always possible. So, here, you can get a dose of The King, some real-deal juke joints, some sights (if not scents) of lip-smacking BBQ... the list goes on!

Don't let me stop you.

Geography's Creative Juices

Apparently September is "musicians and sense of place" month here at The Topophilian.

Today's quip comes from The Man, Mr. Heart of Gold himself, Neil Young.

In an interview by David Carr of the New York Times, this excerpt caught my eye:

“For whatever you’re doing, for your creative juices, your geography’s got a hell of a lot to do with it,” he said. “You really have to be in a good place, and then you have to be either on your way there or on your way from there.”

Best to always either be coming from or going to that 'good place,' it seems.

It's good to have goals.

Erica Wheeler's Search for Sense of Place

Performing songwriter Erica Wheeler has spent 20 years as a touring folky and, as it turns out, has a great interest in "sense of place."

She recently wrote about being a "Sense of Place Sleuth" on her blog. In fact her whole website (and career, in many ways) revolves around what she labels "inspiring connections between people and place."


Erica Wheeler, 2012, as pictured on www.ericawheeler.com

"Wherever you live, there is a history, both natural and cultural," writes Wheeler. "And you can discover it through your computer or newspaper, and then just beyond your front door."


If you're in Wisconsin, you can step 'just beyond your front door' to catch a Wheeler live show, in Marshfield on the 20th and in La Crosse the 21st.

Keeping a fresh set of eyes is vital, suggests Wheeler. "You'll find places you never knew about or see familiar places through new eyes." I couldn't agree more.

Jason Isbell and Americana

Isbell in Madison, WI, 2007.   

I've often been aware of how "place" fits in to so many good songs, not to mention the presumptive worldview of so many good musicians, writers, and other artists. 

This recent CBS News post about northern Alabama native Jason Isbell's "great year" at the Americana Music Association (AMA) awards caught my eye. The AMAs are a sort of Grammy's for the American "roots music" crowd. Other favorite artists of mine in this vein include Justin Townes Earl, Gillian Welch, The Avett Brothers, The Secret Sisters (also mentioned in the CBS article), and many others. 

Tonight they'll all gather in Nashville and, as Isbell recently tweeted "get to dress like @JustinTEarle for a while!" Funny guy.

I wrote about Isbell and his band the 400 Unit back in 2007 for Madison's alt-weekly newspaper Isthmus. I've been a fan since DBT days of "Outfit" and "Danko/Manuel." His latest album Here We Rest is nominated for album of the year.

"Isbell's upbringing left him with a strong sense of place," writes Chris Talbott of CBS, "...he's used it to turn heads in the Southern songwriting community, first as a member of the Drive-By Truckers and later as a solo artist."

The piece also quotes John Paul White of The Civil Wars, noting the strength of place-based lyrical attributes. While this approach is nothing new, it seems that generation after generation of songwriters (and others) rediscover such basic knowledge again and again.

I've blogged about this connection before, here. Now go out and find yourself some good "local" music!

Best Music Podcasts

Love Love Love this: 10 Best Music Podcasts, from Paste Magazine.

Lucinda, Townes, and the Songwriting of Place

The excerpt below was taken from a recent American Songwriter piece highlighting Lucinda Williams and, more specifically, the influence of songwriter Townes Van Zandt on her and her development as an artist.

His love songs were very romantic, very beautiful. I loved [their] earthiness. He had an obvious sense of place. Oftentimes, he’d have references to different parts of the country, like his song “Snowin’ on Raton.” I’ve done that a lot in my writing. He wrote a lot about cities and towns and rivers, and he used a lot of that imagery. When you heard Townes, you knew it was him. He had a way of writing very simply and sparingly, and yet being very evocative and effective. That’s one of the things I’ve strived to do over the years in my writing.


Image of Townes Van Zandt, stolen from AmericanSongwriter.com

People often reference places in songs, but evoking a sense of place is more than mere mention of some street corner or lonesome road. It is more like painting with words the textures of a landscape, evoking the visible and the invisible, the seen and the sensed, the magic and mystery of some special place.

Are there songs (or songwriters) that evoke a special sense of place for you?  For me, artists such as Tom Waits and the Drive-By Truckers exemplify these qualities. Who else?

Glen Hansard's Dublin

World Cafe radio/multi-media program, hosted by David Dye, has a series called Sense of Place. I did not know this until recently. A roving video interview in "Glen Hansard's Dublin" is a great example of how one's early roots of place can filter into the art and music of later years.

Van the Man, James Joyce, U2, Oscar Wilde, the Revolution of 1916... Dublin has an awesome and deep topical history.  Music as a salve for the soul in troubled times, for people running into hardship or away from heartbreak, it speaks to place, from place, and across all social strata. The Clancy Brothers, The Dubliners, and all the nameless buskers along all the timeless streets contribute to and amplify what the scenes, memories, and dreams have to offer. It's all different, everywhere, and all so much the same.

Let Me Throw An Apple At Ya

Arcadia Books & Cafe, Spring Green, WI

I just played a few folk songs out in beautiful Spring Green, WI, in support of my author friend Alex Bledsoe. Alex was giving a reading for his new book The Hum and The Shiver, which refers to a bunch of great old folk songs in its storyline. The mixture of music and story brought out the idea, yet again, of how intimately these are connected. Music is story. Story, like music, has a certain arrangement that affords its greatest impact.

"We all carry a landscape within us," said Bruce Springsteen last year (11.15.10) in an interview with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. I very much agree. "I felt like my own identity was rooted in that sense of place," The Boss continued. Music has been such a rich way to convey place and historical time, as much of Springsteen's music shows. Many great artists are rooted in a landscape of place. Think of Gauguin in Tahiti, or Remington's Old West. Of course, Lou Reed's New York City, and the many laureates of Texas, of which Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, the Austin Lounge Lizards, and Willie Nelson are only but a few.

Spring Green, WI, is a great little artistic community on the banks of the mighty Wisconsin River along Highway 14 in southwestern Wisco. The reading took place at Arcadia Books which is one of the BEST INDEPENDENT BOOKSTOREs in the area. They're new. Very nice people serve up literature and what looked to be very delicious food, much of it locally sourced. They have good wines, local beers, and great ambiance.

My interests in 'sense of place,' both personally and professionally, align with other recent popular movements emphasizing "local" foods, beers, and many other non-big-box forms of economic support. It's part DIY zeitgeist, part awakening from the consumer culture malaise that has gripped the U.S. for the past 50 years. Here in Wisconsin, there has even been a little boom in local booze. Several new distilleries make spirits using regionally sourced ingredients. Yes, please! This theme, in my mind, connected me to Alex's work and his reading because The Hum and The Shiver is very rooted in the Smokey Mountain hollers of East Tennessee. That's Appalachian territory (say it with me: Appa-latch-ann, NOT App-a-lay-chin).

The music, the story, fantasy and history all combine, as they do in this melting pot of Americana, to bring out the best (and sometimes the worst) in people. Pride, jealousy, rumors, deceit - all that small minded stuff gets mixed up with altruism and heartfelt loving-kindness to offer up our modern conundrum of capitalist status quo balanced out by egalitarian social infrastructures. I just hope this modern love of local continues to flourish and turn this "get big or get out" mindset into more of a "get real, get sustainable" way of doing business. As we approach the upcoming holiday season, we can all do our part to catalyze this paradigm shift: Buy Local!