Cray Rail: Blues – Folk – Revolt

By Cray Rail

Posted on: 12/25

“Fire” by Jimi Hendrix. Bob Dylan’s “Only a Pawn in Their Game” and the immortal “Blowin’ in the Wind.” 

Freddie King’s “I’m Going Down.” “Fortunate Son,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. “I Ain’t Marching Anymore,” by Phil Ochs.

The combination of these songs are representative of the “Cray Rail aesthetic,” which I discussed in my inaugural blog post "What's In a Name?” In that first post I explained how the slogan Blues – Folk – Revolt is the essence of the Cray Rail aesthetic. It's a marriage of blues such as Albert King’s “Blues Power” and an uplifting, timely message, what Phil Ochs called “All the News That’s Fit to Sing.” You see, since I was a kid, I have always been inspired by these musical giants and every time I pick up the guitar to write a new song I keep these forefathers and foremothers like Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin in mind. These are the “influencers” I wanted to be like: to play a gut-bucket blues solo on guitar with matching soul inspired vocals and still be saying something relevant about what is going on in our world. 

“For What It’s Worth” (couldn’t help using the phrase) I like traditional folk songs like “Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” which is not political at all and sure, a lot (maybe even most) of my songs are also without any political content. Yet just as much as I like traditional folk music, I believe I excel at writing what Dylan called “finger pointing” songs. Nothing gets my blood moving more than an anthem and I’ve written quite a few of them. In some ways, all my songs are anthems. 

The Blues – Folk – Revolt

Broadly speaking, as the Cray Rail aesthetic is the theme of this post, the Blues – Folk – Revolt slogan is a kind of calling card for that aesthetic. Blues, folk and rock are musical idioms I feel most comfortable in, and which informed all (or most) of my favorite artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. These pre-existing musical forms, blues and folk, which existed long before I was born at least, are in my opinion what has driven the greatest innovation in rock and roll of any era. And when they come together, that’s my favorite kind of rock and roll, which is my way of saying I like rock with these particular roots. It’s nuclear powered music rooted in history and tradition.

When the “three chords and the truth” meet up with a plugged in and turned up Fender Telecaster with well-practiced blues chops something powerful happens. That’s the Blues – Folk – Revolt right there. Many musicians have taken advantage of this formula from Neil Young to Eric Clapton and even Bob Dylan himself, but I could add in a bunch of other influences like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, SoundGarden and so many more. Despite all the years since it started there’s something revolutionary, maybe slightly subversive about a plugged in amp and a person singing pointed lyrics and blasting out a blues riff or blistering solo.

Hope vs. Chaos

When we are living in a chaotic moment, it often seems (correctly or not) as if there was a more stable time in the past. In that past, there were people who were conscious of right and wrong and had the bravery to put that reality into their song lyrics. I believe we need a lot more of that in today’s world, in fact we need to look for and appreciate artists who do this work. Hopefully you feel this way too and will support my work. I’ve always appreciated older artists’ recordings for what they did right. Today I will try to carry on the tradition.

Speaking of chaotic moments, it’s been chaotic for a minute now, and I think it was just as hectic for my heroes (like Sam Cooke, Billie Holiday or Nina Simone) as our era is for us. Sometimes history has a way of showing up daily, and in other eras it crawls by. Music is the emotional zeitgeist of a given era. The troubadours, the spokespeople, those who write the soundtracks of our lives are really alive, long after they die, because their music lives on when we listen to their work. So as I sing for today I also sing for a better tomorrow because I’m alive NOW and it’s rough out here for a lot of people. Even if few hear me now the fact is, at some point someone will pick it up in the future and I’m planning on sticking around long enough to experience that.

These song writers, singers, guitar players and artists are what John Lennon called “working class heroes.” As a kid I didn’t have enough temerity to think I could be that, but I tried anyway. That’s why I wrote “Nobody Knows” and “Say What You Feel.” But I never saw myself being Lennon, that would be ridiculous. My reverence for his work was simple – I would try to do something similar to what he did that would come out in a different way because I’m me, living in a different historical moment. I strive to write songs that do multiple things, entertain, inform and inspire, all while emphasizing blues, folk and rock traditions. Musical intensity, strong lyrics and staying true to my musical instincts with raw bluesy guitar licks are all combined in the Cray Rail, Blues – Folk – Revolt aesthetic. To me it encapsulates a basic understanding of the world from the point of view of the majority of humanity.

It’s All About Conditions

Where are the promises of democracy and modernism? What are living conditions like for the average American? Have they gotten better or worse? Why does there always have to be a war, somewhere, for our country to go and fight, or worse pay someone else to fight? Why does American capitalism preserve racially and economically segregated ghettos? These questions can easily be expanded to encompass conditions in those countries who have fallen under the domination of our country, which are far too numerous to mention.

The great Howlin’ Wolf, in an interview with Chris Strachwitz in 1967 once said: 

“The people all about the blues. The blues is nothing but, if you’re dissatisfied and you don’t have the things you want and have no money, no place to stay, and you’re loafing and going from place to place. You’re looking for something and you don’t know what it is until you find it, you know? Conditions. I see a lot of people walking the road, they got conditions. White or Negro, they got conditions. See, that’s what the blues come from.”

Source: https://arhoolie.org/howlin-wolf-interview-2/

In other words, there hasn’t been any song of any worth that wasn’t about what people go through every day, even if it’s their love affairs, a very safe song topic choice. Their quality of life, socioeconomic conditions, emotional state – all of these things are the fodder of not just the blues, folk and traditional rock artists, – but of almost every artist. It doesn’t matter if the song is about a political issue, a social issue, or a personal issue. All of them end up being about the same thing anyway. Conditions.

These are the questions that I’ve been singing about in my songs and want to continue to write about. There is of course a downside. People will cast you as “just a political singer/songwriter” but I have surely written my share of “pop-like” love songs and performed examples of these from other artists (covers). Even those songs describe “conditions.”

I could deliver a list of covers I’ve recorded that perhaps you wouldn’t expect from a guy like me, maybe that’ll be a future post. Either way, I’ll continue to write and sing songs in the vein of the Blues – Folk – Revolt. Most of us live our lives day to day and I’m no different, artist or not. Music informs and eases the pain, and in many ways it becomes “the soundtrack of our lives” as we live out our own movie both tragic and comic.

But why doesn’t great music with strong instrumental and vocal performances along with fantastic progressive lyrics make it in today’s world? There are a number of factors to consider with this question. 

If answering a question with a question is not a good rhetorical trick, I’ll do it anyway. In short, “cui bono” or who benefits from it? Who benefits from the way things are now and would not like to see any changes whatsoever? 

Probably if you are reading this far by now you will likely have a semblance of an answer. It is in the interest of our corporate overlords to maintain the status quo and not allow possibly threatening messages to move around, or if they do allow it, they aren’t likely to give it any help. That is, until it’s profitable, or safely in “the past.”

“Why Garbage Music Selling a Lot?”

I was reading this piece from Huffpost recently by indie rapper and author Homeboy Sandman. In it Sandman discusses why hip hop with negative lyrical content gets promoted so heavily. Or as Styles P. rapped twenty years ago on Jadakiss’ remix for his controversial hit protest song “Why” – “Why garbage music selling a lot?” Sandman responds this way: “To the casual listener (or the avid listener obsessed with what is most popular), hip hop has become pretty much devoid of topical diversity. Moreso than ever the genre is defined not by sound or musical composition, but by the actual content being covered.”

Sandman has a point with regard to Hip Hop that is also true of other popular genres as well. 

As Kurt Vonnegut Jr. once wrote (by way of introducing Breakfast of Champions: “Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not. So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things. What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance. And all music is.”

I disagree that all music is prima facie sacred, obviously. 

There’s a song from the 1960s that I love and hate at the same time. Its lyrics are: “Yummy yummy yummy, I got love in my tummy" by The Ohio Express. You can take that any way you want I suppose, and it’s anything but sacred. What is “bad” or “good” about it? Few would compare it to A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, but strangely, if Vonnegut is to be given credit for the essence of his remark, all humans that engage in the creative musical act (or literary, or commemorating big events) touch on some kind of spiritual power, even if they aren’t consciously evoking it like Coltrane did.

Yes all music is sacred but protest music has the ability, like a sort of secular religion, to stir the heart towards a “sacred cause.”

All the great movement songs of the world have done this. 

In the words of the great Curtis Mayfield while he was with the Impressions in 1969:

People must prove to the people

A better day is comin'

For you and for me

With just a little bit more education

And love for our nation

Would make a better society.

Here here, Curtis, and here’s to the Blues – Folk – Revolt.

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Cray

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