The only thing I see wrong here is older generations giving up hope on younger generations. Then again, that's nothing new. Perhaps your grandfolks thought you were going to ruin the world, too, just as their grandfolks lamented the "golden days are gone" and how it was all "going downhill from there."
Many people have prophesized the end of the world. So far, none of them have been correct. I'm betting they won't be, at least not in my lifetime.
Just because the "Country music" that you knew and loved does not draw in droves of audiences anymore does not mean there aren't people who will be there to appreciate it after its heyday. I put my experiences as a case in point. Charlie Vaughn kindly invited me to come out and hear the Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame jams this past year. I can count the number of songs that were played that I knew on the fingers of one hand. At the same time, it was great to hear them played, especially live.
There were two other young men about my age, one who sang on the stand there, and another who I believe did a set with a group in the bluegrass room that I missed. There was also a young lady there who I don't even believe was in high school yet, who played two numbers on fiddle with the guys in the country jam room. It's because these guys are out there still playing the music they love that makes it possible for it to be passed down the generations. I can guarantee you that it won't ever be played like it was "back then," but as long as it's taught, you can be rest assured that someone, somewhere, is still playing it.
When the "Fusion Jazz" movement arose, the older players and critics cried foul and said that it would be the death of jazz. Well, by that point, the audiences for bebop groups had thinned out, yet the fusion jazz audiences began to build. And it was through the fusion jazz that what came before was connected to present. Some of those people in the audience even went so far as to explore "what came before the present; what influenced the present," and "re-discovered" for themselves the treasures of the past: the John Coltranes, the Dave Brubecks, the Thelonius Monks, the Barney Kessels, heck, maybe even going back to the Duke Ellingtons.
Some of those audience members are musicians who will start playing the old time music to replicate it. One could maybe find it difficult to believe, but there are still some bands out there, such as the Jim Cullum jazz band, that play Dixieland Jazz, a form that came several generations before fusion jazz, and they still have audiences. The audiences are, of course, small, and oftentimes enjoy the music as a novelty, but maybe a young musician in the Jim Cullum jazz band audience will go on to continue keeping Dixieland Jazz alive in its true form. Likewise, yesterday I talked to a tenor saxophonist who plays Parker and Getz tunes at various gigs here in Athens, who is a fine fellow and player. Jazz did not die.
More often, though, musicians, will assimilate the sounds of the past, absorb them, and combine them with the sounds that come from their own explorations and experiences, to craft something that feels personally "theirs".
I think every generation of music depends on this second process. Every new "style" or "genre" of music is the product of two things: the music that came before it, combined with the new generation's struggle for a unique identity.
This means that earlier generations of music continue to live on through the current generations. There is still Hank Williams, Sr. in Montgomery Gentry, even if you don't think you can hear it because of all the other influences that factored into their sound. Each generation reinvents the wheel, and even though it looks like a square, it's still a wheel at the core.
Perhaps the music
business has been perverted by people in suits who don't care for the music that they seek to make their fortunes from. That is something I can neither confirm nor deny. Yet, even if industry moguls are leading audiences to bad water, you can't deny that the majority is still drinking. It is your responsibility as a musician to play what you find as your truth with integrity and conviction, and lead your audiences to good water. If things work in your favor and they drink, congratulations, but if not, you will not feel downtrodden because you know you've been doing your best. Either way, you can not stop playing with integrity and conviction, and you can not give up faith, or you've already failed what it is you set out to do, and you become part of your own problem.
So keep playing, and trust future generations to do well.
Thank you for attention and patience. I will return it.
Chris<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Chris Lasher on 11 January 2004 at 11:39 AM.]</p></FONT><FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Chris Lasher on 11 January 2004 at 11:43 AM.]</p></FONT><FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Chris Lasher on 11 January 2004 at 11:48 AM.]</p></FONT>
I recall a conversation I had with Leon McAuliffe back in 1975. I was on Alvin Crow's band and we were doing a big WS show with the TX Playboys. I told Leon I thought it was great that Western Swing was making a comeback. He said "yeah Herb, it's wonderful. It's too bad I'm too old to enjoy it."
<FONT SIZE=1 COLOR="#8e236b"><p align=CENTER>[This message was edited by Chris Lasher on 11 January 2004 at 01:01 PM.]</p></FONT>