The Top 10 Greatest Ever Americana Artists: Jonathan Aird

So, we get to this point again – and like most of the contributors so far there’s the temptation to explain the thought process behind this list. I’m going to try and avoid that too much – other than to say “why do we do this to ourselves?” and to note that this list will have a lot of the obvious names missing as I’ve tried to stick to choices that represent music that has existed more or less since the terms alt-Country and americana came in to use otherwise this would just be a re-run of the previous ways of terming this question. So, no Dylan, no Byrds, no Grateful Dead, no Long Ryders.  And no Hank Williams.

And it turns out that there aren’t that many singer-songwriters or folky musicians either, and that also seems about right.  I’m convinced that a lot of great singer-songwriters belong in this billowing tent we call americana, but paradoxically they don’t seem to define the sound by themselves.  Who knows, maybe we’ll do “The Top 10 singer-songwriters (who aren’t Bob Dylan)” at some point in the future.  So without further ado…

Number 10: Phosphorescent

Matthew Houck is the prince of despair – his often funky songs delve deep into a world of sorrow of darkness.  There’s a relentless to his embracing of the world-weary, the worn out and the wasted – when he’s lustful he’s also not holding back.  An artist of extremes whose sound surely pervades that of many bands who have followed in his footsteps.  And not for the last time – great live.

Number 9: Mary Gauthier

Mary Gauthier is one of the strongest modern songwriting voices – her topics range widely and she is fearless in not shying away from the difficult, the complex, and the personal.  And boy can she write, never afraid of a co-write either, and her choice of collaborators in songwriting shows both excellent taste and a willingness to acknowledge that two can tease something even more special out of a song.  Her ‘Rifles & Rosary Beads‘ is a shining light of that approach – with songs that arose from the Songwriting with Soliders program.   Her most recent release ‘Dark Enough to See the Stars’ is a poignant contemplation of facets of love and loss.  Oh, and what a great voice.

Number 8: The Handsome Family

Americana can be weird sometimes, and The Handsome Family (Brett and Rennie Sparks) have done more than anyone to carve out a strangely compelling Gothic otherworld that finds the eerie and the eldritch in the simplest of things – the natural world from bugs and birds upwards, neon lights, lonesome motels (of course) and much more.  And they’ve done that for over two decades and never made a bad album.  That’s a phenomenal achievement.

Number 7: Drive By Truckers / Jason Isbell

Rewriting the narrative of southern rock across albums that are steadily more and more strident in their political nature, Drive By Truckers have become a leading band of note within americana.  And Jason Isbell – well recall that in their song (read the lyrics here) explaining americana at the 2018 Americana Music Awards & Honors show in Nashville the Milk Carton Kids (who should be on this list in their own right) sang “Don’t need to see the envelope Isbell won it”.  As someone else used to say – “Nuff said! Excelsior!”

Number 6: Josh Ritter

A mercurial singer-songwriter, who can also summon up a killer band.  If there’s a new Dylan (always a  curse to be so nominated of course) then it’s Josh Ritter – he’s smart, lustful, playful and cryptic.  Sensational live, and another whose album history is spotless – nothing can be found that even the harshest could give less than 6 or 7 out of 10.

Number 5: Uncle Tupelo / Son Volt / Jay Farrar

The band that defined the alt-country of the nineties and spawned a separate band in Son Volt who could carry on that rocking with a country influence tradition and also become modern-day Woody Guthries.  We wouldn’t be here without them.

Number 4: The Sadies

Since I’d ruled out bands like The Long Ryders I did want to include someone who took the rock – and country-rock – of The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield and imbued it with a punk passion.   They’ve recorded album after album of hugely distinctive americana, you know it’s The Sadies from the first notes.  A band full of passion for their music and relentless in their live performances.

Number 3: The Decemberists

The indie-folk band to outdo them all, a Portland band in love with the English folk sound, who famously offered to be Olivia Chaney’s Albion Country Dance Band as part of the Offa Rex super-grouping.  Along the way they’ve dallied with full-blown prog-folk concept albums, dabbled with synth-driven songs, and yet have always retained their own identity intact.  And, quite importantly, they are a wonderful live band.

Number 2: The Felice Brothers

And I haven’t listed out all the solo recordings or the much missed The Duke and The King, but taken as a whole The Felice Brothers pulled off the remarkable feat of recording music that definitely threw back to the likes of The Band and Dylan in his John Wesley Harding stance but at the same time imbued their music with a modern sensibility.  Rough and tumbling lives that skirt alongside an outside the law existence without really glamourising it – things go so terribly wrong so often, nobody would want that for themselves.

Number 1: Richmond Fontaine / The Delines

I could have just said Willy Vlautin but that would be rather disrespectful to his bandmates in both bands, and in particular to Amy Boone who is the predominant voice of The Delines.  Richmond Fontaine documented the lives of the marginalised in American society, often featuring men desperate to outrun themselves and change their circumstances.  Conversely in The Delines most often we find women hanging on in desperate situations – wanting to run, sometimes running, but mostly trying to keep everything together, patched up and not bleeding out too much.  Hard songs to listen to, but so beautifully written and sung.