I found the post interesting because the soundtrack does seem to represent a tipping point of sorts for old timey and bluegrass influenced artists and how those genres started to attract more fans in this decade. I don't agree with what he's saying about the influence on 9/11. Sure, it's part of the milieu. How couldn't it be? But I don't see it as a significant factor why people started listening to Americana music.
Instead, I'll use Occam's razor and propose that people were exposed to really good music that they didn't know much about or didn't have much of, and they got hooked like I did since I got back into Woody Guthrie, Johnny Cash, various blues musicians, and alt-country folks along with discovering artists like the Hackensaw Boys, Trampled by Turtles, Emma Hill, Old Crow Medicine Show, the Gourds, Neko Case, Railroad Earth, et al.
2 comments:
9/11? Please.
That movie brought mainstream success to many artists. No one outside of Nashville would ever have learned about Alison Krauss without that movie.
The fact is that if a group can harmonize well, they will sell lots of records, e.g. the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Eagles, etc.
Bluegrass highlights this harmony and musicianship. No wonder this movie appealed to the masses.
Yeh, the 9/11 tangent is a "stretcher," as Huck Finn would say.
Gillian Welch also got a lot of exposure from that soundtrack. It's disappointing that she hasn't made more albums over the past decade. I think she's only done three.
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