Elementary, My Dear Aaron Watson

Or how I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Album

Singles drive the music industry. Since the beginning of recorded music being commercialized and sold, singles have driven buyer enthusiasm. Filler songs would be packaged alongside the most recent hit single on an LP. It’s part of the reason that Hank Williams or nearly any early country music star don’t have signature albums. Music releases were intentionally watered down to maximize single driven sales. Record labels specifically didn’t put more then one top charting single on a given record because they wanted to maximize sales.

The idea of a singular album existing as an independent artistic concept is often attributed to Frank Sinatra and his classic 1955 album, In The Wee Small Hours. If you haven’t chanced upon it yet, rectify that at the earliest chance possible. It is a concept album of loss and grief. One of Frank’s best.

Although initially pioneered in the pop space, the concept album didn’t take off into the mainstream until rock took over the zeitgeist. The idea of the album was treated by the more sophisticated of rockers with a respect that previous genres hadn’t accorded it. It became elevated to the ultimate musical art form. Singles still mattered, but to fans, the album was supreme. Having a deep knowledge of album cuts was a prerequisite to be a genuine fan of an artist. Singles were for the casuals.

Country continued apace with its single driven mentality for many years afterwards. Albums had a couple hit singles on them, maybe one per side and the rest was filled with an assortment of filler tracks ruminating vaguely on love found or love lost and a host of other topics. The idea of an album dedicated to a specific theme with each song playing a uniquely valuable role in establishing the tenor and tone of the project wasn’t really done. At best, compilations of loose and thematically similar material were assembled and released. Commercial objectives reigned supreme. It wasn’t until the mid-1970’s that Nashville started begrudgingly embracing the album as an artistic endeavor in and of itself.

Even though we’ve moved away from constrained physical media, the technologies by which we consume music have again pushed us towards single based listening. Even before streaming was the behemoth it is now, iTunes, the dominant music seller of the 2000’s, allowed you to buy individual singles. If you had twenty dollars you got as a birthday gift, either you could buy two albums- a big gamble as you had no way of knowing it would be a good investment- or you could buy 20 singles of all your favorite popular tunes. It was a simple calculation.

The excess access of streaming provided us with even more granular single based listening. Even nowadays, the single reigns supreme. With the advent of playlist based listening, albums are simply a convenient digital repository of songs to be individually enjoyed and savored however one wishes. Select the three favorites on the album, add to the My Favorites list, and never think about the remainder of the album again. In fact, it is arguably even more single focused now. Previously, there was at least a good reason to buy whole albums. The thrill of the unknown and potential for a big payoff with some unsung but excellent album cuts made buying and consuming a fresh new album an experience. In contrast to streaming, you can easily preview the album and suss out what is to your taste and then individually select those songs as your own personal playlisted singles.

The effects of this are more subtle then simply an embracing of shorter attention span affected listening habits. It actually changes the way we personally evaluate art. Gone from the holistic standards used for the decades since Ol’ Blue Eyes had his heart crushed in a dead end relationship and pressed those emotions into vinyl for the masses to hear and forwards towards a simplistic additive view. According to this situational construct, a “good album” is simply one that has the most “good songs” on it.

To bust out of a preconceived paradigm isn’t easy. Humans tend to find a lane and stick to it. Although that may be a safe way to navigate a busy turnpike, when it comes to the joy of artistic discovery, rigidly defining oneself to only one perspective on music can be limiting and hamper the total enjoyment. To clarify, this is not the same idea as having a defined taste. One can be an enthusiast of 17th century Norwegian watercolor portraits because they weren’t exposed to any other type of paintings. They also can become a fan of that style because of prior exposure to other styles and eras of art and have honed in on this style as best tickling the base yet often sophisticated emotional strings of the id.

To break out of the lane often requires a drastic moment. A transcendent moment that opens the gates and reveals the next level in the metaphorical Super Mario Bros. game of life.

For a generation raised on the fast paced rat race of mass content creation, a whole album with its multi-faceted reflections and complex emotional vicissitudes can actually be a refreshing change. Being respected by the art instead of being fed lowest common denominator “bangers” can be exhilarating and liberating. Of course, many are quite happy with the current manner they absorb music and that’s perfectly fine. For those who take the step up to an album focused listening style, usually there is a moment they can pinpoint that jostled their paradigm. Here is mine.

Aaron Watson has been a respected and outspoken leader of the Texas country scene for a long time now. His music embodies the modern Texas sound to a T. He emerged on the scene not long after Pat Green went to Nashville. Alongside artists such as Randy Rogers, Wade Bowen, and Cody Johnson, Watson became a defining presence in 21st century Texas country music.

In 2019, he released Red Bandana. It was a colossal effort, twenty songs long. I was an established fan of country music for a good few years by that point, but I was still mostly listening to curated playlists and singles. I recently discovered Grady Smith’s YouTube channel, then much smaller. His single reactions and comparisons were initially what drew me to the channel. Grady had an enthusiasm about albums that was visceral. There was a sense of more that Grady brought out in his discussions about albums that attracted me to the idea. I never really tried out an album in the holistic sense until I saw his review of Red Bandana. Sure, I had heard albums before, but I was looking at them through the simplistic additive lens.

In Grady’s video review of Red Bandana, he didn’t merely cover the songs, he tied together the disparate songs into a couple of overarching themes that ran through the project. His thoughts were straightforward and on point. Red Bandana is a gorgeous mess of a record. The sincerity of Watson shines through. The main theme of this record, proclaimed Smith (a paraphrase), is that Aaron Watson is a flawed man who tries hard. Songs like Trying Like the Devil or Old Friend discuss this explicitly, but the undertones of this character trait and the value that Watson attributes to it ring clear and true.

After seeing the video I was intrigued. The idea of assorted threads being easily tied together into overarching grandiose album length statements was novel to me. The descriptors and ideas explained by Smith as fundamental precepts of the project were ideas that I deeply related to, but hadn’t ever experienced more then a three or four minute song devoted to these ideas. I was excited to dive into this brave new world.

I queued up the album on Spotify. As soon as I heard the tour de force of the first three tracks’ sequencing, I was hooked. The stark openness of Ghost of Guy Clark smoothly flows into the majestic grandeur of El Comienzo del Viaje which crests and then explodes into the relentless kick drum driven energy of Dark Horse. It was an experience I had never had before. Similar to how a sommelier can teach you to taste the subtle flavors hidden in a bottle of wine, the introduction to the project from Mr. Grady Smith allowed me to open up the album and experience it not as a selection of fun and enjoyable songs, but instead as the messily gorgeous collection of thematic content that tapped deep into the psyche of humanity. This was a first for me and there was no going back after I had tasted these waters. It didn’t hurt that the album is chock full of top-notch instrumentation, solid writing and excellent delivery and vocals by the always dependable Aaron Watson. As singles that appear magically in algorithm driven playlists, they would all have been enjoyed by 2018 me, but the totality as an album added up to well more then the sum of the parts. Cliché but undeniably true. Looking back, I credit this album as being the one that entered me into the wondrously expansive world of the album.

With the benefit of experience, I fully admit that the album is flawed. It is far too long with way too many ideas tossed about to be a coherent singular thematic statement like the finest of albums are. Nonetheless, it has a particular sense about it that even with years of album listening under my belt now, remains appealing and attractive to me. Humans are complicated beings. We have conflicting thoughts and actions and our thinking conventions aren’t nearly as neat and clean as we like to pretend they are. Red Bandana doesn’t shy away from that reality. It embraces it wholly and succeeds in portraying it honestly to a remarkable degree. That is why I think it stood out to me and was the catalyst for me falling in love with the wonderful art form of The Album.

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Joe

My older artist listening continues apace. In March, I delved into some Waylon and Lefty Frizzell classics. In April, I have begun to listen to Glen Campbell and Buck Owens. I'm particularly excited about Buck Owens. Such a key historical figure. If anything sticks out to me, I may bring it up in an upcoming edition of the Burd Bites. Or not. Idk. This whole blogging hobby is much less organized then it may look like.