Musical Gambling

On a music message board I post on, someone started a great thread asking people to recount some musical gambles... you know just taking a chance on an album or a show ... that have been paydirt. Here are a couple of my best gambles:

One of my biggest gambles was when I was joining Columbia House back in the late 90s. I was running out of CDs that I knew I wanted and that they had available, so I remember this rocking chick who I had seen a few months before late at night on VH1 playing this awesome tune called "Changed the Locks." Boy oh boy, who was this whiskey-soaked amalgam of guts, grit, country, rock, blues, and SOUL--you can't forget the soul. And what a tune! So, because I needed to fill out my X amount of CDs for a penny quota that joining Columbia House offers, I figured, hmmmm, I'll check out what this album "Car Wheels on a gravel Road," by this darkened angel, Lucinda Williams, sounds like.

So the free CDs show up and the "Car Wheels" sounds like heaven to me. I immediately (and probably since then) have listened to Lucinda's Car Wheels CD more than all of the others I got combined. I might have even listened more to it in the ensuing couple of days than I ever listened to the others--and bear in mind there were a few classics in that batch that I love and listen to regularly (Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" comes to mind).

Of course, my college roomates at the time, who came from much more urban backgrounds, both personally and musically...well, they just **sarcasm** loooovvvved the nasally waltz "Concrete and Barbed Wire," a tune that tells the tale of a heartbroken lover longing for her man who is stuck on a state-sanctioned vacation (aka doing hard time).

Funny enough, I never knew just how much this gamble would pay off. A few years later, in New York, I answered an online ad to play bass in a band that played a gaggle of tunes off of this album in particular. And, to put a long story short, I never would have met my soon-to-be bride if I hadn't taken that gamble and hadn't answered that ad. She was the singer of the band I would soon join.

Speaking of my special ladyfriend, the next great gamble was all her doing:

Marnie had won some free tickets to see a Patterson Hood solo show a few years back. Now, I had read about The Drive-By Truckers and even had a friend or two tell me that I'd really like them...but I'd never had the opportunity to sample any of their stuff.

I went to the show with a belly full of apprehension and doubt. I just figured it'd be another enjoyable singer/songwriter type who was listenable but just didn't grab ahold of me enough to want to listen to him over and over... and the first few acts of that night fit this description to a T.

Then Patterson, EZ B (the DBT's drummer), and John Neff (longtime cohort and sometime pedal steel player for DBT) came out, and the music and stories they spun that night completely put my entire universe aflutter. Where has this music been all my life?, I asked myself repeatedly in ecstatic, dizzying reverie. That night was one of the best live-music nights of my life--this music is the perfect combination of my gritty hick underbelly and my more literary pursuits (it was the epitome of the "Hick Savant" moniker I proudly embrace). I never realized that these sort of yarns could be spun into song... I could relate to the characters in these songs; heck, I grew up around some of these types of hard-luck and Hard-scrabble characters. It reminded me of why I love all music so much. It made me want to play and write more music. It made me feel like, "damn, it IS great to be alive!"

On the cab ride home that night I felt like I was on happy pills, jumping from cloud nine to cloud 10 and beyond. The only feeling I could equate it to is those first few moments when you've realized that you have, indeed, fallen in love. You know, where all colors are brighter, the air sweeter, the birds more musical, and everything just seems like a work of beauty... even the cold, late-night desolation of the parts of NYC through which our cab glided. As our cab crossed the East River, via the Williamsburg Bridge, the light-speckled city was the most beautiful place on planet Earth.

So, the next day, as soon as I could (aka, I took a field trip from work to the record store...after all, it was Urgent!), I went out and bought "Decoration Day" and "Southern Rock Opera," the two most-recent albums from The Drive-By Truckers (and I had picked up Patterson Hood's solo album, "Killers and Stars," the night at the show) and just dug in. Deep.

Since that fine fine evening, not only have The Drive-By Truckers remained my favorite band, but I have also preached the gospel of them to anyone who will listen.

... and don't get me started on the face-blistering Rawkness that is the live DBT experience... that's for another time.