Greatest AMERICANA Albums EVER!
What is ‘Americana’? Is it country music? Country peppered with a little rock music? Rock of the soft or harder variety?
It’s kind of hard to describe, but relatively easy to recognise when you hear it. It’s like countryified, rocked-up folk music, in intention if not in sound. Some Americana albums are more or less acoustic folk, and others are like bar-room rock, but they all hold a similar spirit.
Lyrically, there’s a realism and a strong narrative element, so there’s no Led Zep-style singing about Lord of the Rings, for example. Musically, there’s a lot of tradition in there from folk and country: the American popular musical styles of the last century and a bit, with certain other sounds added in for flavour over the years.
Actually, it’s easier to just point to a selection of records than it is to verbalise an explanation. Americana will always be changing, but the USA as a sort of mythos will always be front and centre in the music. Today, I aim to show you how many disparate artists can call upon that mythos to supply them with material for wonderful music, all of which can be faithfully described as ‘Americana’.
Are you ready to take a ride with me into the land of Americana? Well, okay then!
The Greatest Americana Albums at a Glance
Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Townes Van Zandt - Live at the Old Quarter
The Band - Music from Big Pink
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Whiskeytown - Stranger's Almanac
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
Johnny Cash - American Recordings
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson
Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
"I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard"
Timelessly stylish, endlessly influential and continuously resonant. That’s what I’d call this masterful release from Dylan. In this, his second album, Bob brought perhaps his strongest selection of songs, including Blowin’ In the Wind, Girl from North Country, Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright and A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. His peers instantly began looking up to him, but he was already planning to go in directions that nobody would expect.
Townes Van Zandt - Live at the Old Quarter
The Old Quarter was in Houston, Texas, and this double album preserves Van Zandt at his potent solo best. Indeed, it’s just him and an acoustic guitar, and the 27 songs that make up this album amply display his craft.
Back in 1977, country artists like him had a ‘sound’ somewhat put upon them by management and label interests. This record is a real response/antidote to that usual polish and sheen of Nashville. Van Zandt’s personality continually shines though in comedic asides and improvised banter. It’s very much a raw, live performance and that’s what people find so valuable about the album.
It’s a great place to start if you’re not familiar with his work, and some fans even say that this is his greatest album, live or otherwise.
The Band - Music from Big Pink
Are The Band actually the quintessential Americana band? They were certainly ahead of their time with their multi-genre gumbo of sounds!
The Band were originally a backing band for singer Ronnie Hawkins, and then for Bob Dylan during his infamous ‘Judas’ electric phase. Branching out on their own, they set up in the basement of a big pink house (hence the album title) in Woodstock, New York to write some original material. The resulting record was one of the most original and influential ‘roots’ albums ever, and one that made them a national treasure. For 1968, the blend of Rock, soul, country, folk, jazz and blues was practically unheard of, with Roger Waters even calling it the “second most influential record in the history of rock and roll” after Sgt Pepper’s.
Probably time to give it a listen, if you haven’t yet! And yes, I know they were mostly Canadian, but it’s still Americana!
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
Lucinda Williams is one of the real touchstones for Americana music. She’s constantly cited as an influence on generation after generation of artists, whilst never losing the potency of her own increasingly excellent body of work.
This fifth album saw Wiliams collaborating with Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle, confirming her status as a prominent alt-country force. The song Can’t Let Go became something of a calling card for her, and the album remains her best-selling.
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
Better known at the time for his bombastic epics, Nebraska was something of a surprise to fans of The Boss. Fully acoustic, sans band and lacking in even pro-level recording quality, Nebraska sounded like some obscure field recording from the past. In reality, the album is mainly cleaned up home demos that Bruce worked on away from the pressures of the studio and the E-Street band.
The results are immediately obvious: it’s a different universe to Born to Run, filled with quiet, haunted songs that carry only the barest of musical decoration. The stories inside the songs include subject matter such as local cops, doomed newlyweds (of course) and infamous serial killer Charles Starkweather. It may have bemused his audience at the time, but it paved a new path for him and everybody else.
Jason Isbell - Southeastern
After getting clean (via an intervention from his wife, friends and former bandmates), ex-Drive By Trucker Jason Isbell knuckled down to confront his demons via song. The result was the album that effectively made his career, filled with familiar yet fresh takes on the timeless tales of loneliness, regret and heartbreak.
Initial album producer Ryan Adams backed out of the job after hearing initial recordings. According to Isbell, it was out of intimidation rather than disappointment. Whether that’s true or hubris, it does allude to the power of the art contained within.
Whiskeytown - Stranger's Almanac
Talking of Ryan Adams, before he was a solo artist (and long before his controversial behaviour), he was best known as part of Whiskeytown. Whiskeytown may not be a household name, but they were very influential in the Asheton, NC underground scene and beyond. Their sound became the template for a myriad of alternative country bands, and whilst Adams saw greater fame (and infamy) on his own terms, maybe would say that his best work was on 1997’s Stranger’s Almanac.
Steve Earle - Train a Comin'
Musician, writer and actor Steve Earle is a perfect example of an Americana artist who lives his work, and writes his life. A recovering addict, Earle has earned respect and admiration for his honest songwriting and drawn-from-real-life observations.
He has a number of great albums out there including Guitar Town and Copperhead Road, but possibly his most ‘Americana’ release is Train a Comin’, from 1995. This was Earle’s fifth album and his first since managing to get free from addiction. Many of the songs are actually from an earlier period in his life, and the recordings included lots of Bluegrass influences. Train a Comin’ is perhaps his most folky album overall, but his entire back catalogue can be described as superlative Americana.
John Prine - John Prine
Your favourite artist’s favourite artist. Lauded by Amanda Shires, Jason Isbell and a great many more, John Prine is someone you graduate to when the time is right. Again, simple acoustic songs matched by lyrical depth and narrative, Prine’s fingerprints are all over modern Americana.
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People
R.E.M.? Americana? Most definitely. Considering that their main sound is one of Southern Post Punk, their hugest-selling period was actually based around folky, countryesque and bluegrass music. Losing My Religion - their enormo-hit from Out of Time - was of course written on a mandolin, but they didn’t stop there.
Automatic for the People has the mandolin returning on Man on the Moon (there is actually mandolin on loads of R.E.M. songs), bouzouki on Monty Got a Raw Deal and dulcimer on Try Not to Breathe, in addition to acoustic and electric guitar. These instruments provided a particularly iconoclastic sound for the grungy times they appeared in, but the songs themselves echoes the prophetic, fatalistic themes of all of the best Americana. Also, because these records were huge sellers, they got these folkier sounds into the ears of a huge number of listeners.
Tyler Childers - Purgatory
Purgatory is the second record from Tyler Childers, and brings together a wide variety of Americana influences. Indeed, there’s Appalachian music here, bluegrass, traditional folk and more, all delivered with a distinctly authentic sound and feel.
The songs themselves tell stories of blue collar hardship, and of rural life. It’s definitely a modern document of some age-old human conditions, and serves to remind the world just how timeless these types of music can be.
Johnny Cash - American Recordings
Whilst it’s hardly fair to reduce Johnny’s Cash's entire life’s work into his last few albums, these Rick Rubin-guided records were the ones that have come to define the sound and production of modern Americana. We’ll take it as a given that Cash’s writing and performances are of staggering achievement, not to mention influence. What is revealed in the American Recordings albums was how to reposition that titanic voice, and how to frame his lyrical portraits in a way that was both sympathetic and steely; contemporary and timeless.
The world paid attention, and countless records since have used these albums as a blueprint.
Neil Young - Harvest Moon
The ‘Godfather of Grunge’ could just as easily be crowned the Godfather of Americana. Truly, Neil Young was blending rootsy rock, country and folk way back in the early 70s. Whilst his pals in The Eagles bought yet more swimming pools and sports cars, Young kept his head down and innovated again and again.
Harvest Moon is actually from a later period, but it’s a direct nod back to his Harvest and After the Goldrush period, where it seemed like he could sneeze out masterpieces.
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
In a career of excellent music, Emmylou Harris’ 1995 album Wrecking Ball is particularly special. Mostly comprised of carefully selected cover songs, it’s the execution of the songs that mark this record out as a landmark.
This album - produced by U2 collaborator Daniel Lanois (who also performed a number of instruments) - re-introduced Harris to the world in a new context, with a new sound that was simultaneously contemporary and tastefully timeless. On this record, she sings songs by Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and Harris herself. The cumulative effect of this album is quietly mesmerising, and very memorable.
Kris Kristofferson - Kristofferson
We all know Kris Kristofferson as a legendary singer and actor. What maybe isn’t so obvious to the casual music fan is how instrumental he was in defining ‘outlaw country’, a legitimate alternative to the polished sound of 70s Nashville country.
Kristofferson’s badass credentials only increase the more you learn about him. He wrote the songs that made up his debut album Kristofferson whilst working as a helicopter pilot. Shopping his tunes around (and working as a janitor at Columbia records), he met and convinced Johnny Cash to get involved, who then championed Kris. This was all after he’d already served in the military, taught at a training academy and then left to follow his musical dreams.
The songs on his debut spoke to the human condition like all great country music: freedom, failure, loss and passion. His idiosyncratic voice was the key to why this record is as memorable as it is: it’s rough, expressive and sometimes a little pitchy, in other words, far from the manicured Nashville sound. It was a human voice, and it resonated far and wide.
Americana - So Much Great Music
There are too many great records to fit into today’s blog. It’s especially difficult when I’m talking about a genre that really isn’t a genre at all! Americana is more a loose descriptor of an aesthetic - American music that is based around folk styles and filtered through country and other rootsy variations. We can argue the finer points of it, but that’s the nutshell, and there have been so many worthy records over the last half century that could easily fit the Americana tag.
In the spirit of inclusion, here’s a list of honourable mentions, for those records that definitely deserve to be listed alongside those already featured:
- James McMurtry - Complicated Game
- Tom Petty - Wildflowers
- Brandi Carlisle - The Story
- Son Volt - Trace
- Tony Rice - Church Street Blues
- Turnpike Troubadours - Goodbye Normal Street
- John Moreland - In the Throes
- Justin Townes Earle - Harlem River Blues
- Gillian Welch - Time (The Revelator)
- Ian Noe - Between the Country
- Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
There’s certainly more where those all came from. It’s a never-ending list of great music, so you’d best get started working your way through these! Enjoy.
