Have you noticed the wide array of headgear we bring you enshrined in video on these pages? Americana music might single-handedly bring back the chapeau, which had been all but abandoned as a must-wear since men came back from World War II. And the hats are not monochromatic, either. There are chapeaus of every description: fedoras, baseball caps with the perfect bend to the brim, cultivated in fraternities. There are berets and toques and headwraps; snoods, military issue and fur trappers with the great ears, and cowboys hats, of course! You know, Music Fog has been looking for a few good sponsors, but we haven't knocked on any hat purveyors' doors...yet! Here is a good one!
Photo Credit: John MeloyKasey Anderson wears hats quite well, thank you very much! He has been spotted in Pull-ons, Maos, and Pork Pies, but the Newsboy look might just be his favorite. He has been on tour all summer, doing gigs with Steve Earle, Peter Case, Joe Pug, and a bunch of other luminaries. He and the band just wrapped tracking a new record for a later release. Kasey says, "I wanted to make a record that sounded like a band. So I wrote songs with a band in mind. We'd get a take we liked and used it. No autotune, no "nudging" stuff in ProTools, none of that. People have become so careful and mechanical in the way they make records, and I really don't have any interest in any of that. Thematically, it's a record about trying to figure out how to live in a world that's collapsing, how to reconcile that and what we can do about it. It's not a political record - it's a record about finding out who and what you can depend on when things get as dark and horrifying and infuriating as they are right now - what to do with that fear and rage, how to use it." He continues, "I played a gig in Bellingham, Washington once and, afterwards, a guy came up to me and said, 'You remind me so much of Woody Guthrie.' I was so taken aback. I'm not sure there's a bigger compliment you can pay somebody who stands up there with an acoustic guitar and sings. We all owe something to Woody. I told the guy as much, explained that 'I Ain't Got No Home' was the first song I ever knew the words to, and mentioned that the Joe Klein biography was the first book I ever bought with my own money. The guy looked me dead in the eye and said, 'Yeah...it's mostly just the hat.'"
"Sooner/Later" comes from Kasey's last CD, Nowhere Nights, which came out in February 2010. Looks like he is shooting for February 2011 for the new one! We revisit the stage of Threadgill's for the Music Fog SXSW Marathon video shoot!
- Jessie Scott
