A Song For You, Gram

A little over two weeks after I was born Gram Parsons died. He died at Joshua Tree National Park in California for reasons all too common for musicians of the day: too much morphine and alcohol.

When I was starting to play guitar and sing and write my own songs I was heavy into alt country. Bands like Wilco and Son Volt and Whiskeytown and Old 97s were in heavy rotation. As I am want to do with music I am always searching for more more more and that led me to the grand-daddy of alt country records: Sweetheart Of The Rodeo by The Byrds. I've talked about Roger McGuinn before and The Byrds are popularly known as a contemporary of The Beatles and The Beach Boys, but Roger  originally was a banjo player (hence his distinctive guitar playing style) and bassist Chris Hillman was a country kid to his core. After David Crosby got the boot McGuinn starting dipping his toe in the world of country music where they weren't particularly welcomed (i.e. their Grand Ole Opry show in 1968). Chris Hillman knew Gram and invited him into the band and for one record they became a hard-core country band thanks to Gram.

Now when I say country I don't mean the garbage you see on CMT. I mean real country. Cash. Haggard. Waylon. Kristofferson. Real outlaw stuff. Not this pop junk done by morons in jeans and giant hats singing about getting barbecue sauce on their t-shirt. Deep, man.

I don't think there has ever been an artist who spent as little time in a band yet had such a profound effect on a record as Gram Parsons did with The Byrds on Sweetheart of The Rodeo. For legal reasons his voice was taken off the original record or at least pieces of the original record, whatever, but the re-issue has him singing a bunch of tunes like "Hickory Wind" and "The Christian Life" and "One Hundred Years From Now." Listening to that record it is unlike anything else in The Byrds canon, even with Clarence White joining and pretty much playing slide the next few records. It's hard to imagine this is the same band (mostly) that did "Eight Miles High" and "So You Want To Be A Rock n Roll Star."

After that Gram and Hillman went on to form The Flying Burrito Brothers. If somebody tells you they like country rock and how awesome the The Eagles and Jackson Browne are tell them to shut up and listen to something like "Sin City" or "Hot Burrito #1" or "Christine's Tune." And I LIKE The Eagles (except for the non-Joe Walsh tunes on The Long Run).

TFBB didn't last long and Gram went solo making two amazing records (G.P. and The Return Of The Grievous Angel), discovering Emmylou Harris (see below), hanging out with Keith Richards and damn near turning THEM into a country rock band, and doing an ungodly amount of drugs and booze. That got him dead but the music lives on and it is awesome and sounds as vital today as it must have seemed strange to the country boys back then, a long-haired young hippie kid doing hard core country music. You might have heard some of those tunes from those records done by other people: maybe "Streets Of Baltimore" and "$1000 Wedding" by Evan Dando (who wore a Gram t-shirt in the video for "Mrs. Robinson") or more likely "Love Hurts" by Nazareth.

I don't listen to much alt country anymore. I am however listening to The Burritos do "Sin City" right now and it reminds me of when me and my buddy Clay did that song at the old Grog & Tankard in Georgetown and I said to the meager crowd "We're going to do a Flying Burrito Brothers tune now" and one guy by a pool table let out a yell and a cheer and applauded mightily after we did "Sin City." At least we touched one guy. Gram touched a helluva lot more than we could dream of doing. I guess that's good enough.

Gram would've been 66 years old if he were alive today. What a waste. What a damn shame.

Here's a treat: Gram and and an incredibly young Emmylou doing "Streets of Baltimore."