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| Bouldering season is here in the Southeast; Rocktown via @a_harrison |
#dirtbagswag is down, but it isn't defeated. Not yet. Time to climb is hard to come by right now, never mind trying to write about climbing. But #dirtbagswag is back, back for now, and back with the Dixie Cragger's Fall Mixtape for your autumnal sending.
"Place is space which has historical meanings where some things have happened which are now remembered and which provide continuity and identity across generations." wrote Walter Brueggemann. Many of the songs are rooted in a yearning for a specific place and/or time. The yearning to belong and to have a sense of place is a deep and meaningful pursuit. Land gives us meaning and well-being. Place expresses the wholeness and joy of belonging.
A few months ago, I moved to a new city for a new job. Tony Horwitz is right to observe in Confederates in the Attic, that Atlanta is the "Anti-South," a cultureless concoction of urban sprawl and Northern industrialism, "a crass, brash city made in the image of the Chamber of Commerce and overrun with corporate climbers and carpetbaggers." So in many ways this playlist is self-therapeutic as I cope with this exile from the people and place that I love.
Thus, when Matt Woods laments, "My boots belong in East Tennessee, I carry her hills inside of me. When I lay down my head, she's in my dreams," I'm singing lament with him. But it is hopeful lamentation, because like Woods, who finds himself dislocated on the windy, prosaic plains of west Texas, I too can sing "I'll get back there someday, if I don't blow away."
If you've been listening to these seasonal playlists for a while, maybe since the beginning (2011), you won't be surprised to find an array of country, bluegrass, and folk music; all of which fall under the umbrella term of "Americana." And you won't be surprised to find them interspersed with an assortment of old-guy-who-still-reads-punknews.org punk songs. And all that is sandwiched between two Manchester Orchestra tracks (the latter of which is as near a perfect song as has ever been written). If you're right in the place where you belong or you're living in exile someplace outside -- or within -- the Mason-Dixon, there's something here for you.
Listen to it on Spotify HERE.
- Manchester Orchestra - The Only One (Mean Everything to Nothing)
- Chris Wollard and the Ship of Thieves - No Exception (Self-Titled)
- Drive-By Truckers - Part of Him (English Oceans)
- Deep Dark Woods - All the Money I Had Is Gone (Winter Hours)
- Old Crow Medicine Show - O Cumberland River (Remedy)
- Matt Woods - West Texas Winds (With Love From Brushy Mountain)
- Chuck Ragan - For All We Care (Till Midnight)
- The Wonder Years - Local Man Ruins Everything (Suburbia, I've Given You All & Now I'm Nothing)
- Possessed by Paul James - Songs We Used To Sing (There Will Be Some Nights That I'm Lonely)
- Steve Martin & Edie Brickell - When You Get to Asheville (Love Has Come For You)
- Blue Mountain - Mountain Girl (Dog Days)
- Honeywagon - New Slang (The Shins cover) (A Bluegrass Tribute to The Shins)
- Uncle Tupelo - Looking For A Way Out (Uncle Tupelo 89/93)
- Billie Bragg & Wilco - Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key (Mermaid Avenue)
- Peggy Honeywell - Green Mountain (Green Mountain)
- Have Gun, Will Travel - Finer Things (Fact, Fiction, or Folktale)
- The Menzingers - The Talk (Rented World)
- The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit - Very Best Of (Old Excuses)
- Hackensaw Boys - Alabama Shamrock (Love What You Do)
- Manchester Orchestra - Colly Strings (Like A Virgin Losing a Child)
Listen to it on Spotify HERE.
Listen to The Dixie Cragger's Summer Mixtape HERE.