Issue #38: Waxahatchee, Jess Williamson, Plains and the best country records that they said weren't so

You say "alternative," I say "twangy as fuck"

By Marissa (

lockeland springsteen by Marissa R. Moss

)

Hi Don’t Rock The Inbox readers,

Sorry for the late letter this week. We’ve been under a couple of inches of snow here in Nashville, which means school has been cancelled – old me, East Coast me, would make a snobby stink about this, about how we used to drive in two feet of snow, but I am too old and too cold to do so, and I haven’t seen a single plow on my road. All that said, I’ve been struggling to make it all work, as I’m sure many of you can relate to. So this newsletter is being written in fits and starts while children scream, while a pot of Mac and Cheese simmers and I pick up literal trails of breadcrumbs where dinner rolls once were. Figure I might as well be honest.

We have been working, trying to keep the kids occupied and their spirits up (middle school drama, the isolation of modern motherhood, IYKYK), cooking, attempting to go outside once in a while (mostly failed) and listening to music. We play songs in the kitchen at night, when the kids turn off Henry Danger and work on painting a giant piece of wood that came in a shipping container for a piece of furniture. The kids don’t even realize they are learning the words.

It's been a lot of “Right Back to It,” by Waxahatchee featuring MJ Lenderman, to be honest. I made a joke in the last songs roundup that in 2022 the album I most listened to was Plains (the record from Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee, and Jess Williamson), in 2023 that was Jess Williamson’s solo album and in 2024 it would be Tigers Blood by Waxahatchee. I have been thinking a lot about how my favorite country records and country songs of late are not classifiable as “country,” and exist well outside of the Nashville machine (so few of the country-specific outlets even covered these records or these artists, but would easily cover a dudebandwho makes only vaguely twangy rock music if he looks the part). Apple tells me that the Plains record is “alternative.” What exactly does that mean? “Abilene” is one of the most purely country songs I’ve heard in years, as country as the spiders on a Texas porch. Williamson’s vocal curls on these songs say more than one hundred truck and tailgate mentions. It’s perfect, I think.

Both sides lose when genre dictates what we listen to, and what we write about, what we bring into our world. But with Nashville as it is, I don’t blame anyone who wants to remain on the outside, for fear of looking in: our prescribed formula for mainstream success is a man, as is the prescribed formula for success as an “outlaw.” I want Jess Williamson singing at the Opry. I want Plains at country award shows, I want Waxahatchee to be just as much ours as it is theirs. I don’t know if they want this, but I do. Maybe that hurts them more than it helps me, though?

I hear “Right Back to It” as a country song. Even in the video, Crutchfield is riding down swampy waters on a pontoon, the notes of the banjo some of the first things we hear. It is about casual, unfunny, everlasting love, about picking up where you left off. It makes me feel like country music always makes me feel, and that is enough.

As much as I think about country not claiming this music, I think about people who love these records not claiming country, either. This tweet made me laugh:

Nadine isn’t wrong. I hope that people who love these records open themselves up to country music, beyond just a chosen few “approved” artists, and beyond just a recurring punchline.

Anyway, I’m listening to “Right Back To It” and “Tobacco Two Step” and the Mac and Cheese is done. There is snow on the ground and smears of grocery store cupcake frosting on the counter and it all feels country enough to me. Coming right back to it.

-Marissa