He's Gone Country
Look at them boots....A sociological explanation for a puzzling disparity. And a book review.
One of the more surprising albums this year was released by a fellow named Theo Lawrence. The existence of this album is not particularly surprising as a standalone project. It is a neovintage record, dripping in authentic 1960s instrumentation and presentation. As a deeply thought out homage to that era, it is not a skin deep representation. The intentional similarities go deep, all the way down to the lyrics, musical accompaniments, song structure, atmosphere etc. Every component tightly corresponds to that specific 1964-ish era of country music. Albums of this sort tend to not have the highest profile, but they do have a devoted group of admirers, of which I myself am one. Perhaps not the first thing I reach for when I turn on Spotify, but in the right environment it is a subgenre that I greatly enjoy. As a matter of fact, this year has been one of the best years I can remember for this particular kind of vintage inspired country music.
All that aside, there is one remarkable difference between Cherie and most others in this vibrant subgenre. What is so remarkable about the Theo Lawrence album is that Mr. Lawrence, or should I say Monsieur Lawrence, is not an American. Nor is he Canadian, Australian, or Irish. With almost zero exceptions, every country musician of even mild renown is from one of those four countries. By and large, country music has not developed significantly anywhere else. (Perhaps Mexico with its long and rich tradition of Ranchero and Tejano music qualifies as a fifth, but I feel it to be on its own.) This adds layers of intrigue to the story of Theo Lawrence, the Frenchman country troubadour.
One would assume that in order to have the intimate knowledge of a specific form of country music, the artist would probably have grown up in a family and environment that was closely related to the subculture of the music. Perhaps living in a holler in Kentucky where grandpa plays his old records at family parties, where inevitably the songs sung around summertime campfires are folk and country songs that have been passed down throughout the ages and culture. In that scenario, one would easily assume that someone brought up there will possess this intimate knowledge that would both inspire and allow the artist to create an accurate vintage reproduction. Sure, this is true of a great number of neovintage artists, however, if one takes a census, you find an odd conclusion. Offspring of the assumed ideal kiln for the firing of a country music star often don't end up making music that resembles that of their fathers. The pop country artists grew up in families that had a deep and rich appreciation for country music. Kane Brown idolizing Randy Travis is nice, but doesn't mean his music sounds anything like Travis. An inverse line on a graph could be drawn representing the real reality. The ironic fact is the more "uncountry" the background, the more "country” the music, at least most of the time.
This adds a further thick swath of irony on top of the already eyebrow raising trend of artists shouting out traditional artists in synthetic pop country songs that those acclaimed artists would not touch with a 10 foot pole. Chris Lane doesn't look like he'd ever turn on a George Strait vinyl and Billy Ray Cyrus butchering a Don Williams classic is bad enough. Top that off with them actually having grown up in those American regional and cultural subcultures and influences and it is just plain weird.
Remarkably, this stands in contrast with many artists that pursue neo vintage styles. Unlike the assumptions granted in the opening paragraphs of this piece, there is a small but growing scene of international country acts that are achieving success and attention in the traditionally inclined space. I can think of no pop country acts coming out of Sweden, but there are a few up and coming tradco acts. Harmonica Sam is chief among them. Christian Larsson, also from small town Sweden, has made waves with his deep baritone applied to modern tales on outlaw music. Country Heroes from Norway. James Steiner and Johnny Falstaff make up the Germany expat/emigree country club. Obviously, the Frenchman Theo Lawrence has already been discussed. Perhaps one has to squint a bit to see it, but it sure seems that a micro trend of sophisticated and deeply country projects are coming from international areas by those who are not “of the culture”. This is not to obviate all the dedicated American artists in this subgenre, but is merely trying to point out the international diversity of the scene.
Even within American based artists, this narrative holds true, albeit not to the same extremes. JP Harris mostly grew up in California and didn’t listen to country music until he was a teenager living in Oakland. He lived for a decade in Vermont. The noted bluegrass musician Dan Tyminski hails from Vermont as well. Many of today’s popular independant acts did not grow up in the typical country music listening enclaves and themselves started out in hard rock and punk bands, only to discover country music deep into adolescence or later. A quick shuffle through my liked artists section in Spotify shows Zephanaih O’hora (New York), Jesse Daniel (California punk scene), David Miner (Pacific Northwest), Jason James (Texas punk scene), The Shootouts (Akron, Ohio) and many others who fall into this category of untraditional inputs with highly traditional outputs.
By way of explanation, I’d like to present a short book review. The book is entitled Ametora and it is authored by a fellow named W. David Marx. He is a fantastic writer, with real insight into the depths of culture. His two most recent books, Ametora (2015) and Status and Culture (2022) both are must reads.
Ametora goes into the history of the Ivy Style which is the common name for a specific era in the rich history of menswear fashion. From roughly the 1920s until the 1960s, there was a distinct collegiate mode of dress that was found mainly in Ivy League schools. Easily identifiable by the heavy use of tweed and other historically sportswear styled fabrics, cut in comfortable soft fits, and worn in a more casual manner with a flippant devil may care attitude, it was a cultural ethos of casualizing the previously formal cultures of the college elite. It was more than a clothing fashion, as the adherents of the style went on to be heavy hitters in politics and culture and with time, the casual styling began to represent the elite east coast WASP culture wherein most of the styles arose from. In part because of the utilitarian versatility of the style- the ability to straddle the formality scale and always feel just dressed enough has an attractive practicality to it- as well as its unique cultural associations led to a particularly interesting long tail relationship with menswear fashion. Once it became coded as a “deeply American” style of dress, it persevered even after the 1960s put an end to the Ivy ideal of a middle of the road balance between the formal and the casual on campus and shifted towards full on casual wear. This stubborn persistence of the style manifested itself into what we would just call “basic clothes''. Instead of being coded as a particular style, it now is coded as normal everyday clothing. Knitwear, button down collar shirts, polo shirts, chinos, penny loafers, and boat shoes all started out as Ivy Style campus staples and now are just regular daily wear. Casual blazers replacing suits is another long term trend that was heavily influenced by this specific time and place in fashion. Once the original manifestation of the style (which to be honest was itself a slow moving evolving creature, with 1930s Ivy looking similar but identifiably different from 1950s Ivy) moved, the mainstream culture adapted the trappings for its own purposes. It took the bits and pieces of the Ivy style that it found useful and incorporated it into the next generations clothing styles. Evolved and reimagined, Ivy Style has stuck with us in varying forms. At least that's how it went down in the United States of America.
This is the background information that starts the story of Ametora. Until this point, the story of Ivy fashion was one that was not atypical for any large scale trend, aside from the intriguing wrinkle of the long tail perseverance as discussed in the previous paragraph. The plot twist that fascinates Marx is the surprising tale of how Japan became the flag bearer of this uniquely American Mode of dress. The cliff notes version is that a group of aspiring Japanese clothing salesmen with a deep appreciation for western dress in general and Ivy style in particular managed to transplant the style and entrench it into the framework of Japanese culture. So deep was this new bond, that Japan became the center of classical Ivy dress for decades after it fell apart in the states. The story is remarkable and very much worth the time to read.
Via detailing the history and personalities that brought the style overseas, Marx slowly begins to untangle certain questions that naturally arise when confronted with this topic.
The main question is a simple one. How does one transplant an essentially cultural idea across the seas? This question is especially salient considering the mid 1960s time period of the fashion shift. This was well before the years when globalization and the internet broke down the immense barriers of geography and language. The idea that Japanese youth would be able to gain the practical knowledge of the intimate details of the style, as well as wholesale adopt the identity implicit in the style of dress was unthinkable. It took an immense amount of marketing. More importantly, it took a paradigm shift. The cultures of America and Japan are very different. One of the crucial distinctions is the importance of process. Japanese culture highly values engaging in the procedures properly. The focus is not only on the output as is the emphasis in America, rather the input is sanctified. The way the importers of Ivy Style approached the Japanese market was by quantifying and breaking down into specific rules what to that point had been no more than a vaguely identifiable vibe and trend. One could become Ivy by following easy step by step guides. The amorphous form became crystallized in this different imported context.
One interesting knock on effect of this, is that the specifics of Ivy stuck around in Japan in its "proper form". Traditionalists found themselves unable to find traditional Ivy styled clothes in the states as the old school clothiers shifted in response to trends. In Japan, things didn't change. They had wholeheartedly embraced Ivy as it had once existed, now with clear cut rules laying the ground rules instead of long standing culture. As time went on, nostalgic Ivy enthusiasts in America found themselves nearly required to make a pilgrimage to Japan to shop at stores that still made clothing in authentic Ivy style. The roles had reversed. The importer had become the exporter.
Marx shows how this process and rules based focus when applied to clothing neatly aligned with the Japanese cultural view of clothing as uniform. By dressing in Ivy style, you align yourself with an idea as expressed by a uniform. The more you adhered to the strict definitions, the more Ivy you were. This cut in stark contrast to the American ideal of self expression via personalization in clothing choice. By defining clearly what was and what wasn't Ivy, the sociological differences were made of no consequence and the style was wholly embraced.
I found the idea of the host culture possessing a flexible and heavily cultural view, and the adopted culture viewing it through a rules based lens highly interesting. We have done a lot of work on the blog on hammering into the underlying assumptions behind traditional country and its pop flavored mainstream variants. I would like to propose another piece to the puzzle as an explanation for this perplexing oddity about inverse cultural representation. Within the host culture, the varying vicissitudes are viewed as the simple reality of life. Things change, they adapt. One version isn't necessarily a better manifestation of the other, after all it's all basically the same thing. We are all Ivy, we are all country.
It may take the foreigner, one who is removed to see substantive differences. The outsider views 1962 country music as not merely the step between 1961 and 1963 which all are part of some grand journey from Fiddlin’ John Carson to Lainey Wilson, but instead as an independent means of expression. One that represented ideas in a unique way and form. It is valuable and precious. The outsider sees this entire entity and makes conscious effort to absorb and appreciate it in its fullest with rules, rigidity, and uniformity. The more accurate to the time period, the closer you can get to replicating the magic.
All I’ve really done here is draw parallels where I see them. I could be wrong. It certainly is not the entire explanation. It may also be a reach to try and use some grand theory of cultural appreciation to explain the odd existence of a handful of personalities choosing this American folk expression as their preferred way of doing things. Nonetheless, this parallel has been sitting in my head for about six months now, and it felt like something that I can no longer ignore. I think the idea that different cultures relate to the same things differently based on any number of circumstances is a logical one and certainly seems to me to be a part of the puzzle.
Thanks for reading,
Joe