An All-American Mixtape

A Folk Punk Show in Missouri

Shows on this block have a small-town feel.

I’m seeing some folk musicians at a venue not much bigger than my living room. It’s on a lonely corner outside of city limits, on a street that feels like an industrial park sans industry. There is no stage — the bands stand on the floor in front of a red curtain. Paper mâchéd mannequins pose in the window and the thrift store is rolled up into sheets that hang from the ceiling. All ages, $10 or pay-what-you-can. There’s a weird diorama on Doom Scroll’s merch table — I have never heard them before tonight, but the way we all stomped and danced to the wailing of their fiddle got me to buy a 7 inch and a t-shirt.

Doom Scroll’s merch table

Futchdog, the local opener, covers Kimya Dawson and luckily we’re at an all-ages venue because I brought my sixteen year old self with me and she’s buzzing with joy. In Kimya Dawson she heard something that sounds like protest music for the first time — but it isn’t loud and angry — it’s gentle and loving, unbelievably simple and earnest. This is amazing. This is just one person, a few chords, and some really good lyrics. I can do that. I am moved by compassion in spite of angry static. Doesn’t all of it come back to love? Even rage?

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Americana

“American Tradition” is a loaded phrase in a nation of diaspora and conquest. The flag is drenched in blood, I don’t want it on my hands. Our history is muddled through the thick whispers of phantoms, politics and power are to be condemned at best, and yet in the things I can see and touch I am glowing with pride. Do I have to believe in “nation” to love and believe in everyone that lives here?

Two-stepping, high kicks, skanking, and square dancing, this must be the “melting pot” I was always told about.

Futchdog says, “I take Neutral Milk Hotel requests,” I yell, “COMMUNIST DAUGHTER,” and they play Holland, 1945 right into Communist Daughter and I sing along. After the set they tell me they busk out in Kansas and that I should try it sometime, that it’s different to play to people in passing than to play to a crowd that’s watching you.

It’s a chatty and friendly crowd tonight. Some of us know each other and some of us don’t, but we all shoot the shit like good friends and stomp in time with the banjo twang as the band plays faster and faster. The sound is both nearby and ancient, I can hear the hollers of their voices bouncing off of mountains and reaching a divine distance. It’s speedy and rhythmic, acoustic instruments with the timbre of an electric shock. The crowd is hooting and clapping, picking each other up, locking arms and spinning around.

This is the new American folk music — twinges of folk and bluegrass but something entirely on its own, sparkling with rage and love. Dark Souls references, protest songs, pit games, a place with no barrier between performer and audience. Sister Wife Sex Strike step out into the crowd and spin around in a funny little circle while they play their last song and scream into the air. They’re clumsy and shining, everyone is giggling, we are all the same.

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Patriotism

We get in the car and I ask Dayna, “Is it weird that I love my country right now?” The brightness of a banjo, a chattering washboard, and white hot anger is Americana. This belongs to us.

And not just “us” the Americans; us, we the people who have no access to that high power that tries to define and degrade us. But we the people wake up every day to build and struggle and gather and create because that’s what humans do. We in the flyover states who cling to each other because we’re all we have, we who arrange free stores and food distribution and classes, we who see a world beyond what exists now and are sparked by care and love and a longing to build.

I won’t stand for the flag but I’ll stuff it in a bottle, I’ve got a match and a pocket full of seeds. They’ll make seeds illegal, probably, but I won’t let the family go hungry. The ground will be fed soon, too, and the new wealth of soil will yield a world of plenty.

Tear down the precinct and build a garden in its place; the bands tonight bring me into their vision. I can see it like it’s right in front of me, because it already is.

was having too much fun to take a good picture