Radicalized by Uncle Tupelo

Or, why I decided it was a good idea to make a country album in 1996

I’ve been obsessed with country music my whole life, since I could recognize music and form a thought. My first musical idol - along with The Beatles my parents treated as soothing sounds for baby - was Glen Campbell. His variety show, The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour, followed the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. My folks learned to leave our little black & white portable going after the news or I’d lose my shit. I loved rock and country music equally as a kid, ideally as a musical Reese’s Cup - two great tastes that taste great together.

My first album purchase with my own money was Eagles Greatest Hits.¹ I told the story on my old Wordpress blog - not 100% my choice, but it had a big influence on my tastes. Concurrently, I gathered up all the albums in the house that deftly blended rock and country - Sweetheart of the Rodeo, Heart Like a Wheel, Music From Big Pink, etc. etc., forming my sense of song structure and instrumentation. At a pivotal time in my musical development my dad brought home Lost & Found by Jason & the Scorchers during my senior year in high school. That album made perfect sense to me in every way. Punk rock Hank Williams - why not.

I sought out any variety of country with a rock attitude and rock with a country twang alike, an embarrassment of riches in the early 80s. Long Ryders, Dwight Yoakam, Nanci Griffith, Gun Club, The Blasters, Rank & File, Violent Femmes, X, Steve Earle, Lucinda, even certain R.E.M. cuts - all happening just outside the mainstream in the age of Urban Cowboy. .

Although our Boston scene isn’t especially known for twang, country and country-adjacent music provided constant inspiration for my musical circle. Sometimes it was my direct influence. Blake Babies’ Hank Williams cover on our first album is 100% the product of my bullying and cajoling Juliana Hatfield, same as when I got her to join me on harmonies for a version of Keep On The Sunny Side by The Carter Family. Evan Dando, on the other hand, was already a huge country fan when we met. We used to drive around listening to country radio, and I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for turning me on to Gram Parsons’ solo albums, Townes Van Zandt, and Guy Clark. There isn’t much country influence evident on the early Lemonheads albums; but by the Atlantic years of the 90s, it’s there. Check out Ride With Me and Half The Time on Lovey from 1990 (with its great Manson-themed video featuring a bunch of our friends and a very short-lived lineup with Ben Daughtry from Squirrel Bait, that never actually recorded).

In the late 80s I used to hang out as much as I was allowed at Fort Apache Studio in Cambridge, soaking it in, making the scene, and trying to learn what I could about record-making. That’s where all the bands recorded, where the broke-ass bands like Blake Babies snuck in to record after-hours. In late 1989 Fort Apache house engineer Paul Kolderie told me about (what he described as) a rockin’ young country band from near St. Louis he was recording at the original Fort Apache studio in Roxbury. He played me a rough mix and I couldn’t believe it - they’d cracked the code of how to blend the energy and melodic force of Husker Du with classic country songwriting.

Months later the album came out, and Uncle Tupelo returned to Boston to perform at T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge. I went to the show without having heard a note of their music. I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t ALL that different from Jason & the Scorchers, but it was translated through the best of the SST catalogue, Huskers, Minutemen, and Meat Puppets. Three guys, the two in front singing tight harmonies. Songs! I became an instant fan. I bought the album and listened obsessively.

A year or so later I had moved from Boston to Bloomington, Indiana. Uncle Tupelo’s endless tour brought them through Bloomington to play Jake’s Nightclub. Of course I already planned to go, but then I got a call from my friend Dale Lawrence. He needed a sub to fill in for his bassist for his band The Vulgar Boatmen, the opening act for Uncle Tupelo!

Anyone reading this knows how exciting it is to see a band you’ve been listening to for months. It’s much more exciting to share a stage, get to meet them more as a peer than a fan. I don’t remember much about meeting drummer Mike Heidorn except that he was friendly; but both Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar made lasting impressions. Jeff was so nice, so open and encouraging. He loved The Vulgar Boatmen and treated us with great respect. He was funny and easy to be around. Jay, on the other hand, wouldn’t make eye contact with any of us, and he never spoke a word as we shared a small dressing room. What a contrast, seemingly opposite personalities. The show blew me away: a true power trio exploding with energy.

I ran into Jeff fairly often because he dated (and has now long been married to) a club owner named Susan Miller, one of Blake Babies’ first and most loyal supporters. I used to play Sue’s club Lounge Ax in Chicago every few months, and Jeff was often there. I remember Jeff - as well as Fred Armisen - working the door without anyone making a fuss. We hung out a couple times after my band’s shows at Lounge Ax, such good people.

Uncle Tupelo came back to Jakes the following year with an expanded lineup, adding Ken Coomer on drums and expanding the lineup. Tempos slowed a bit, the arrangements evolved towards the more traditional, and they just kept getting better and better. By the time their final album, Anodyne, came out in 1993, they were my favorite band.

The last time I saw Uncle Tupelo the band was in a death spiral. I remember driving to Louisville to hang out with my friends from Mammoth Records, who were with their latest signing, Joe Henry.² I had dinner with my friend Steve Balcom from Mammoth, along with Joe and Jeff Tweedy. Jeff told us all about how he and Jay no longer spoke with one another, and that their tour bus was divided into front and back lounge factions. The show sounded great, but you could tell they didn’t want to be there - especially Jay. They stood on opposite sides of the stage. Heartbreaking.

The lineup of Tupelo at that 1993 show was basically Wilco with Jay. Another Jay, Jay Bennett, replaced Jay Ferrar on lead guitar and they wasted no time. Wilco’s debut, A.M., came out in early 1995. I saw them on their first tour. Their label, Reprise, optioned both artists, Tweedy’s Wilco and Ferrar’s Son Volt, and seemingly set up a competition by releasing the albums six months apart in ‘95. First assessments - including my own - gave Son Volt the edge. But history has vindicated Tweedy.

It’s disappointing, having a ringside seat watching your favorite band fall apart. Bands are unique relationships. Everyone believes they’re gonna make it, but what if they don’t? You’re friends, co-workers, business partners, drinking and drugging buddies, sometimes even love interests. When it goes wrong, people walk away wounded. I’m grateful and slightly amazed I’m still friends with all my ex-bandmates. I wish that were true of those guys, but I digress.

I spent most of 1994 on tour, either covering four continents with The Lemonheads or carpet-bombing England with my heavy psych trio, Velo-Deluxe. I got off the road in early 1995 completely sick of rock music. My tastes went from hippie country to Uncle Tupelo and related acts to the entire history of honky-tonk, Nashville to Bakersfield and all points in between. I became obsessed with Buck Owens, George Jones, Merle Haggard, and a hundred other singers. I nearly lost interest in rock music and all I wanted to do was play those songs.

I got a couple of my rock scene buddies excited about the music. I’d forced Mitch, the drummer in Velo Deluxe, to listen to so much honky-tonk that he knew all the parts. My buddy Glenn, then in a band called El Niño that was under a development deal with Oasis’s management, was up for just about anything and fell hard for the music. (Glenn has a band these days called Griffy that you should check out - he’s as great as ever). We decided to recruit some real country players to make it sound more legit.

We called a cool guy, a fantastic guitarist named Steve Woods, who worked at the guitar store. Steve had a mop of curly, dirty blonde hair like Chris Hillman. I think Steve brought in Dennis, a masterful middle-aged³ pedal steel guitarist who asked us to please call him Biscuit. We worked up a set of covers and started playing out as The Hello Strangers (named after the Carter Family song “Hello Stranger.”) Those shows were so much fun. I used to work in a recording studio, and I decided it would be fun to make an album.

I decided, wisely I think, that it would be lame for us to cut an album of country covers. Not with me singing anyway. I’m a singer only to the extent it’s the right instrument for my songs. I would love more than anything to be a great singer, but I am in touch with reality. I knew to hitch my wagon to great singers like Evan and Juliana if I wanted to be a famous musician. I decided in late 1995 to write and record a country album as The Hello Strangers.

The first recording session happened around Christmas. The studio, the B-room at Echo Park, was one big open room with a few isolation rooms but no control room. I had a completely crazed notion that I wanted to make the album with a party going on in the studio, trying to live out an Exile on Main Street approach. We bought some beer and whiskey and invited a dozen folks, including my dad. Several uninvited guests came by as well. As the beer and liquor and who knows what else went down, folks got rowdier and rowdier. At one point my dad got in an argument with a guy in chef’s whites about cooking Risotto. It was a beautiful disaster.

It probably would have been fine, but I came down with a bad cold the day before the session. It was so hard cutting those tracks over a bunch of people shouting at each other, eventually not even listening to the band through the modest studio monitors. We managed to record seven tracks, and it actually came out pretty well. I suppose it is quite influenced by Uncle Tupelo, but that was par for the course for underground country in the mid-90s. We took just as much from Gram Parsons and The Jayhawks as we did from classic country. We were fans but not flat-out plagiarists. I did the best I could with the songwriting, and I’m still proud of some of those songs.

Things got a little messy around the album release, titled Caledonia. I’d promised a solo album to a new, decently-funded local label called Flat Earth. I doubt they expected a country record, but they were good sports. It got picked up in Europe by Demon Records, a label owned by Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe. Flattering, but I never met either one - even though over 20 years later I was briefly Elvis’s label head. Strange turn, but it all happened in the confusion of the Pandemic.

An old musical acquaintance reached out to tell me - or perhaps I should say remind me - that he had a band in Connecticut called Hello Strangers, and he’d rather I not use it. I talked it over with the nice guy who ran the label - who really wanted a solo album - and I proposed that we changed it to John P. Strohm and the Hello Strangers. That slowed us down a bit, and by the time it came out I was ready to leave on another long Lemonheads tour. I disappointed at least some of my bandmates by never playing again after the album, release.

The one thing I regret about the mid-cycle forced name change is that there’s a song on Caledonia I didn’t write or sing. It’s a song Steve Woods wrote and sang titled Powderkeg. It’s a great song, one of the standouts for sure. Several reviewers around the release singled it out as a notable cut. I’ve always meant to pay tribute and respect to Steve, an outstanding musical talent who never really broke out. He was well-loved and admired around the Bloomington music scene for decades, but there isn’t much evidence of his exceptional talent in the archives. Powderkeg - what a riff. Somebody should cover that one.

After I got all that music out of my system and had another couple years of hard road work, I stripped down my solo work and stopped trying so hard to write country. I managed another solo album for Flat Earth, Vestavia, before I took a couple turns and somehow ended up a married lawyer in Alabama with three kids. I made my name, for the second time in life, in indie and alternative rock, this time on the business side. In the decade since, I’ve focused more and more on developing exciting new country acts - both as an attorney and label head.

In retrospect, the 90s “alt country” gold rush that Uncle Tupelo kickstarted was part of a trend that dates back to the 60s and before - the blending of American roots genres by young hipster music-makers. Elvis blended country and rock when he covered Bill Monroe’s Blue Moon of Kentucky on his first Sun Records single. The perceived divisions between genres have always been mostly illusory. Maybe I was radicalized by Uncle Tupelo demonstrating how easy it is to mix and match, pick and choose…but if I’m clear-eyed about it, I was just as inspired and influenced by The Jayhawks, Will Oldham, Lucinda, and others from that era.

It’s all part of a current I’ve been riding for decades, and it feels like we’re coming into a new golden age for coloring outside the lines with rock, country, and adjacent genres. As platforms seek to flatten and neuter genres for “lean back” listening, the best artists are breaking down walls as if their lives depended on it. I’m here for it, but I’m ready to leave it to the youngsters this time.

1. By mistake - I looked at the cover and thought it would be a hard rock record…but I learned to love it.

2. Joe Henry’s Mammoth debut The Kindness of the World from 1992 is one of the greatest Americana albums of all time.

3. Sadly, both Dennis and Steve have passed away. I called Dennis “middle aged,” but he might have been 35 at the time. He had a slow, thoughtful drawl that made him seem about 70 at the time.