"Misery on Display"

I’m not a big country music fan. I don’t like the flag waving stuff, just because I don’t think wrapping a song in a flag makes it any better. Often times, there’s just too much twang. Other times it’s just too bland. When country music is done properly, though, it really is a unique art. Merle Haggard did it right. Johnny Cash did it right. And Gary Allan does it right.

Allan is, after a fashion, a student from the Dwight Yoakum music school, who was himself a disciple of the late, great Buck Owens. Interestingly enough, he represents his own niche in country at this point. In an industry dominated by songs about love and beer, Allan almost defiantly sings about the perils of being love sick, alcohol, and pain. Very few would even attempt to cover Todd Snider’s “Long Year,” but Allan takes the song about attending Alcoholics Anonymous and infuses it with the experience and understanding of a man who’s been there, that Snider’s version lacked. He plays against type by taking songs that are anything but uplifting and placing upbeat music behind all of it, giving depression a groove.

In 2005, Gary Allan wrote one of my all time favorite albums. “Tough All Over” was written and recorded after the suicide of Allan’s wife, and his pain practically pours out from each track. Even his cover of Vertical Horizon’s “Best I Ever Had” takes on a different meaning under Allan’s distinctive vocals. The album itself is a departure from Allan’s usual fare, and represents a shift in his usual style. But, of course, it has to. After an event like that, there’s no way Allan could go back to singing good but relatively shallow songs like “Smoke Rings in the Dark.”  This is the point when Allan began to truly flex his artistic muscles as he worked through his pain. Song writing, Allan has said, served as therapy, one of the few outlets he found to keep himself sane in an impossible situation. The end result of his torment is twelve tracks that all deal with his pain on one level or another, and explores his regrets and after thoughts of his marriage. The album moves from callousness to sheer depression to anger to remembrances of the past to redemption to loss to regret to explanation as Allan deals with grief. He notes, almost sardonically, how an object that used to represent love and devotion haunts him. “Ring” is a song about a man who’s left holding his wedding band after his wife left him. “Puttin Memories Away” is about cleaning up the mess left after death. Grief and guilt combine in “No Damn Good” as he tries to figure out life without his lover. As Allan shares his grief, the songs become more and more about us as an audience as much as they are about him. While Allan’s situation is all but unimaginable to most, we begin to see shards and fragments of our own lives on display. “Promise Broken” is as much about Allan’s regrets as it is about our everyday mistakes. In grief, we always look back and see all the missteps we made. I’ve really only heard this type of songwriting done once before, that I remember, with Patty Griffin’s “Long Ride Home,” and for Allan to be on Griffin’s level in any regard means that he must be doing something right.*

After “Tough All Over,” Allan has continued to write and perform songs that few of the glitter country crowd would touch. His first single from his latest album, “Today,” is about a man who watches the woman he loves marry someone else. Allan has continued to grow as an artist, and while I fear he will never top “Tough All Over,” in a way that is how it should be. An album as seemingly perfect (well, in my opinion at least) as that requires an almost perfect storm to occur. There are albums, such as Carol King’s “Tapestry” that are not only great in their own right, but represent a significant shift in the alignment of the music industry. Allan’s album represents a shift from the glib pop rock country that had taken over the radio to a more guttural type. While the industry has slowly but surely wandered back to the confection, Allan has done the opposite, moving more and more away from the accepted topics, tapping into the darkness, pain, and honesty that lie within us all. He may never produce an album as perfect as “Tough All Over,” he’ll certainly never put out an album he doesn’t care about. And, in a world of Justin Beibers and Lady Gagas, that’s saying something.

*Most of Griffin’s songs discuss regret in some way or other, while managing to remain fresh. Griffin, it seems, is concerned with finding new viewpoints to speak from, and regret is a universal theme.