Of Note 016: Tyler Childers, Brian Eno, and Sly Stone as Themselves
Howdy folks!
For many of us, life is a long lesson in being ourselves. For some lucky folks, it just comes naturally. And it just so happens that many of those folks make music. Maybe that’s why, as a recovering people pleaser, I’m drawn to stories about the mindsets and habits of unique creative folks: to learn how to be more of myself.
This month, I found myself learning from Tyler Childers, Brian Eno, and Sly Stone, three incredibly talented and distinct individuals who seem to have no problem just being themselves.
Tyler Childers Puts It All Together
Tyler Childers is the latest country “outlaw” - in the same chord at Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price - to take the spotlight. As is typical, there were plenty of stories about how he’s not doing things the Nashville way and rubbing more conservative and traditional fans wrong.
Marissa R. Moss has written what may be the definitive profile of Childers and his new album, Snipe Hunter, for GQ. She gets you right from the opening line:
It’s pelting rain in East Nashville, and Tyler Childers is telling me a story about dharma, drugs, and dogs.
It would be easy to treat Childers left-leaning political views as a country music curiosity, but Moss knows that’s not the interesting or uncommon part. She digs more into how Snipe Hunter was made - I love the part about Childers asking Nick Sanborn of Sylvan Esso to “put some drugs on it” - and how it brings together all the elements of Childers personality.
So take your country music and play it with the rugged fury of a garage band, or even bring in a synth or two. Go to India to explore the Hare Krishna. Make something timeless in a world obsessed with change. Pray to whatever God you feel like at the time. Bring Black Lives Matter to the holler. Normalize a queer love story. What makes Childers one of the most important country artists of his generation is that he won’t conform or compromise, and every step of his career is about building a song, or a life, that both respects tradition but seeks expansion, not exclusion.
That’s not all for Childers this month. I adored this review from Stephen Baldwin at RealWV. The view from Appalachia provides a vital lens on this album and Baldwin writes with a ton of heart and the joy of feeling seen:
We do, Brother Childers. We do; because while we Appalachians are sometimes wont to go too far from home for various fears – not being accepted or turning from our roots – you make it acceptable to visit new cultures without losing our own.
Brian Eno, One of a Kind
I’m sure I’m not the first to note that Eno is One backwards (I’m also not interested enough to Google who else has made that observation).
Grayson Haver Currin’s expansive profile of Eno for GQ - Brian Eno wants to know if you’re listening? - does what Eno loves best: follows his pleasure.
Currin traces Eno’s interests and instincts in a winding way that somehow finds its way through how Eno approaches creativity, the impact that approach has had on on his collaborators (and, in some cases failed to impact them), and all the way back to Eno’s current projects with Beatie Wolfe and his activism. Currin, who is no stranger to making music while interviewing musicians for a story, writes about Eno creating a new song, “The Grayson Jam” just for him and it perfectly captures the spirit of the giant:
He decides to try again, and this is when I lose him. The high sample hisses and spits, and the bass moves in glacial peristalsis, so low the speakers wobble on their platforms. “That’s an amazing sound,” he exclaims as he disappears fully into the machine for several minutes, moving sliders and pressing keys and pulling the bass out only to restore a still more aggressive version of it. This is becoming one of the most caustic pieces of music I’ve ever heard. “Sorry, I’ll be back to normal soon,” he finally says, waving his hands. “I’ve got to catch it.”
Book of the Month: Sly Stone Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again): A Memoir with Ben Greenman
I knew almost nothing about Sly Stone, beyond his hits, before reading this book. Unfortunately, this is a case of death preceding interest. With him passing away this year, I felt the pull to read about his life.
This memoir is striking in its voice: It sounds like Sly Stone. He perfected his wordplay and lyrical speech while DJing at KSOL and it has followed him into these pages. There are many delightful moments, obvious and subtle, where the way he says things is more interesting than what he’s saying. In writing, as in life, his style is his own.
I also found the book - which is a straightforward, chronological retelling of the highlights of his life - compelling because you can feel when Stone, his ego, and his shame won’t let him confront his failings. He spends much of the book reckoning with his drug use and patting himself on the back for overcoming it late in life, but he does not such reckoning with his abuse of women, children, and animals. He will allude to things like hitting a partner and suggest that maybe he didn’t remember. There’s a particularly shocking story about his pitbull killing his pet baboon that comes out of nowhere and leaves without so much as a “That was crazy.”
That, in addition to him often playing the “everybody needs to love each other” card in his politics, left me with the lingering feeling that Sly Stone is a coward.
But a memoir needn’t be therapy or apology. As a book, I appreciated having to think about the flawed humanity at its center.
Bonus Links
For The Atlantic, Gabriel Kahane writes a love letter to music and art listings and worries what we lose when they go away.
Stephen Thomas Erlewine with a lovely, brief obituary of Ozzy Osbourne for the AV Club.
Thank you for reading! See you next month! On time!
Justin Anderson-Weber
