Nashville Skyline Anne McCue checks out Lost Futures

LOST FUTURES, GAINED PRESENCE

You may not have noticed that the contemporary female guitarists who are lauded online have one requirement - they must ‘shred.’ They often play heavy metal and wear black plastic or leather. Have you ever noticed that Joan Jett* is always included in that annual list of ‘best female guitarists’ even though she always has a male lead guitarist with her and the extent of her guitar playing is power chords? When you are asked who are the great female guitarists, can you only name Bonnie Raitt* and Joni Mitchell*? Why must female artists wear skimpy clothes and writhe around the stage as if they are having sex with an invisible partner? When you are a female artist who doesn’t writhe you look ‘bored’ or are boring and yet you’ll see one of our male peers just standing at the front and playing and singing and he is described as ‘rivetting.’ The pushback against unique female musicians has been monumental since before any of us reading this were born. You may not know how hard the music business has tried to discourage women from playing instruments, how women instrumentalists were kept on the fringes of music, how the female horn players in the 1930s had to form all-women big bands and be cast as novelty acts because they were not invited to play alongside their male peers. Women were meant to sing and look pretty, otherwise, back off. Even now, you will see the business wrenching the instrument from a woman’s hands. Take for example, Norah Jones on the Grammys. No piano! Just singing (and thereby ineffectual.) And what about Brittany Howard with Alabama Shakes at the Americana Awards - no guitar! Whose ideas are these? What is the result? The women are reduced to being singers. Their only worth is how ‘good’ their voice is. Whereas the essence of why both of these women are unique is that they are instrumentalists. The very emphasis on ‘the voice’ that has come into play the last 10 years is to me a sign of the shallowness of our times. Unique voices are discouraged. To succeed you must sound like someone already famous. Everyone is singing these elaborate trills and yet somehow all singing the same homogenous notes. The most recent cover of The Nashvillean Magazine features an Americana darling posing without trousers or skirt on and I am left to wonder if all the young kids taking up uke and guitar think that is what it takes for a female in the music business to succeed. So, it’s nice to see a musician like Marisa Anderson garnering some attention and making a career out of just playing guitar. She has released six solo albums and multiple collaborations with artists such as Jim White (Dirty Three) and William Tyler. The album recorded with the latter is called Lost Futures. The two met at a Portland, Oregon show - “There was an obvious and immediate affinity musically and personally which led to the feeling that we should try and do something together…’ says Anderson. When Covid shut down their respective tours they found they had the time to launch the project, composing together remotely and then meeting to record at Flora Recording & Playback in Portland during that wild time of protests, riots and private police kidnappings in 2020. William Tyler is well loved in Nashville due to his being a member of bands such as Silver Jews and Lambchop and for owning the now defunct venue, Stone Fox. He may well have the gift of eternal youth as he still looks 19 even though he was born in that magical year when music made the giant shift away from disco toward the new wave -1979. His parents are hit songwriters which gives a child a secure platform from which to launch a music career. What is delightful is that William Tyler has forged a creative path of his very own and remains a unique and creative guitarist. The Blue Room has traditionally been Jack White’s private venue for showcasing friends and family of his Third Man Records label but just recently they have opened the room up for touring and local

BY ANNE MCCUE

artists which is a great boon for Nashville because the indie music venues are struggling to stay open and some, such as Exit/In, have lost that battle. Tyler and Anderson played a duo show in Nashville to celebrate their collaborative album, Lost Futures. The music ranged from ambient to Latin, cosmic country to psychedelic bluegrass and much in between. I’m listening to the album as I write this and enjoying the sonic landscapes immensely. Standouts for me are At The Edge Of The World and Hurricane Light. It’s quite a lot to ask an audience to stand for over 2 hours on a concrete floor listening to instrumental guitar music but we did it! It was an inspiring show for me as a guitar player. When I see artists being themselves, not posing or pretending, just playing, that’s when I have hope for music. Little pockets of humans playing music, being listened to by handfuls of people who really dig it. Let’s hope it never goes away! No-one writhing around, no backing tracks, just two humans conversing with their instruments. No pyrotechnics and flashy playing. Far removed from those ‘90s guitar heroes in their white hitops and acid washed jeans who were technically perfect but musically deficient. This was a night for modest souls without the showbiz. They played together and each took a solo turn in the middle of the show before returning to the duo format. The Blue Room is a small room, blurry at the edges and was comfortably full. We each had a little space around us. I felt lucky to be there. I’ve been listening to the record all day and enjoying it more each time. I’m finding instrumental music more palatable in these anxious and volatile times. It leaves room for the imagination to create one’s own stories, feeding off the emotion of the performances. Lost Futures is on Thrill Jockey Records. marisaandersonmusic.com/williamtyler.net *No slight to these artists is intended. Rather, I am intending to slight the music business.