COUNTRY TIME - Part 4
We Came for Country Music. We Got Ranch Dressing on the Salad.
Before we go any further in the saga, I must ask for a favor.
We have just released episode 4 of Films Not Made, the video podcast everyone should be watching and/or listening to. In this episode, Oscar-nominated director Heidi Ewing regales us with her unmade project about a real-life Soviet domestication program entitled “How To Tame a Fox.” It’s a great story, and we had a really fun time working on it and laughing along with Heidi. Truly!
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In other news, NASA astronauts are about to circle the moon. I find this completely exciting and having spent some years doing sound on space projects, I’m all-in. If anyone has a project about any of the NASA Artemis missions and/or their lunar landers - call me. This last month had me recording/mixing sound at at ketamine clinic, the Legal Aid Society and a variety of corporate concerns.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled program of dubious meals and twangy guitars…
Project: It’s All Country
March 2, 2024
Tip the band
The dawn in Nashville once again unfurled a tapestry of grey, the heavens still weeping from some cosmic heartache, as we made our pilgrimage to the hallowed halls of the Music City Bar and Grill. Our mission: to capture the elusive essence of country music’s inner circle in a roundtable discussion that promised to be as flavorful as the local cuisine.
Upon our arrival, it became immediately apparent that the donuts on offer were not mere pastries but once again the colossal, sugary franken-puffs that defied conventional consumption. Fork and knife in hand, I braved the confectionery behemoth, marveling at its delicious defiance of pastry norms. This led to a philosophical quandary: if a donut lacks a hole, does it relinquish its ‘donut’ status, or does it ascend to a higher plane of dessert existence?
The walls of the Music City Bar and Grill served as a silent testament to the legends of country music, each photo and piece of memorabilia a mosaic piece in Nashville’s storied tapestry. Under the watchful eyes of icons like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Dolly Parton, and Hank Williams, we orchestrated our setup, a concerto of cables and cameras.
And then, lunch.
As the specter of lunch loomed once again on the horizon, the words “catered Mediterranean” echoed through the Music City Bar and Grill like a foreboding prophecy, threatening to unleash a culinary déja vu upon our unsuspecting crew. Having only yesterday set sail aboard the HMS Taziki, where the choppy seas of “Mediterranean” cuisine had left our palates partially shipwrecked, the announcement of a sequel filled me with both anticipation and trepidation. Would this be a redemption of the flavors of antiquity or a further desecration of the culinary bedrock upon which Western civilization was built?
The first harbinger of our gastronomic fate was the so-called “Greek Salad,” a dish that bore as much resemblance to its Hellenic namesake as a Trojan Horse to Seabiscuit. This sarcophagus of iceberg lettuce, entombing the faintest whispers of Greek culinary heritage, was an affront to the gods themselves, drenched not in the ambrosial nectar of olive oil and citrus but in the pedestrian banality of a side trough filled with ranch dressing. I offered a silent apology to Margo and all of Hellenic descent; this was not the salad their ancestors had fought for.
The “seasoned rice” that followed was as cryptic as the Eleusian Mysteries minus the mind-altering ergot. I wondered, was this rice seasoned with the tears of culinary purists, or merely the dust of indifference?
Our main course, the beef and chicken kabobs, arrived like warriors from a forgotten era, skewers brandished like spears in defiance of the culinary mediocrity that preceded them. Here, at last, was a glimmer of hope, a potential return to form that could salvage the wreckage of our Mediterranean odyssey. Each skewer was, perhaps, a chance to reclaim some semblance of authenticity from the jaws of culinary calamity.
As the lunch saga unfolded, Scott, a veritable Nostradamus of the dining table, preemptively seasoned his chicken with a cascade of salt, stoicly proclaiming, “I know how it’s gonna be,” with the weary resignation of a man who’s seen too many unseasoned poultry in his day. Meanwhile, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the chicken, a veritable phoenix rising from the ashes of yesterday’s culinary debacle. Each bite was a duet of flavor, a morsel that whispered secrets of the grill, the char, the very essence of flame itself, leaving my taste buds in a state of eager anticipation for the next encounter.
The beef, however, was the culinary equivalent of a wallflower at the high school dance, unassuming and content in its anonymity. It was as if it had achieved a Zen-like state of beef-ness, existing simply to be, without aspiration or desire, a reminder of the existential void in meat form.
The glaring absence of sauces, most notably any trace of tzatziki, was a culinary oversight akin to a Greek tragedy unfolding on our plates. Here we were, adrift in a sea of flavor potential, with nary a dollop of geographically-specific creamy, garlicky salvation in sight. The absence of spice was a missed opportunity, a culinary cry for help that went unanswered, leaving our palates yearning for a taste of the Aegean.
Grant, ever the optimist, declared the meal “good food,” his standards a testament to the power of hunger over discernment. His culinary philosophy, “as long as it isn’t gross, I’m happy,” served as a humble reminder of the simple joys of sustenance. Meanwhile, Margo’s foray into the realm of pizza was a journey fraught with disappointment, her deadpan critique painting a picture of a dish in existential crisis. The thin crust, the “bad” sauce, all culminating in a verdict that only a Chicagoan could deliver with such conviction. She has “higher standards.”
But then, the baklava—a dense, sweet denouement to our edible odyssey. Though it bore the weight of a thousand phyllo layers, it was still a beacon of hope, a sugary lifeline in the tempest of our meal. With each bite, the vestiges of lunchtime regret were washed away. I indulged in a second piece, a silent Opa! echoing in my heart.
As the cameras rolled and the warm overhead light cast an inviting glow over the assembled “round table insiders,” the conversation meandered through the heartland of country music, traversing its storied past, its pulsating present, and peering into its uncertain future. Someone kicked things off with a nod to the more recent titans of the genre, Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney, reminding us that once upon a time, country music’s worth wasn’t measured in album sales but in the miles and the stories it traversed across America’s vast expanse. Jay chimed in, his voice a testament to years spent in smoky bars and neon-lit studios, musing about the essence of country music as a tapestry of tales, where the narrative is king, and the chords are merely loyal subjects to the storytelling sovereign.
Alice pondered the seismic shifts in the landscape as back-to-back Black women topped the country charts, a phenomenon as refreshing as it was rare. The table mulled over the relevance of radio in an era where Tyler Childers might as well be a kindergarten teacher, and Beyoncé, with her genre-defying audacity, gifts mainstream country with a new playbook. Marcus, ever the self-aggrandizing philosopher, raised a glass to the blurred lines between country and Black music, their intertwined roots a hidden harmony awaiting rediscovery in the public consciousness. Holly, with a cutting sparkle in her eye, recounted tales of Oklahoma’s oil bust diaspora.
As the discussion veered into the neon-lit bar signs of bro-country and its subsequent implosion under the weight of Beyoncé’s influence, the panelists navigated the tricky terrain of cultural appropriation and authenticity. Mickey Guyton’s soul-stirring anthems became a beacon of hope, yet the specter of tokenism loomed large, a quota system in sheep’s clothing. The power dynamics of Nashville, once dictated by the iron fist of record labels and the insular echo of country radio, now danced to the tune of TikTok’s possibly democratic rhythm. But is it any good?
Jay, with the weary resignation of a seasoned record producer, likened his craft to capturing lightning in a bottle, a Polaroid snapshot of ephemeral magic that defies control or prediction. As the conversation meandered through the minefield of competition shows and their “glee club” mouthpiece alchemy, the insiders lamented the “veal-crate” confinement of genuine talent, their voices a chorus of concern for a future where AI might dilute the raw, unfiltered essence of country music into a pixelated shadow of its former glory.
And then we were done. With the sounds of some cover band banging out “Turn The Page” seeping into the set from the bar next door, “cut” was called and we began our breakdown waltz of equipment. The next thing I knew, I was outside loading the minivan marveling at the now-warmed air and sunshine, wondering if there might still be any adventure left in the day. But, as usual, as soon as the road began to roll under our tires, I was lulled into a daze, only coming back up for air as we approached the hotel - the hours of voices in my ears decompressing and settling like sand at the bottom of a New England kettle pond as I headed back up to the gear room to call it a day.
Down again and then back again on Monday!
PARTING SHOT
Things Are Moving Fast
While not on sound assignment, I’ve spent the last few weeks deep in Claude, Codex & Claude Code. It’s really amazing what’s possible now. I’m running a creative and personal framework you can get for yourself here. I’m building new AI pipelines for the show and have a roster of other ideas I’m iterating on. One is really big and will help get films made.
Overall, in my opinion, it’s all a major creative supercharger, and it occured to me that I’m literally co-creating with the type of agentic AI I had imagined in my Sundance Lab project “Zereoes and Ones,” only in 2009, a lot of people had a hard time imagining what we are living through now. The acceleration is accelerating.
So, once again, my advice is - get your hands on it.