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Now am I the kind of sucker that is going to go and buy a record by an aged country singer just because some new upstart rock superstar produced her new record? Am I the kind of guy that likes to discover an old talent and then share my efforts with all my friends on my make believe on-line music magazine? (Its really cool, I just got an interview with the VanBondies). Well I was a guy that wasnt going to buy this new record by Loretta Lynn, (did you know that Jack White produced it?), okay I honestly wanted to maybe borrow someones copy, not just buy it blind, so I was in luck that not long after it came out I was shopping in the Electric Fetus and one of the considerate employees was spinning it. Not unlike that scene in High Fidelity, I approached the desk and had to ask,
Is this the new Loretta Lynn record?
Yeah, he said, knowing he had me.
Now this record, Van Lear Rose, gives Loretta Lynn to those of us who have heard of the movie Coal Miners Daughter, but probably havent seen it. I am happy to have her in my life, even if it took the White Stripes to bring her to me. Just like it took Rick Rubin to wake a lot of people up to Johnny Cash, (throw me in that pile), Jack White has helped to make a modern Loretta Lynn record. It sounds as if two groups of muscians collided in Nashville to back Loretta up on this. The First is a group of her kin-folks from the backwoods, who can play the shit out of everything from a set of spoons to lap steel all the while watching a kettle of corn boil up. The second is an Econoline van load of grease balls that Jack drove down from Detroit, sleeping on their jazzmasters and Big Muff pedals. After a few helpings from the corn squeezins they got together and got behind this voice and these songs that tell us of Womens Prisons, Heart Break, Little Red Shoes, and the glories of living far from the city, High on a Mountaintop. This record takes Loretta Lynn out of the old country star category into the cross-cultural legend one. Lets get out and find more of these legends before we lose them.
Jeremy Oswald
August 22, 2004
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