Mississippi roots-rock trio brushes off their chops for first tour in years
By Terry Smith
Athens NEWS Editor
May 8, 2008
Once upon a time, my children, a new musical genre burst upon America’s pop-music scene. Dubbed alternative country, this genre’s “New Testament” period started with Uncle Tupelo in the late 1980s, though it traced its roots back generations in musical prehistory to such rock and country-rock performers as Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Buffalo Springfield, The Band, and for obscurists out there, Great Speckled Bird.
Among the heralded second wave of popular acts in alt.country’s early ’90s renaissance were the Old 97s, Whiskeytown, Starkweathers, Bottle Rockets, Robbie Fulks, Backsliders and Blue Mountain.
Which is a really long way of getting around to announcing that Blue Mountain, with its original three members, is playing the Casa Cantina tonight, along with NYC’s Andy Friedman and the Other Losers and Athens’ own Sad Bastards.
Of all the alt.country vanguard back in the day, Blue Mountain, along with Dallas’s Slobberbone and UT’s Jay Ferrar, had perhaps the crunchiest sound. And they still like to play rock ’n roll, along the roots-rocking lines of such stalwarts as Neil Young and Crazy Horse, the Replacements and Uncle Tupelo, according to band leader Cary Hudson, who spoke with The Athens NEWS Tuesday afternoon by phone from Chicago.
“We’re not AC/DC,” he acknowledged.
They don’t consider themselves country, notwithstanding the alt.country tag, even though Hudson, who hails from Oxford, Miss., has carved out a solo career recording his own brand of Southern country-rock. “We never set out to do alternative country,” he said. “We always set out to do rock ’n roll.”
Blue Mountain (with Hudson, Laurie Stirratt and Frank Coutch) originally got back together to perform some reunion shows in the summer of 2007, and then, according to Hudson, they decided to keep playing “after that went pretty well.” And so, the band is back together as a going concern, though Hudson acknowledged that with age comes some easing off on the gas pedal where pushing and marketing the band is concerned.
Yet, the years have done nothing to erode the band’s penchant for delivering entertaining and exuberant live shows, so the Casa should be rocking tonight.
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