I’ve been thinking about the term “Americana” as it relates to music. Technically, it refers to “roots music” like R&B and various folk and country styles. The contemporary distillation is “alt-country”. All that is what it is… those are culturally agreed-upon definitions and I’m not going to dispute them. But when I think of the word etymologically, as music that is American, it seems to me that we could expand the definition if we wanted to. Everything from jangly San Francisco pop to the Wall of Sound to bubblegum to Broadway to rap to jazz to the arena rock power ballad could be Americana.

Music was our culture’s most robust art form for almost half of the 20th Century. It was a vital driving force, the way the novel had been before it, and visual art before that, and poetry before that. But I think those days are finally over; music is now what all of those other things have been for most of my life: ephemeral entertainment. Music reacts to cultural change, and no longer directs it. Audiences are too fragmented for any one piece of music to have the impact of a “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, or an Appetite for Destruction, or any Beatles record.

You could argue that the chef or the comedian is the new rock star, but I think the art form that has replaced music is stupidity. It’s the only thing for which you can bank on every American tuning in. We love to gawk at other people’s moronic behavior in any medium. Stupidity inspires us to create and collaborate, and most importantly, to share… in YouTube form, stupidity brings us all together around the Facebook Wall the way a hit single once brought us together around a turntable or car stereo.

Anyway, if music is no longer America’s cultural lifeblood – and sure, you can argue that it still is, though I wouldn’t – then it should be safe to look back on its reign from here, just after the end, as something that can be considered in its entirety. What was American music?

I have my opinions, honed by years of friendly (and sometimes not-so-friendly) debate with Mike Keaney and the Hanslick Rebellion gang; informed by countless priceless firsthand conversations with New York punk rockers and San Franciscan concert poster artists; colored by my experiences in the music business of the 1990s and early 2000s, and by my status as a white male, a citizen of the East Coast, and a member of Generation X. My perspective may be useful, but it’s probably also sort of Cubist.

Say what you want about the “attention span issues” of Millennials, but the fact is that when they choose to engage with a subject, they go deep. They’ll use the Internet to its fullest potential, tracking down and consuming every morsel of information. I learned this when hanging with the Avi Buffalo crew, who pissed all over that stereotype about the intellectual indolence of Gen Y. Those guys are passionate about music and so they want to hear it all – every note ever recorded. And they want to know everything about how it was made. Avi and Sheridan are on the obsessive, beautiful quest of the true scholar, and they see music history in a context that’s as different from mine as mine is from that of someone who attended the first Television gig at CBGB.

Avi, Sheridan and I had been talking about doing some recording together… making it an adventure, trying out some of America’s legendary studios like Muscle Shoals, EastWest or Ardent. Studio recording is arguably a dying art, and in the past decade classic studios have been disappearing faster and faster. As we brainstormed potential destinations, I thought about how each studio represented a time, a region, and a sound. I began to categorize newly-written songs by appropriateness for a particular studio. A tune that might lend itself to lush sonic experimentation would get earmarked for Dreamland. Something basic, grooving and soulful, for Muscle Shoals.

We settled on SugarHill in Houston, Texas for our first recording safari. Originally known as Gold Star, it’s the oldest continually-operating studio in the United States. The air in that room has gotten shook up by all manner of hillbillies and bluesmen, by the Big Bopper and the 13th Floor Elevators. SugarHill isn’t synonymous with a sound, but the studio’s output represents a spectrum of styles that are all genuinely American.

All across the country, musicians of generations past – the very players who helped to develop their region’s signature sound – are still kicking around and quite vital. As a guitar/keyboard/drums trio, we lack a bassist, so that’s great for us… a local bass player can be our wild card, anchoring two Californians and a New Yorker to whatever city, style and era we happen to visit. As regards such, our trip to SugarHill went better than we could have imagined: the Texas bassist we drafted into Sevendys was Chuck Rainey.

We recorded basic tracks live in the studio, all in one room, instruments bleeding together. The sound was incredible. And here’s what it looked like:

The result: four songs, two of which are now available for listening and downloading. The other two are being pressed to 7″ vinyl, and we’re currently planning our next session. Working with Sheridan and Avi has me feeling so musically rejuvenated and excited… this is the most fun I’ve had playing in years! And there’s so much to consider, and to learn, about the history and fabric of American music as we embark upon this adventure. I almost feel like I’m getting to experience everything from multiple angles – through my own eyes and ears and simultaneously through the perspective of my other-generational partners. This is the first rung of a whole new ladder.

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