The Band (1969)

 

They seemingly came out of nowhere in 1968, looking like a pack of dirt farmers who'd gotten lost on their way to California to escape the Dust Bowl and playing music that sounded more suitable for 1868, on rudimentary instruments.  But the Band were in fact seasoned musicians, having backed country singer Ronnie Hawkins in Canada and having played for Bob Dylan when he first went electric, and they arrived with experience in interpreting and illuminating American pop forms in their music - though all of them except Arkansas-born drummer-singer Levon Helm were Canadians.  They also arrived with perfect timing; their rustic, sparse rock and roll was an antidote to the more extravagant  sounds coming out of the progressive psychedelic craze.  The Band pretty much put an end to flower power and influenced generations of rock musicians to adopt a simpler approach to music.

Music From Big Pink, their 1968 debut, is considered the gold standard for the Band's approach to music, but it was their self-titled 1969 second LP - commonly known as the Brown Album for obvious reasons - in which the group hit their stride.   The songs explore numerous facets of American culture and history and demonstrate how modern America is inextricably tied to its past.  From the gambling drifter in "Up On Cripple Creek" to the tired old man looking for peace in "Rocking Chair" to the unionized laborer of "King Harvest (Has Surely Come)," the Brown Album evokes a world of vast, rugged valleys, honky-tonk carnivals, workers carousing over a bottle of bourbon, and hardscrabble farms.  It's a slice of Americana that's more realistic than romantic.  The power of class privilege in "The Unfaithful Servant" and the hard luck kid in "Jawbone" speak to the injustice and misfortune of a tumultuous way of life. 

The music befits the sometimes abstruse lyrics, sounding creaky and weathered but delivered with a fresh veneer of cheekiness and measured production.  Bassist Rick Danko's subtle bass lines blend perfectly with Helm's understated drumming, and keyboardists Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson, respectively on piano and organ, work in concert as well as a first-class second baseman-shortstop team in baseball, their two-tiered approach rarely equaled in rock.  On top of all this are the expressive vocals - Manuel's haunting delivery, Danko's plaintive approach, and Helm's gentle Ozark growl all ecoking the raw country blues that rock and roll derived from.

While the Band can certainly adhere to tradition, they also can rock out ferociously, as "Look Out Cleveland," a warning to America of trouble on the way, demonstrates.  Guitarist Robbie Robertson, the Band's principal songwriter, foregoes his usual low-key approach to his six-string and pushes some riffs as heavy as the thunder the lyrics describe.  But Robertson's greatest moment on the Brown Album is possibly his greatest song ever, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down."  Told from the perspective of a poor Southern farmer, masterfully voiced by Helm, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" illustrates the plight of the working-class white Southerner laboring under the yoke of the plantation-owning aristocrats and suffering the effects of a civil war initiated by those same slaveholding plantation owners but still willing to defend their homes and their families against Northern aggression.  As a Canadian, Robertson knew Americans better than they knew themselves; "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" showed how modern America was (and remains today) captive to the legacy of the Civil War and how the United States can't put its past adversity behind as it faces new challenges.