Full Circle
Home fires

THERE'S A WHOLE part of being American that's lost on those of us who weren't weaned on the warble and twang of country music. It may not be such a bad thing, given the rather stressful politics that trouble many of the regions where "country" and "western" constitute the only two kinds of real music. Nowadays, Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)" and Darryl Worley's smash "Have You Forgotten?" have become pop-chart embeds thanks to their red-meat sentiments.

But sometimes the world of spurs through the heart and tears in my beer lets loose magic, as on Flowers in the Wildwood: Women in Early Country Music, 1923-1939 (Trikont). It collects rare songs from the interwar years, when women in the American South began to claim country music as their own. Heavy on the hillbilly, the comp features gems like Lulu Belle and Scotty's winsome "Wish I Was a Single Girl Again" and Louisiana Lou's charming "With My Banjo on My Knee Blues." They glisten with a vulnerability, devotion, and spirit that should be admired, even if one's ears don't perk up to yodeling.

The compilation also features the Carter Family's minor hits "Just Another Broken Heart" and "Walking in the King's Highway." Simple and direct, the harmonies bear all of the traits that made the group so influential to future folk, bluegrass, and rock musicians. You wonder what Belleville, Ill., high school buddies Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, and Mike Heidorn felt when they first heard the Carter Family in the 1980s. What was it about the Carters and about country music as a whole that moved guitarist-vocalist Farrar, bassist-vocalist Tweedy, and drummer Heidorn to name their band Uncle Tupelo's 1990 debut album after the Carters' depression-era spiritual "No Depression"? What did it mean for Farrar and Tweedy to harmonize, "I'm going where / There's no Depression," 60 years after Alvin Pleasant Carter had taught the song to his family under wholly different circumstances?

As the trio's Midwest slumped out of the 1980s, there was no reason to hold one's breath. Open farmlands were no longer signifiers of hope, factories went topsy-turvy, and the economy was still a bummer. But on the cusp of a new decade, perhaps Tupelo could rewrite their surroundings into something simpler and beautiful – something provincial. Perhaps they could will change, if only in their imaginations.

Uncle Tupelo's first three albums – No Depression, Still Feel Gone (1991), and March 16-20, 1992 (1992) – have recently been reissued by Columbia/Legacy with bonus tracks and early demos. The obvious hope is that the recent success of Tweedy's current band, Wilco, as well as a pretty robust alt-country scene, which includes Farrar's post-Tupelo band, Son Volt, will boost reissue sales for one of the first groups to successfully fuse country's sigh and punk's snarl.

From the almost obnoxious power riffing of "Graveyard Shift" to the forlorn rustle of "Whiskey Bottle," No Depression was the canonical moment of alternative rock's foray into country. Songs like "Screen Door" and "Flatness" described working-class Midwestern life with a tinge of achy nostalgia. The arrangements were rustic and bare, but with tiny muscular surges.

The band continued settling into their skin on 1991's Still Feel Gone, but it was March 16-20, 1992 that became their dark triumph. Here was an album grim with details of smudgy coal miners, Satan, too much whiskey, hardwood floors, and faith, with Farrar's bellows and Tweedy's whispers meeting in the middle. It brings its own cold, despondent wind. This was their most country album, a total negation of American dreams that embraced bygone folk heartbreakers like "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down" and the Louvin Brothers' nervous "Atomic Power."

Heidorn left the trio after that album. Onetime best friends Farrar and Tweedy tolerated each other for one more effort, 1993's Anodyne. Their version of Waylon Jennings's anti-Nashville, anti-glitz "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?" appears on the reissue.