by G. Jack Urso
From the Aeolus 13 Umbra YouTube channel. Use full-screen mode to better view the lyric captions or click here for the transcription.
“Old Country
Prison Work Death Song (The Existential Hoedown),” is a tribute of sorts to
Depression-era songs about the impact of a collapsed economy on the most
vulnerable among us. The start of the Depression was a time with few government social services, no welfare, no food
stamps, and no health insurance for the unemployed (and barely any for the employed), so the broken often only had themselves and other broken people to rely on for
help. This resulted in poverty, misery, and disease for millions, but provided
those who survived with a keen understanding of the human condition — we are only as
human as the humanity we extend to others.
This project attempts to create a “found artifact” of the past — as if someone discovered an
old radio and instead of picking up one of today’s channels it reaches into
the past and tunes into a low-power AM broadcast not of Nashville’s
finest, but rather a couple old guys scrounging up a few bucks for performing on
the local radio station. The sound is raw, and the vocals a bit off-key and not
always in synch with the clanging washboard, yet the lyrics reflect a sentiment expressed in many songs from the era, such as “Brother, Have You Got a Dime?” and “Paper Moon.”
The recording
was completed with a Shure SM58 microphone connected to a TASCAM digital audio
recorder. Audacity was used to edit the recording and add some reverb. A
low-volume amplifier sound was added in
the background to emulate the hiss often accompanying these old radios and
gives the audio some texture. The final version was assembled on Filmora.
Special thanks to
Monty Von along with Poorer Richard on the washboard for their patient participation in the performance.
A full transcription of the lyrics is available at Aeolus 13 Umbra: Old Country Prison Work Death Song (aka The Existential Hoedown).
● ● ●