My Year in Music: Grayson Haver Currin

Most Played Song of 2013: Wooden Wand, "No Bed for Beatle Wand/Days This Long". I suppose I had a head start here, since an early copy of Blood Oaths of the New Blues—the first of the two albums James Jackson Toth released in 2013—arrived well before the close of last year. I remember driving to my grandmother’s for family Christmas in 2012 and listening to this record on repeat, attempting to decode Toth’s tales of bank-robbing families and kids bound for ruin. For the last 13 months, I’ve come back to its first song—which actually conjoins two tunes with an organ drone—again and again. It’s a love story told with requisite worry, where turning yourself over to something bigger than you becomes both a relief and a dare. Toth attaches asterisks to his optimism but crowns his anxieties with the realization that he’s finally where someone can keep him from “freaking out.” I listened to this song at dawn or shortly thereafter this year more mornings than I’d like to count; it felt, and feels still, like a moment of very honest assurance, a reminder that times have been been worse before and that—if you’re lucky—maybe they’ll never be that way again.

An Old Album I Discovered/Rediscovered This Year: I’d heard the name Betty Smith mentioned many times in connection with Appalachian folk music, but I kept it like a reminder to, at some point, actually seek her out and listen. This summer, while idly browsing the used section of a local store, I found a copy of Smith’s 1975 album for Folk-Legacy, Songs Traditionally Sung in North Carolina, complete with the 20-page book of annotations she’d written for the release nearly 40 years before. The price seemed high, but I’m glad I made the investment. Smith is still alive, but even then, her voice seemed ancient, delivering familiar ballads with an almost alien sense of wonder. Her "Black is the Color" is a gentle, mesmerizing wonder; I like to ponder her hypothetical reaction to Patty Waters’ version, recorded exactly a decade before.

Musical Highlights: Since we met, my wife and I have been a bit like glue. When we’re not in our offices, we’re generally together, whether that means dinner or rock shows. Early in our relationship, I asked her to go see William Tyler, a Nashville guitarist with a new record out, open for Yo La Tengo. She agreed, because that’s just what we do. “You didn’t tell me he was good,” she scolded me, slack-jawed, a few minutes into his set. I think that’s when she started to trust me, perhaps? In June, I was slack-jawed, too, when I watched her walk down the aisle of the rock club where we’d met, as William sat tucked beside the stage, playing our processional. Our family and closest friends watched and listened, and it was a perfect moment. 

Otherwise: Facilitating a meeting between Jason Spaceman and John Cale, then talking to Spaceman while Cale waited (patiently) in the car to be taken to his hotel room. Seeing CocoRosie perform for the first time in many years and loving every surreal minute of it. Watching John Darnielle cover The Grateful Dead, George Jones, Ace of Base and "The Cat Came Back" at a NARAL Benefit. Seeing Richard Buckner silence the same room solo, several months later. Watching the wonderful ASG christen a new metal club in Raleigh. Seeing Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn perform in a hotel suite for a crowd of a few dozen. They played Washington Phillips’ "What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?" and the traditional “Am I Born to Die?” Based on that last selection, I convinced Washburn to buy Current 93’s Black Ships Ate the Sky. Dream collaboration?

Musical Lowlights: Honeymooning in Jamaica, only to find that, according to Jamaican resort culture, Bob Marley is the only Jamaican recording artist of all time.