ALBUM SPOTLIGHT: "No Depression", Uncle Tupelo

The importance of Uncle Tupelo is impossible to overstate. Did they invent what they became known for? Oh, sweet love of God, no. The mixing of punk rock swagger with traditional country and rural folk elements had become common enough (particularly in the LA music scene) that the term "cowpunk" was already common parlance by the mid-80s. And, especially early on, there were definitely cornerstones of the Tupelo sound that owed nearly everything to the by then stale cowpunk scene:

"Before I Break"



But in our haste to reach for antecedents let's not undersell the more exploratory side of the band's legacy, which came when they turned the volume down and got introspective. At that point they tended to jettison punk rock altogether and became something more akin to Neil Young acolytes:

"Life Worth Livin'"



Eventually Uncle Tupelo - Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and drummer Mike Heidorn - would outgrow these formative influences and forge something unique, something elemental, out of that decidedly un-chic foundation, but when No Depression was unleashed on the public in 1990 the trio was still in full on deconstruction mode, stripping cowpunk and Neil Young's patented proto-grunge down to the frame, dowsing it with half full cans of mismatched primer and taking it for a fast ride down the country lanes of Southwestern Illinois. It was that alchemy which would prove prophetic and vastly influential.

"Whiskey Bottle"



Lastly, it would be remiss not to mention that the title cut from Uncle Tupelo's debut, itself a cover of an old Carter Family song, became the moniker of the magazine No Depression, a bi-monthly publication first appearing in 1995 that arguably did more to define the nascent musical genre "Americana", as well as consolidate it into an actual "scene", than any other band or entity on the planet.

"No Depression"