Amplified

We can understand why songwriters take up poetry. The forms superficially match enough to make the transition appear easy. Poetry bestows some degree of artistic credibility (right, Jewel?), and if worse comes to worst, no one reads the stuff anyway. What we don’t get is why the short story proves inexplicably alluring to musicians. Sure, the brevity must be appealing, but given the narrative paucity of most pop songs, it doesn’t seem like the skill sets would sync up.

That’s what makes Amplified editors’ Schaper and Horwitz’s decision to stick to folk and alt-country musicians for this new anthology all the wiser. The genres already lend themselves to storytelling, and the musicians selected here—including Chicago legends Robbie Fulks and Jon Langford—have plied that trade for years. Veteran Boston folk singer Chris Smither opens the collection with the best story, and the one most conscious of its musical forebear. “Leroy Purcell” features a folk singer narrator, making his way across Texas, playing in churches and coffeehouses and the occasional NPR affiliate. When he gets stopped by the titular state policeman, Leroy asks him to give his critical opinion of a few songs he has on CD. As he makes his way across the Lone Star State, the narrator becomes entranced by the murder ballads playing through his speakers, and in a final reveal, the story becomes a classic in the genre.

As you’d expect, the characters who show up in roots music make their way into these stories, too. They’re drinkers, losers, drivers and backwoods mystics. Rhett Miller chimes in with a fine and amusing story about the same kind of heartbroken jamoke who has populated his Old 97’s songs for years. When the songwriters’ stories succeed, they contain the same echoing sadness that we expect from their songs.

Buy Amplified on Amazon.com

• More book reviews
• More Books articles