Come Around, Sarah Jarosz (2011) or Where we learn Country Music isn't what I think it is....

Front Royal, VA to Galax, VA

There's not a great deal in the town of Front Royal, Virginia. Rows of gas stations, motels and a small sleepy town. The reason the place exists is Skyline Drive. A highway twisting and turning it's way through the Blue Ridge Mountains, ascending to 4500ft above sea level and allowing views across the pine forests and towns of Northern Virginia. Eventually we left the parkway and found ourselves on the "Crooked Road". The Crooked Road is essentially a network of local roads to small towns that are the heartland of "Old Time Mountain Music" or Bluegrass. This is real small town America, everyone greets you and people do genuinely play Banjo's in the street. As we parked up in Galax, Bluegrass poured out of the shops and people picked Banjo's from the shelves in music shops and proved themselves to be virtuosos. The place is alive with music, and it's an interesting town that is proud of it's heritage and despite the fact I'm not a huge fan of Bluegrass and country I loved the music that surrounded us. Unfortunately this came to a stop when we got in the car, the local radio was dominated by Country and not the energising, super techincal music that surrounded us but the stuff you instantly think of when someone says country. Hats, songs about cars and women and the same four chords. I understood the music in Galax and Floyd, VA but this doesn't bear any resemblance to that. I rapidly hooked up the IPod and found Sarah Jarosz's Come Around. She's a ridicously gifted college student from Texas, who's already on to a second album of beautifully written Country influenced pop, her music echoes the sounds of the South that I experienced in a way that the country on the Radio didn't and I came to a realisation- I just don't understand pop music be it N-Dubz or the Country on the mainstream radio stations of the South. I need music to be a little more real, a little less of a product. Be it the Banjo players of Galax or the beautiful songs of Sarah Jarosz there is country music that does that but the Commercial stations of Tennesse and Alabama don't seem to be that interested in it!