Twang Town
Lansing's become a hot spot for alt-country
By Matthew Miller
NOISE
Detroit's got garage rock. Grand Rapids has metal. Lansing's got ... obviously, Lansing's got a lot of different types of music. But, increasingly, Lansing's got twang.
Twang music is country, but it's the country you won't hear on commercial radio. It's the Hank Williams honky-tonk, the Bob Wills Western swing. It's also Wilco and Whiskeytown. It's everything from old-time to cowpunk.
Over the last few years, Lansing has gone from having two or three bands that might fit into the twang category to having close to 10.
You can chalk that jump up to any number of things. Alternative country has been working its way slowly into the mainstream, and, if it hasn't exactly arrived, you'll find a lot more hipster kids listening to country these days than you would have a decade ago.
There's also that "Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack that everyone seemed to like so much, the one that raised the cultural cachet of so many traditional performers.
But those are national trends, and the turn toward twang is something you'll see far more in Lansing than in Detroit, Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor.
The fact is that Lansing was set for this to happen. For years, the city has had unusual access to twang music through two unique channels: the Elderly Instruments music store and the "Progressive Torch and Twang" radio show on WDBM 88.9 FM.
Twang on the air
"Progressive Torch and Twang" first went out over the Lansing airwaves in 1989, not long after WDBM, the Michigan State University radio station, went on the air. The person who created it was Jenni Sperandeo.
Sperandeo is now West coast national director of promotion, rock formats, for Virgin Records. She used to manage the alt-country band Whiskeytown along with a few others. It's maybe no surprise that she hit the alt-country trend early on.
"I didn't even realize I was a country music fan," she said. "It's not like I was raised in a super-rural, country-music-listening family. But I was really turned on by Uncle Tupelo."
Sperandeo left the show in 1992, and it soon passed on to an English graduate student named Jamie Depolo. It was Depolo who would make "Progressive Torch and Twang" a minor phenomenon.
When she started with the show, most of what she played was antique, classic artists who no longer had a place on commercial radio. But she soon discovered new bands who were taking country in a direction that was anything but Nashville, the pioneers of alternative country. And she made them her mission.
"One of the things that really became fun was introducing listeners to new bands," said Depolo, who now lives in New Jersey. "That became a big part of the show."
And it made a difference, to one band, at least. The Clutters were a mid-'90s group that mixed country stylings with punk sensibilities. Mark Deming was the singer.
"(The show) opened us up to the idea that this wasn't just something that a few people around here were doing, but it was something that was really growing nationwide," said Deming, now a writer for All Media Guide in Ann Arbor. "It was like, 'Yes, we're not the only ones.'"
Depolo soon carried her interest in new bands further. She brought them into the studio to play and started interviewing them on the air.
"We had the Old 97's come in. We had the Jayhawks come in. Anybody who came remotely through town, we'd try to get them up into the studio," Depolo said.
The promise of publicity -- and of audiences familiar with their music -- made Lansing an attractive place for many of those bands to play.
"A lot of those national bands, Lansing was about the only place they could play in Michigan and actually have an appreciative audience," said Fred Beldin, bass player for the Clutters and now a freelance writer in Seattle. "Not necessarily a big audience, but the people who showed up would be excited and looking forward to it."
Doug Neal joined "Torch and Twang" as Depolo's co-host in 1995. He still hosts the show, these days with Corrina Van Hamlin. Neal decided he wanted to take Torch and Twang's influence farther.
In 1997, the people involved with a local music magazine called Etch started booking shows at Mac's Bar in Lansing. Mac's is now one of the busiest music venues in the city. Then it was a mostly empty sports bar. Booking bands had started to change that, and Neal wanted in on the action.
"I just wanted to bring some cool artists into town," he said. "I started talking to them about a twang night and they said, 'Sure, let's do it one night a month.'"
Soon, one night a month seemed like far too little. Neal helped put together shows by bands like Whiskeytown (where Ryan Adams, not famous enough to be such a diva, cut the set short and literally had tomatoes thrown at him by fans), like Mike Ireland and Holler, like the Derailers. He and Depolo put on two-day "Torch and Twang" fests in 1997, '98 and '99.
"We got some bands we didn't think we could get,"Depolo said, "just because they had heard of (the fests) and heard of the show,"
The festivals ended in 2000 when Depolo left and Neal spent a summer abroad. By that time, though, local venues didn't need much encouragement to book twang bands. Lansing had its audience, it had bands like the Weepers and Steppin' In It. It would soon have more.
"'Torch and Twang' sort of seeded the ground around here," said Ray Aleshire, the showroom manager at Elderly Instruments and the front man for Those Delta Rhythm Kings. "It got young people listening to that kind of music."
The 'epicenter' of twang
Elderly Instruments in Lansing is a nationally known music store. It's one of the largest vintage instrument dealers in the country. It's a place where the curious can find steel guitars and dobros, ukuleles and Celtic harps, squeeze boxes and autoharps.
Elderly is also what Doug Neal called the "epicenter" of twang music in Lansing.
Elderly has almost 100 employees, most of them musicians. It's the place where many of them get their first serious exposure to twang music (and roots music generally).
Twang often plays in the store. It's there on CD and on instructional videos. The store has all instruments needed to play it. For the musicians who work there, the cumulative effect can be potent.
"If you go in a metal head, you'll leave a folkie," said Jason Portier, who plays bass with the Ingham County Regulars. Portier worked at Elderly for three-and-a-half years.
"I saw so many guys who went in and hated (roots music) and a couple months later they'd be into it. It's definitely a huge influence."
Almost every twang band in Lansing has some connection to the store. Honest D and the Steel Reserve, a honky-tonk band that formed in 2002, is one.
Three of the band's four members work at Elderly. Only one -- Joe Bakaitis, who played in the bluegrass band Hot Toe Mitty -- had played in a twang band before Honest D.
Singer Derek Smith and guitarist Jeremy Rapp said working at Elderly kicked them toward country.
"I didn't get into country music because of Elderly," Rapp said, "but it got me deeper into it."
Joe Wilson, a member of the local roots band Steppin' In It, said working at Elderly got him into different styles of twang music by providing him with the right instruments.
"I wasn't into Western swing until I got my double neck (steel guitar)," said Wilson. "I was like, "Who uses these?"
Of course, Elderly also provides a twang connection for the community at large. For many local musicians, the twang scene seems like a logical result of its influence.
"Kind of like, if you open up the cupboards in the kitchen and all the ingredients are there," Ray Aleshire said, "you tend to cook up the right stuff."
Published 2004-06-02
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