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'You can magnify beauty, take it apart, see how it got to be so damn pretty. You take a song and you look at it real close, and what happens? Well, first of all, you have to slow it down a bit to really hear what's going on.
And once you've done that, you find you don't need so many chord changes, you don't need so much activity. It just gets in the way.
Of the beauty.' -- From Make Me Laugh, Make Me Cry: 50 Posters About Souled American, edited by Camden Joy Think of Loretta Lynn traveling the South, pleading with DJs to spin her first record, sleeping in her car every night and babying her one good dress. Or of George Jones, dodging the drunken brutality of his father and playing on the street for coins, thrilled when he realizes that people like him. Such is the stuff that country music legend is built on. Then consider alt.country pioneers Souled American, who have generated a very different kind of musical legend. Over more than a decade and six albums together, the Chicago-based band has reversed the rags-to-riches process, becoming more obscure with each passing year.
They have delved ever deeper into their introverted musical vision, an organic kind of sound that is immune to trends or commercial success. In the process, their stark, eerie country-based music has become slower, sparer, and less available in every sense of the word. Bassist Joe Adducci and guitarist Chris Grigoroff, the core of Souled American, met in 1983 in Charleston, Illinois. Both of them grew up in households in which music was an obsession.
Adducci's mother has written country songs all her life; Souled American has covered her songs on two albums. Grigoroff's father ran radio stations when he was a child. 'In our house, music was everywhere,' Grigoroff remembers. 'I got into Dylan and Prine, people who were connected to life.
Music was not only entertainment but something else as well.' Twentysomething old-time country music fans were rare in the tractland of Illinois, and the two bonded over their love of the genre.
'Joe was the partner I'd been looking for all my life. We found the affinities for country music and a sense that we were able to create new music. We've always perceived ourselves as a rock 'n' roll band, but to a large degree country is at the core of what we write.' Guitarist Scott Tuma has also played on all of Souled American's records.
The band, then a four-piece with drums, began their recording career by churning out three albums -- Fe, Flubber and Around The Horn -- for Rough Trade in eighteen months from 1988-90. These albums, uptempo by the standard of their later work, presaged the alternative-country upsurge with drawling vocals, country and reggae-influenced rhythms, and an all-around freewheeling spirit. At that time, the band appeared on the commercial radar, touring and receiving press attention.
Their fortunes sank, however, when Rough Trade went bankrupt. Since then, the three domestic Rough Trade albums have been available only in used-record bins. Nonetheless, the members of Souled American bear no ill will.
'A lot of people had bones with Rough Trade,' remembers Grigoroff, 'but they let us make records.' Their sound, which had slowed progressively with each release, continued to evolve from country-tinged rock to something much stranger and more atmospheric. In Souled American's early days, college-rock audiences could, by and large, connect to the band's country-influenced rock sound, though they sold fewer records with each release. After their third album, however, their audience declined precipitously, and they ceased touring in the United States. 'There's not an audience,' Grigoroff says calmly.
'We saw the naked truth. We changed, and that was the downfall of our audience.' After Rough Trade, the band was unable to secure a deal with another American label. 'The honest-to-god truth is, no American label would sign us,' Grigoroff says. 'Souled American hasn't turned down much in its life.