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The 2004 RFT Music Awards

Continued from page 6

In 1993 three of the four Chicken Truckers -- Brian Henneman, Mark Ortmann and Tom Parr -- released their first record as the Bottle Rockets. They had added a monster of a bass player in Tom Ray and they'd started to find songs, especially "Kerosene" and "Got What I Wanted," that made no distinction between country and rock but had the classic feel -- the instantly singable melodies, the vivid imagery -- of what they loved about both genres. That deeper commitment to songwriting exploded on the Bottle Rockets' two best albums, The Brooklyn Side and 24 Hours a Day. Over the years, every band member has written songs, and they've been aided by important, honorary members Bob Parr (who played bass in Chicken Truck) and Festus high school teacher Scott Taylor. The breadth and success of their songs owe in part to that democratic mix of multiple voices, a rare thing on today's rock scene.

Over the past seven years, the Bottle Rockets' initial momentum has given way to fairly constant tumult. After losing both bass player Ray and their first major-label deal in 1997, the band's first record for a new joint, Doolittle, should have provided the fresh start hinted at in the title. But 1999's Brand New Year presaged only further confusion and frustration: Henneman's parents died late that year, the band soon fled Doolittle and, for the next three years, the Bottle Rockets gigged sporadically. The band's 2002 tribute to Doug Sahm seemed to herald a full-bore comeback; instead, a month after Songs of Sahm hit the streets, guitarist Tom Parr left after a notorious fight at the South by Southwest festival in Austin.

Blue Sky, the record that followed that chaos, is far more focused, resilient and hopeful than we had any right to expect. Even in the record's bluest moments, "Mom & Dad" (about losing one's parents) and "Baggage Claim" (about losing romantic innocence after 9/11), a sense of resolve and confidence runs through the melodies and through Henneman's voice. In its own way, that voice is as authoritative as Woody Guthrie's or even Chuck D's. He makes every word count, no matter if the subject is as trashy as "Gas Girl" or as stinging as "Smokin' 100's Alone." That's how the best rock & roll, from its roots to its wildest branchings, has always been sung and played. The Bottle Rockets have been making every song count for some twelve years. Here's to twelve more. -- Roy Kasten

Best Singer/Songwriter

Jay Farrar

"Caught between, between two worlds -- don't want to be, don't want to be fenced in." It's easy to believe Jay Farrar when he sings these, the opening lyrics of "Voodoo Candle." The song, nested in Farrar's 2002 solo debut Sebastopol, weights the album's middle like a fat crow on a wire. But the callused sound of truth is typical coming from Farrar. Friends, fans and casual listeners have long come to expect storytelling from Farrar, to hear from the strings of his guitar a tale of nonfiction concerning the best -- and worst -- of our sepia Midwest. Farrar pens a poetry that can be as lonely as it is full of life. Somehow, for more than a decade, he has managed to distill in song a people, an air and an ethic, to preserve in audible amber a sense of modern reminiscence, as if he possesses a Petri dish containing culture samples from both sides of the Mississippi.

Jay Farrar's canon of work is as evocative as it is sparse: a snapshot of squinting eyes deeply set in a head turned, sun glinting off the small hairs of a hand raised against the glare, a shadow cast over a freckled face. This is the sound of home, the sound of a place that is caught between two worlds, caught between the legacy of its history and the obvious necessity of an unflinching move forward. While the two worlds Farrar is caught between could be his natal Midwest versus the stylized daguerreotype of his songwriting, they could just as easily be his sense of self and art versus the soap-operatic schism of his former band, Uncle Tupelo, which birthed Wilco, Son Volt and a little thing called alt-country.

A strain of pride resides in Jay Farrar's voice, the voice of a second son claiming his own, stamping a path through twine and chicken wire, through plots of corn and soybean that maze through rural Illinois and Missouri. His songs also mark the literal path from band to band to solo career to founding his own label. Perhaps the two worlds resident in Farrar's songs are a small past and a big present, two plates with shifting tectonics strong and loud enough to reach beyond the experience of one man and speak for a people and a way of life, for a stretch of land that looks to St. Louis as its Big City. Perhaps his pride is not only understandable but laudable, a way for everyone who hears a Jay Farrar song to relate. Though we may build fences to distinguish our world and our place in it, none of us want to be fenced in. And at times it takes someone like Farrar, with words and music enough to overturn all of our wood, wire and brick, to remind us. -- Jess Minnen

Best Reggae/World Music

Murder City Players

The Murder City Players have been plying their trade for 21 years now. Oh, musicians have come and gone, though some, such as keyboardist Jeff Schneider and singer Mark Condellire, have been in for the entire run. Still, children have been born and legally purchased alcohol since the day the Murder City Players began bringing reggae grooves to local bars and clubs on a regular basis.

The history? Back in the early 1980s, there weren't very many American reggae bands anywhere. Every once in a while, you'd hear a punk or new-wave rock band try its hand at the Jamaican rhythms for a song or two, but these were few and far between -- until one such St. Louis band, the Felons, started playing more and more covers from singer Mark Condellire's extensive collection of reggae. Eventually the band split in two, with Condellire, Schneider and bassist Pete Sikich deciding to abandon the frantic rock approach entirely and cool down with deeper beats. They chose their ironic name after a newspaper headline declared St. Louis the murder capitol of the country the year before.

The Murder City Players were the right band in the right place, as Jamaican music started to become something more and more people wanted to hear. And they were -- and are -- damn good at playing it. They worked up a repertoire of obscure rarities from the island, plus originals that sounded as if they should have been on records for years. For a while there, the Murder City Players were one of the most popular working outfits in the area.

Trends come and go, but the Murder City Players just keep on keeping on. They've added back in a ska influence that had been left behind with the Felons, but other than that, they've stayed true to their reason for being all this time. Who feels it knows it and, as Bob Marley said, "One good thing about music/When it hits, you feel no pain." The Murder City Players don't allow no suffering in their presence. -- Steve Pick

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