On my way to interview Josh Rouse, with his songs murmuring in my iPod, I wondered how best to ask the question that was really bothering me: Does this still matter?
Not "this" as in Josh Rouse, per se, or Nashville, his well-crafted new album, but "this" as in agreeably melancholy middle American sensitive singer-songwriter music. As in, folk-rock or indie-rock or alt-country or any of the other permutations of nice, smart, tuneful songs by nice, smart, tuneful writers, played on guitars and pianos and basses and drums, lovingly produced with nods to Brian Wilson or Owen Bradley or George Martin or Jerry Wexler or Berry Gordy or whatever the favored reference point happens to be.
I like a lot of this music, and I love some of it. But I love other music too, and increasingly it's that other music -- hip-hop and electronic music, but also the expanding world of digital reconfigurations (mash-ups and mixtapes and DJ sets), with its appetite for new sounds and its capacity for weaving together cultures and languages and past and present -- that rings bells. My favorite album of 2004 wasn't really an album at all; it was a mix by a British/Sri Lankan rapper and an American DJ that incorporated everything from crunk to the Bangles to Brazilian ghetto funk. The songs are great, but it's more than that: The music, the way it hopscotches genres, continents and decades, feels immediate, engaged and global. It makes even my favorite middle American music seem...too middle American. Limited. Parochial. And it makes me wonder if the present moment really lends itself to affable affluent Americans contemplating their latest heartbreak over one more set of tasteful arrangements and four-chord melodies.
It seemed like a reasonable question. But it makes its own set of assumptions about the music, and the people who make it and listen to it, and those assumptions don't necessarily reflect reality either. Take Josh Rouse, for instance.
The first place the easy pigeonholing of Rouse falters is in the simple matter of geography. Middle American he may be, but Rouse is, for the moment living far, far away. Last fall, he moved to Altea, a small town in the east of Spain. He enrolled in Spanish classes five days a week, and found a Spanish girlfriend.
"I had toured there last year and I really liked it a lot," he says, in an interview during a short stopover in New York after a holiday visit with his parents in the Midwest. He's wearing a gray sweater and matching corduroys, and his cropped, chopped hair makes him look considerably younger than the 33 he will turn this year. "I had a couple friends that were buying houses there, and the idea of it sounded really neat," he continues. Especially for a guy emerging from a divorce and looking to put some miles between himself and a city where he felt a little too familiar. He grimaces at the headline someone put on his new set of publicity materials -- "Rouse has run away from home" -- but doesn't deny that he's made a deliberate break with his recent past.
Which makes it either ironic or fitting, and maybe both, that his new album dwells in and on that past, starting with its title. Rouse didn't set out make a record about the place he lived for most of the last decade. During the recording sessions, he hadn't even decided what to call it. But returning from the west coast as he was finishing the disc, he heard the pilot say "We're landing in Nashville" and realized he wanted to pay some kind of tribute to the city.
"It was kind of where I was at, with living there for ten years and leaving," he says. "It was for all the people who live there and play music that's kind of outside Music Row or outside the commercial country thing -- kind of on the inside. The record is somewhat subtle and inside anyway, so I thought it was a nice name. And I always liked the name Nashville, I think it's an interesting name. I like the Robert Altman film. And it's kind of quirky, Nashville is a quirky place. So this represents a side of music you're not used to hearing."
It's true that Rouse's Nashville, released February 22 on Rykodisc, avoids most of the obvious associations with the name. But the city has for years nurtured a pop-rock underground, with guitars that jangle more than they twang and influences that range far into folk and psychedelia. Rouse, who like most singer-songwriters of recent vintage has sometimes been compared to Nick Drake, was a natural fit for the scene. At the same time, the enlistment of Music Row veteran Al Perkins on pedal steel gives Nashville a sound distinct from the strings-drenched arrangements and classic AM radio vibe of Rouse's 2003 album 1972. The songs don't come from country music, but they do sound like they live down the block and sometimes keep the windows open.
"The way I approached the record was we just did different sessions," Rouse says. "It was very song-y, almost folky in approach. I didn't really set out to go, 'OK, I'm going to go make another record.' We just recorded these songs here and there, and then it all kind of fell together." The "we" included his friend and producer Brad Jones, who also produced 1972, and longtime bandmates Curt Perkins, James Haggerty and Marc Pisapia, along with Daniel Tashian on guitars.
Rouse has a tendency to see things -- people and places -- in the rearview mirror. His first album, 1998's Dressed Up Like Nebraska, recalled his Midwestern childhood and adolescence. In 2002, Under Cold Blue Stars drew on observations of relationships, both his own and others', for a song cycle about domestic life. And 1972 was a conscious effort to recreate the soulful, groove-laden pop of the year Rouse was born.
Nashville is likewise retrospective, but in a less focused and maybe more personal way. "It's a more subtle record," he says. "But I think it's maybe something that people will be able to enjoy a little bit longer, because there's a different depth to the songs that's not quite so immediate."
It started as sort of a grab bag, with some songs reaching back four or five years. But it ended as a summing-up. The songs simmer with hints of Rouse's recent divorce, and the pedal steel moans evoke Music City at the same time they say goodbye to it. The songs are restless and contradictory, full of mixed messages. Sometimes Rouse is the sly guy on the make -- in "It's The Nighttime", he purrs to some object of desire, "We can go to your room/I can try on your clothes." Other times, he's lonely, or else uncomfortably accompanied.
"Why Won't You Tell Me What" charts a relationship's downward trajectory over the album's bluesiest shuffle. "Give me a sign, some kind of sign," Rouse begs, but he doesn't sound like he expects an answer. And in "My Love Has Gone", which opens with a mournful harmonica wail, it's all over but the finger-pointing: "Lost in a fog, I'm using spite to find my way," he murmurs, before adding, "I miss her smile, I miss her laughing in my face." It's a cocktail of longing and resentment, alone with the TV on, waiting for the phone to ring. It's also Rouse's favorite song on the album.
Elsewhere, he seems to have already left all that behind. "Winter In The Hamptons" is springy Brit-pop that reminds you Rouse's early influences included the Smiths (just as "My Love Has Gone" bears the mark of mid-period Cure). And with its repeated declaration that "We have stayed too long," it makes the record's clearest bid for moving on and away. The album closer, meanwhile, is a bit of lazy-day folkishness called "Life" that matches a Donovan-like lullaby melody to willfully naive lyrics: "Just sing a song, and feel all right/'Cause that's just life."
The album marks a break in another way: It will be Rouse's last for Rykodisc. Although he says he's been happy to have a home for the past seven years, he notes that the relationship hasn't been quite as steady or stable as it looks. The label's catalogue/reissue mission sometimes takes precedence over its roster of contemporary artists, and its limited resources mean limited marketing and support.
"It's been good, and it's been frustrating at the same time," Rouse says. "Since I've been there I've put out five records and there's been four different people running the company. They're always moving offices, and there's turnover. As far as what direction they're going in or who's running it, it's always been unpredictable."
If Nashville puts a bookend on a period of Rouse's life, it's been a prolific one. After growing up in Nebraska and then moving frequently in his teen years, he landed in Tennessee for college, attending Austin Peay in Clarksville. That led, eventually, to a 1996 move to Nashville, where Rouse worked the standard range of aspiring-musician jobs (parking valet, coffeehouse counterguy). While he was self-producing the songs that became Dressed Up Like Nebraska, financing it with his parking tips, a chance meeting at a Grant Lee Buffalo show garnered him a manager and, in short order, a deal with Rykodisc. Rouse, who had barely begun to play live and was still mostly unknown in Nashville, was suddenly being booked for tours of the U.K. and U.S.
Naturally, that also gave him higher visibility locally. His full-fledged entrance into the Nashville scene came via friendship with Kurt Wagner, the majordomo of the eclectic art-pop outfit Lambchop. Rouse and Wagner even recorded an EP together, 1999's Chester, and Rouse was soon immersed in the camaraderie of the city's indie crowd.
Nashville can be a hard place to win fans; "It's a tough town," Rouse acknowledges. "I'll go see some band that's in town that has all kinds of press, and there'll be 50 or 60 people there." But once they're won, they tend to stay won.
"I was always really supported, right from my first record," he says. "All the press and the community, they were like, 'This is great.' And it's been that way for all my records. I do really well there.
"It's pretty supportive in that aspect," he adds. "There's a lot of people there just trying to make a living playing music, and they all help each other out."
There was enthusiasm outside of Nashville too. Dressed Up Like Nebraska was well reviewed, as were its follow-ups, Home and Under Cold Blue Stars. And 1972, which found Rouse newly willing -- and able -- to explore his inclinations toward blue-eyed soul, brought his best reviews yet and closest brush with breakout success. Still, he struggled to separate himself from the neo-folk-rock pack. In the Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave 1972 a moderate endorsement while confessing that he initially had trouble telling Rouse apart from the other Joshes crowding the category: Joplin, Ritter and Kelley.
At that point, having logged four albums and an EP in just over five years, Rouse could have been forgiven for slowing down, retooling, reconsidering or just plain resting. Alternatively, he could have tried to leverage the last album's buzz into 1972 Part Two. But all of those options ran counter to his instincts.
"You know," he says, "looking at Tom Waits or Dylan or Neil Young, these people that kind of put out a record every year, I kind of like that. I kind of like the records that aren't the popular ones, the ones that have a lot of subtle songs. I've always been a fan of that anyway, so I thought, well, why don't I start doing that? I mean, I wasn't setting out to make some masterpiece record. You know, it's gonna be something when people look back in ten years and say, 'Well, you know 1972, but do you know Nashville?'
"There's not a lot of people doing that these days, you know? Really making a lot of records. I've been fortunate that Ryko's let me continue to make records and they've continued to put them out and I've been able to build an audience. So it's kind of like the '70s in the way that I'm doing it.
"Unfortunately," he adds, with a rueful laugh, "the singer-songwriter crowd isn't quite as big as it was then."
Especially not in the United States. Among the more interesting things in Rouse's career to date is that his most enthusiastic reception tends to come overseas. And here's where another chink opens in the insular-indie-Americana argument. Here at home, the territory trod by Rouse and his contemporaries has relatively narrow bounds and limited outlets: Americana radio stations, niche magazines (ahem), small to mid-size clubs, maybe an occasional late-night TV appearance. Even standard-bearers such as Wilco and Ryan Adams can't expect widespread commercial airplay or the album sales to match. So it's easy to think of the music itself as limited in scope and reach, the province of puritans seeking a haven unsullied by whatever constitutes the corrupt mainstream.
But in Europe, Rouse has found, there's much less distance between guy-with-a-guitar music and the mainstream audience.
"It's really weird," he says, "I just played Portugal a few weeks ago, and I do really well there. I did two sold-out theaters there, solo. And they have the catalogue, you know? They're into artists. They're into knowing all the songs; it's not like, 'Oh, I know the one song 'Directions' he has.' It's pretty cool. Where over here, I think it's more about, people will buy one record or they'll know a few songs. In Europe, I don't know why, but it's a bit more that they really follow an artist."
So if American singer-songwriter music connects better in Lisbon than Los Angeles, how parochial can it be? There are explanations, of course: most prominently, there is the commercial and cultural dominance of hip-hop, commercial country and post-grunge nu-metal in the United States, none of which cast quite the same shadow overseas. And while dance music in its various iterations regularly makes the charts in Europe, adult pop hasn't been sidelined as forcefully as it has in the States.
"There's a smaller window here," he says. "Over there, this record could do really well, I think. I mean, I could have a gold record in the U.K. It always seems like much more of a possibility, you know? Here, I just kind of do what I can do. I'm not on a major label, and I don't have someone sinking millions of dollars into my career or trying to get me on the radio. I don't know if the records I'm making really sound like..." he pauses, and laughs, "...the rest of the homogenized shit that's on the radio here."
Not that he's averse to getting on the radio, making videos, or any of the rest of it -- if it can be on his own terms. "I would be interested in doing that," he says, "if there's a company that would be interested in saying, 'Hey, this is what should be on the radio, and we believe in this' enough to where Beyonce can scoot over and hear some acoustic guitars and my weird voice on the radio."
You don't have to hate what's on American pop radio to see Rouse's point: From the perspective of a guy with a guitar trying to make a living, Europe seems like friendlier territory. His music might get filed under Americana, but its most comfortable affiliations are international.
As are Rouse's, these days. The move to Spain was prompted in no small part by his divorce, the effects of which Rouse is still absorbing.
"I'm still kind of going through it," he says. "I felt free, I felt liberated, but at the same time there's the guilt thing. You still have to get over the guilt of being in a relationship for a long time, not being there, and all the friends you've made together and all that. I don't know, I'm always the kind of person who keeps everything to myself and then subconsciously it ends up floating into a song somewhere."
When it does, it might be with a new vocabulary. After finding an apartment in Altea, Rouse initially used his new surroundings for songwriting inspiration. But pretty soon the culture outside the windows beckoned.
"When I first got there I really was inspired and I went through a week of not even leaving my apartment and just coming up with things," he says. "And then I got into my Spanish lessons, got into the siesta and the long lunches, and now I'm not doing anything." He laughs. "That's been some adjusting; I feel like I should be doing something all the time. I'm used to, here in America, that I should be going or I should be working or something, and they're just not worried about that. They're about enjoying life and enjoying food and the sunshine. It's interesting. It's been a good experience."
And not one he's in a hurry to conclude. Although he thinks he may move back to the States eventually, possibly to New York, for now he sounds like he's happy a long way from home.
"We're touring there for a month and then we're coming here for a month. I'll be back in Europe in May, and then in July I'll probably have some festivals and things over there.
"I think my career is somewhat focused over there right now," he concludes, "I just feel like I do better over there."
None of which really resolves my original question -- Does this still matter? -- beyond the obvious point that it matters to Rouse and, OK, to the people in several countries who come to his shows and buy his records. Which is maybe answer enough. And when I find myself after a few days with "Winter In The Hamptons" running continuously in my head -- without the iPod -- I have to concede that, maybe, it matters to me, too, in the same way the Sri Lankan rap and Brazilian funk do: as something I want to hear again.
ND contributing editor Jesse Fox Mayshark lives in New York City, where he changes diapers, sings "Hush Little Baby" a lot and sometimes writes.
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