20 Songs/1.3 Hours

Part of my perception of the rock music I like was that to make the pantheon of greatness there had to be hard core drinking and drugs involved and at least the hint of promiscuity. The stories of John Bonham’s binge drinking and choking to death on his own vomit or Jimi Hendrix overdosing on heroin or the partner swapping during the height of Fleetwood Mac’s popularity were all part of the muse that made rock music. That’s sad, really, and not true. Most of the songs on this list are either from professed Christian musicians or popular musicians who turned from sex and drugs and still made rock and roll. Sometimes in these songs a bit of the bite is gone, but the beauty blossoms. As I get older, I prefer more and more the beauty to the bite.

This list is about as country as I get, and that’s not really country at all – even with songs from Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and the like. It’s just southern. For me, there is some common denominator, something comfortable about the sound. The bands here seem to know what I mean. The Rolling Stones even give me a taste, and they’re not from the south (maybe south London, but I don’t know). I do know it’s a music I gravitate toward. Hope you do to.

I had a could of songs I wanted to use in a new Playlist and they both had Blue in the title – Willie Nelson’s Blue Hotel and Alexi Murdoch’s Blue Mind. Thought it might be fun to do an entire list of songs with Blue in the title. Did a little searching and deciding (no Blues, just Blue) and here’s the list I came up with.

No Mom, this doesn’t mean I’m feeling blue, and neither are most of these songs.

I originally made this playlist soon after I had taken my youngest daughter to see her first real concert – Robert Plant and the Band of Joy in The Woodlands. She loved it, and for me it was like Alt-Country Zeppelin.

There is one song from the Plant album Band of Joy and one from Patty Griffin – she was the band’s back up singer, lead singer on occasion. The rest is built around the vibe of those two songs. Enjoy.

Ten years ago I was already listening to about half of these bands, half I hadn’t heard of yet. That’s one of the reasons I like putting these lists together – they’re a story of where you’ve been, where you are now and (perhaps) a little glimpse of where you’re going.

I made some compromises here – all my Jayhawks favorites wouldn’t fit on one disk. So, I’ve included songs from all their albums to give a comprehensive picture of their music. But that means I’ve left off some of their great live songs in lieu of selecting my favorites. Anyway, this is a great list of songs from one of the bands everyone should get to know.

The songs on this list are from bands I saw live when I was in high school. And I can tell you, this ain’t no Glee list. I just laugh when my daughter gets so excited about the High School Musical movies on Disney Channel. I think the soundtrack of my high school experience is just a little better than anything Disney has to offer, and the memories of being there are infinitely better than some teenager singing on TV.