Jason Crawford

No one has ever accused the Black Crowes of being innovators. Some say their sound is derivative, others say imitation. I find them somewhere in the middle depending on which record you're listening to. They've made one truly great album ("Southern Harmony and Gospel Companion") and a few really good ones, mostly towards the beginning of their career.

When I think of Duke Ellington, I think of Big Bands and his "Live at Newport" album from 1956. I bought "Money Jungle" based on the album cover and the fact that it was released by Classic Records. The cover photo shows The Duke and drummer Max Roach commiserating at the piano while the formidable Charles Mingus looks on in the background with his bass. It's in black and white. The music is not.

At this point, I'm not expecting Son Volt to release any experimental electro-pop or klezmer-inflected jam funk. Son Volt makes straight ahead country tinged rock and roll music. Almost exclusively. Jay Farrar has the voice for it. He's good at it. He's known how to do it for decades, and he doesn't seem to have any interest in changing his ways this late in the game. Besides, Farrar got a little risky with some alternate tunings and unorthodox song structures on some solo releases a while back, and no one was buying.

I came to the Iron and Wine game late.  I bought 2007's "The Shepherd's Dog," amongst the disapproving howls of his audience who seemed to think he'd abandoned his sound.  You'd have thought he'd started rapping or something.  "Around the Well" is a collection of B-sides and rarities that span the length of his career, and I can kind of see his fans' point in retrospect.

There are few popular recording artists that have their very own genre of music. I mean, you can probably count them on one hand. Tom Waits comes to mind. That's about it, really. There are probably others, but even someone like Neil Young can't be said to have his own genre. His music is instantly recognizable, and derivative of no one's work, but it's still rock and roll at the end of the day. Junior Kimbrough played the blues. But he didn't play the blues like anyone else played the blues. He played his own style of Hill Country Blues, and it varied so severely from his neighbors' styles that you could almost say he created something new. He created something new that sounds like it pre-dates time. It's a sound that's as complex as the region that spawned the artist. It's a place and a sound that time seems to have forgotten in a lot of ways.

What is there to say about Bob Dylan that hasn't been said already?  His fans pore over his every word, dissect every couplet, and assign their own meaning to an artist that has made a career out of evading definition.  Every release is studied and reported upon in chat rooms, barrooms, and living rooms.