Tangled Up In A Deeper Well
Yes, I purchased TWO vinyl copies of Kacey Musgraves’ latest album, ‘Deeper Well’. Today’s record buying is a far cry from the times of my youth when I could purchase the hits of those days for $5.99 or even $4.99 off the racks at Music Land, Woolco, or my favorite place, The House Of Sight & Sound which doubled as both record shop and head shop. Records were unanimously pressed on black vinyl back in the ‘hey day’ of the 80’s. Special picture discs were rare, and when found, went up on one’s wall and rarely played. If luck was to be had, the record you bought had lyrics or a poster included within the inner sleeve.
Today, with the resurgence of vinyl in full force and an entire generation experiencing the drop of a needle into pressed vinyl grooves, resulting in the organic sounds of analog fidelity for the first time, vinyl purchases are an entirely different game. $30 is pretty much the baseline price for most vinyl albums. Lyrics are a given, and if they aren’t included, you’ve been ‘ripped off’. And, in the case of sleeves and colored vinyl, the game is quite creative. For ‘Deeper Well’, I have two different colored vinyl variants and the inner sleeves are scented around central themes of her album. Fancy stuff. 2024 has already seen tons of great musical releases hit the market, but ‘Deeper Well’ sticks out, high above possibly all of them.
I first heard Bob Dylan’s 1975 masterpiece, ‘Blood On The Tracks’ 16 years after its release. Living in a picturesque, second story stone apartment within midtown Memphis, my quarter-century old self thinking I might just have it made with a job promoting a band within the Christian music industry, I added a copy of ‘Blood’ to a CD collection where the ‘D’ section was anchored with ‘Oh, Mercy!’, ‘Bringing It All Back Home’ and ‘Infidels’. Dylan had won a place in my heart after hearing him in the peripheral of my Nashville college radio days and seeing him perform, once at Nashville’s Starwood Amphitheatre, (Literally, the only thing he said during his set was ‘Goodnight, thank you’.) and another time straw hat clad, opening the set with Z.Z. Top’s ‘My Head’s In Mississippi’ at Vanderbilt’s Memorial Gymnasium. A trip to the record store lured ‘Blood On The Tracks’ into that growing mix of Dylan, indelibly making its mark on my soul which continues to be visible to this day. I had never listened to this album before. On that fall, gray Memphis Saturday, with my balcony doors open and welcoming the cooling delta breeze, I hit play on my Sony five disc changer: “Tangled Up In Blue”.
For me, a test of a great album is how the first listen impacts you, and if that first listen makes it all the way through the album without stopping. This listen did. 30 years later, ‘Blood On The Tracks’ has been one of my favorite albums. Much like Memphis, I find ‘Blood’ to be palpable, unique, sparse, yet expansive. I have often told people that if you blindfolded me, chained me up in a box, and dropped me in the middle of Memphis, I would know exactly where I was. I think similar about ‘Blood On The Tracks’. I can hear any part of that album, foreground or background and know that sound, know that feeling. It is unique, and has been such since my first listen of it. The soul grinding stories from the first chords and lyrics of “Tangled Up In Blue” through the river’s arteries pumping out “Simple Twist Of Fate”, “Meet Me In The Morning”, and “Shelter From The Storm”. ‘Blood On The Tracks’ is, to me, a river of life.
Technologies have advanced these days. CD changers have given way to virtual ‘play’ buttons on our phones. Headphones connect to those phones with no wires, magical witchcraft bringing the music into your soul. I hit that ‘play’ button on Kacey Musgraves, ‘Deeper Well’ and there was that feeling: Sparse, yet expansive, connection with the Earth, something way different than most things. I listened all the way through, and again, again, again.
My vinyl copies arrived Saturday. One on my doorstep and the other I picked up from my local record shop, Seasick Records here in Birmingham. With all the technology, I have enjoyed dropping the analog needle on the ‘Transparent Creme Vinyl’ version of ‘Deeper Well’ today. It has accompanied me at work, and spun to the side’s end at least eight times. I don’t believe I will ever tire of the spellbinding flow of ‘Cardinal’ or the magic of ‘Jade Green’. The album was not written for me but I feel connected to it, much like being a part of a mycelium, which has a deep place within the threads of this record. The Shane McAnally imprinted ‘The Architect’, well, I’m not sure I can help someone who doesn’t relate to the awe inspired questions brought out by this tune.
Kacey Musgraves is 35. Bob Dylan’s age during the ‘Blood On The Tracks’ cycle? 33 turning 34. I have said to a few folks that ‘Deeper Well’ is to Kacey what ‘Blood On The Tracks’ is to Dylan. I felt that connection upon my first listen of ‘Deeper Well’, before I made the connection of their similar age in life at the times of these albums.
‘Early one morning the sun was shining, I was laying in bed’1 (that day happened to be this past Friday when ‘Deeper Well’ released).
Opening lyrics of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’, the opening track of Bob Dylan’s “Blood On The Tracks”. Bob Dylan, Copyright Ran’s Horn Music, Universal Tunes.