A friend and I were chatting a couple of weeks ago about a shared love of authentic American music, and Iris DeMent’s name came up. I’ve never seen her perform, but remember her from appearances on early A Prairie Home Companion days, when Garrison Keillor was genuinely entertaining and gently funny, before he became infected with what I refer to as “David Letterman disease,” which presents with the same sort of symptoms, in which what was once entertaining, funny and endearing becomes nasty, bitter and off-putting. (Keillor is walking some of his worst excrescences back these days: I guess signs of impending mortality will do that to a guy, although I don’t think Letterman’s yet received the memo.)
Iris DeMent is the youngest of fourteen children, born in Paragould Arkansas and raised mostly in California, where she began her entertainment career at churches and revival halls, singing with her siblings.
Her first album, Infamous Angel, released in 1992, features Our Town, the first song she wrote, and one which was inspired by a road trip through the often boarded-up towns of the American Midwest. It’s just as good today as it was then, and even more relevant. Here it is, Iris, accompanied by a couple of friends:
A love-song to a way of life that’s fast becoming just a distant memory in the minds of America’s oldest citizens.
Some may also remember it from the last episode of the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure, a quirky little series about an neurotic, newly qualified Jewish doctor who’s sent to the fictional town of Cicely, Alaska as part of a scheme to repay the state for underwriting his medical education. He’s completely out of his element among the town’s eccentric residents, all of whom wormed their way into the hearts of the viewing public between 1990 and 1995, when it was one of the most popular shows on television. As often happens, the show lost its way a bit towards the end, and was cancelled after six seasons. Our Town was sung over the closing credits. And like the singer, I had “tears in my eyes.” Because, just as in the song, “our town” had become “my town.”
It always does.
Argh. As the saying goes, “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.”
Except when it is.
BTW, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the United States. I suspect that (in the curious way memory sometimes works), what got me going today was this Telegraph article about the demise of the small-town English high street, which is accompanied by this photo:
Ugly. And sad.