Dirt Music [CRACKED]

Luther Fox, a loner, haunted by his past, makes his living as an illegal fisherman -- a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, he grew melons and played guitar in the family band. Robbed of all that, he has turned his back on music. There's too much emotion in it, too much memory and pain. One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each other no matter how dangerous it is -- and out on White Point it is very dangerous. Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature. Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion -- and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.

Dirt Music

A brilliant excavation of an obscure piece of music history, Steve Earle's I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive is a ballad of regret and redemption, and of the ways in which we remake ourselves and our world through the smallest of miracles.

Based on the award-winning Australian novel by Tim Winton, DIRT MUSIC follows Georgie (Kelly Macdonald), the restless live-in girlfriend of widowed local fishing legend Jim Buckridge (David Wenham). She's become a substitute mother for his two boys. But then she becomes intrigued by local "dirt" musician Lu Fox (Garrett Hedlund), whom she spots poaching from their lobster traps. In a small town where secrets spread faster than germs, Georgie's attraction to Lu makes him a target.

Stillwater, Oklahoma is a one-of-a-kind historic college town. The spirit of the American Midwest is alive and well here, and a captivating way to experience it is in the tradition of Red Dirt music. Named after the richly colored soil in the state of Oklahoma, live Red Dirt bands can be heard often in the bars surrounding Oklahoma State University.

The city of New Braunfels has a vibrant music scene that consists of many parts. Over the past few months, I have chronicled the purchase of Gruene Hall, KNBT-FM switching to the Americana format and the rise of Robert Earl Keen and Lyle Lovett. This month I want to talk about the Red Dirt music scene that originated in Oklahoma in the Stillwater area.

The name comes from the color of the soil in Oklahoma and got its start in the bars around Oklahoma State University. A few years after Keen, Lovett, Pat Green and Cory Morrow made their mark in Lubbock and College Station, a new set of musicians were playing the bars in Stillwater.

Bob Childers, a local singer, songwriter, is known as the Father of the Red Dirt music scene. Childers lived in an old two-story house called The Farm on the outskirts of town. Local musicians would hang out together and write songs.

My critics say that Red Dirt music is simply Americana music recorded by bands that originated in Oklahoma. I disagree. The Oklahoma Red Dirt sound was built by acts like Childers, Skinner and LaFave, then expanded to include a more southern rock sound.

Bands like The Great Divide, Jason Boland and Cross Canadian Ragweed were all influenced by the older artists but put their own spin on the music they created. It has been described as a mix of folk, rock, country, bluegrass, blues, Western swing and honky tonk, with even a few Mexican influences.

Last month, a few dozen songwriters/performers converged under and around that tent for the filming of a mini-documentary about red dirt music, the uniquely Oklahoma genre that mixes rock, country, folk and more. The day after the private story-swapping and jam session, the musicians played as duos at a public music festival at four Stillwater venues, where more filming took place.

Red dirt is the first genre chronicled for a new online docu-series called Red Bull Roots. The series will travel to various parts of the country exploring the origins of different genres of regional music, with mini-documentaries for each one eventually being collected on a dedicated website.

Cooper and his buddy Danny Pierce, now a college professor who flew in from Tennessee for the mini-doc, lived there while attending Oklahoma State University. While Cooper and his fellow musicians penned and played songs for hours on end, Pierce became the caretaker and constant at The Farm.

The Rangers, Childers, LaFave and their contemporaries became mentors to the next generation of red dirt players. Cody Canada, Stoney LaRue, Mike McClure, Jason Boland and Monica Taylor were among those who gravitated to The Farm in the '90s. Taylor even lived for a few months under a tarp behind Childers' trailer house.

Red Dirt music may have come out of Oklahoma, but it also grew and evolved in Texas. There are arguably two different versions of it depending on which state it comes from, but this song shows just how connected it all is.

Pat Green is a Texan who embraced the Red Dirt style and built quite a name for himself with his own fearless musical style. A song like this is good advice because he reminds you that sometimes you should just let loose and enjoy your life!

Among conversations I have had with many people in the scene on the subject, I also had the opportunity to talk with John Cooper of the The Red Dirt Rangers about what red dirt is and the history behind it all.

Childers and Cooper, along with Jimmy Lafave, Tom Skinner, Greg Jacobs, Chuck Dunlap, Randy Crouch, Ben Han, Brad Piccolo and Steve Ripley, were some of the first musicians on the scene to be a part of this collective experience. Although these are some of the more well-known names from that time, this (of course) is in no way a complete list of the musicians who were a part of the scene, which largely included The Farm.

I can only imagine the magical musical nights around fires that happened with all of these people at The Farm. It became a musical commune of sorts; hosting more musicians in one sitting than any other place could offer. The lyric ideas and tunes being thrown around, layered together piece by piece, with many different creative minds in the mix must have been an incredible experience to witness.

The sounds and songs of the first red dirt pioneers were folksy and bluesy with a tinge of rock and a tinge of country. They were mixing up genres in a way few had done before, which actually set the foundation for this large red dirt umbrella that so many people fit into, yet may not sound anything alike.

Although Woody Guthrie is usually the main name given when asked who influenced these pioneers with their music, there were many more that had a hand in helping to form the influence for the red dirt movement.

A road trip to Stillwater from Plano is a simple four-hour drive north. If your road tripping in the fall, you might find yourself at an Oklahoma State University football game, but another claim-to-fame is their Red Dirt music scene.

It's a question we get asked often: "What is Red Dirt?" Those of us who live and breathe the music can spout off names such as Jason Boland, Mike McClure and Cody Canada, and sing along to songs like "Carney Man, "Oklahoma Breakdown" and "Good Lord Lorrie."

According to Wikipedia: "Red Dirt Music is a music genre that gets its name from the color of soil found in Oklahoma. Although Stillwater, Oklahoma is considered to be the center of Red Dirt music, there is a separate Texas Red Dirt subgenre as well."

Okay... But it's so much more than that. Red Dirt is the music we listen to as we float rivers, drink beers and drive backroads (not at the same time). We walk down the aisle to it, hell we make babies to it, name them after our favorites -- then we make those babies listen to it too. We still buy the albums, go to the concerts, drive hundreds of miles to get into the festivals. It belongs to us, it belongs to the people.

The "sub-genre" really hit its stride in the 2000s. Fittingly, and almost seemingly by divine intervention, the three biggest bands at the time offered fans a superb balance of music. There was something for everyone. Cross Canadian Ragweed was rock, Stoney LaRue had more the folk flare, and with his steel guitar and fiddle, Jason Boland brought a more traditional country side to Red Dirt. 041b061a72