30 Years after: Uncle Tupelo's "No Depression"

June 22, 2020 9:21 AM

Can’t Look Away: Musicians, Writers, and More Reflect on 30 Years of Uncle Tupelo’s ‘No Depression’. Thirty years (and one day) after Belleville, IL's Uncle Tupelo released their seminal alt-country album "No Depression", several current artists and writers talk about discovering the album, what it meant to them, and how it influenced them. Features Lilly Hiatt, Patterson Hood (of the Drive-By Truckers), Rhett Miller (of the Old 97s), Ben Nichols (of Lucero), Eric Earley (of Blitzen Trapper) and many more.

Bonus live videos: Lounge Ax, Chicago Il. 11/8/92 and their final show May 1, 1994 at Mississippi Nights in St. Louis.

posted by Ufez Jones (11 comments total)

Also Patterson Hood: Now, About the Bad Name I Gave My Band
posted by box at 9:55 AM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for making me feel very old. 30 years.
posted by octothorpe at 10:45 AM on June 22, 2020

Down here 30 years knocked on my screen door and fled in a second.
posted by shjun at 11:03 AM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

I lived nearby these guys in HS. Used to see them in the same music store. No Depression stands up. Killer record.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:35 AM on June 22, 2020

What kind of a*****e would name his band Drive-By Truckers? A valid question, if you ask me. I'm the person responsible for it.

This drives me nuts. Either spell out "asshole" or say "poltroon" or something like that.
posted by thelonius at 11:50 AM on June 22, 2020

You can't say "asshole" on NPR; David Brooks would get the vapors.
posted by octothorpe at 2:38 PM on June 22, 2020 [2 favorites]

Uncle Tupelo's sorta but not reunion in Mexico, as told by Jeff Tweedy

The interview where Jay Farrar gets all chatty, 1989
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 4:55 PM on June 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm just really surprised that two exceptional talents arose from one band. That's getting pretty rare these days. It's also interesting that they are considered the godfathers/re-inventors of alt-country when Steve Earle's Copperhead Road came out 2 years before No Depression. Talk about a guy way ahead of his time.

They also both seem like moderately toxic people, and have constantly had well-documented personnel problems with their respective bands. Whatever. I'm still impressed by what they wrote and sad how true it still is.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:58 AM on June 23, 2020

A friend and I did a podcast where we walked throughthe entire Uncle Tupelo catalog song by song (I posted it to MeFi projects back in the day under the username I was using then). It was a pretty wild and rewarding experience, especially coming to grips with the No Depression stuff and seeing just how much Minutemen there always was in the band's DNA. It really made me think that to some extent, their country cred rested on the accents they sung with and a couple of cover choices they made.
posted by COBRA! at 8:34 AM on June 23, 2020 [3 favorites]

Anodyne is probably my favorite but No Depression holds up amazingly. It never really sounded of its time in 1990 so it hasn't aged the same way more trendy sounds have. I wish that I would have had a chance to see them live. I've seen Wilco a few times and Tweety solo once and Son Volt a few years ago. I love Jay Farrar's songwriting but the Son Volt show I saw was so perfunctory that I felt a little ripped off.
posted by octothorpe at 9:38 AM on June 23, 2020 [2 favorites]

The first time I saw Uncle Tupelo they were playing at a fraternity party in Columbia, Missouri. 1988. The frat boys called them the "Tupesters." I was there because the older generation of college radio staff knew Tupelo was going to be there, and they dragged me and the other new DJs, and we went and we watched them play the outdoor show and from then on I learned to trust the older DJs and radio staff. Over the years, I met the band dozens of times, saw them play countless shows, but didn't go to seem them on the same bill with Nirvana in St. Louis, to my regret. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for their music. We stuffed the the CMJ ballot box one year and we felt like we were the main reason they topped that year's best-of rankings. But I listened to some of the Uncle Tupelo albums recently and wished I hadn't. It was thinner than I remembered, and as COBRA! says, the country twang sounds fake, and now as a linguist I know people in Belleville, Illinois, don't talk like that, much less sing like it. I like their covers now more than their originals and what I know now about the way some of the band have treated each other, and other people, weighs heavily on my heart. I do sing about a "three-hour-away town" in the shower now and again (that town is Columbia, Mo., by the way), and I've seen the "liquor and guns, the sign says quite plain" at Shakespeare's Pizza (and I made T-shirts of that sign for KCOU, the student radio station back in the day). Complicated feelings, I guess.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:20 PM on June 24, 2020 [1 favorite]