STOMPIN IN THE By Michael Goodwin There’s a war going on. The enemy is fast food, interstates, non-dairy creamer, People magazine, and 90 percent of what’s on the radio. The Liberation Army is me and my friends, and. our best weapons are cayenne, garlic, and regional music. There’s a lot of us scattered across the country—singers, photographers, writers, cooks, marine geologists, filmmakers, shiatsu teachers, actors, and social service supervisors. We share a passion for old music, vanishing lifestyles, concrete history. Music is a big part, but food is just as important. Also beer, hats, dancing, hot sauce, barnside graphics, railroad trains, gospel churches, and clowns. As we move toward Century 21, the quality of life is sinking fast — and the main reason is that people have been suckered into the wrong choices. Interstates are concrete prisons compared to the two-lanes that carried traffic through towns and past local business; Kentucky Fried chicken tastes like rubber compared to a yardbird cooked by a human being in the next room. Standardization is efficient, but it’s killing us by degrees. Regional art doesn’t have to sell to a national audience, so it doesn’t need to be standarized — it can be eccentric, daring, spicy. Local art tends to carry a lot of traditional material in its pocket — if only because tradition grows best in its native soil, and doesn’t mass-produce very well. In any case, local music seems to go back farther and remember better, and the farther back it goes, the longer base-line it provides for setting sensible priorities. Regional music gives us a foothold in time; it beats back death, a t ’least a tick or two. As often as my work lets me, I go road-running to see how the battle is raging — check my friends to see what they’ve turned up, look to see that some of the old stuff is still alive, hear some music, eat some food, go honky- tonkin’. The worst (and best) thing about regional music is that you have to go where it is to hear it; it won’t come looking for you. So out I go, this 24
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