The Byrds—The Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)

Musical Mindfulness.

FUN FACTS

• Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) is the sixth album from U.S. rock band The Byrds. It was released on August 30, 1968 by Columbia Records.
• It was the first album that featured country rock pioneer Gram Parsons in the band’s line-up. Parsons‘ inclusion shifted the direction of the band’s music, from their psychedelic rock roots to country rock. He was just 21 when he joined the band and brought his vision into creating Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968).

If you can guess who Gram Parsons is just from the sheer passion radiating off him, you win a prize.

• Although largely praised for their work on the album, The Byrds‘s decision to change their musical direction was initially received with much more resistance and criticism, from both their followers and the very conservative country music scene in Nashville, Tennessee.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I just realized that I probably listen and enjoy a lot more country music than I can recognize and remember. When I think of country, I think of mainstream country acts like Kenny Rogers and Carrie Underwood. The spectacle of starred up boots and a Tennessee twang that bounces from the way they strum that guitar to how they press their tongue down on the words they sing. But now, listening to The Byrds’ rendition of You Don’t Miss Your Water, I realize that I’ve loved that slow-rolling folk Americana sound all my life. In the music of The Band, Neko Case, and Bob Dylan, among others.

I enjoyed Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) because it straddles many thresholds between country and genres like folk, blues, and rock n’ roll. As a writer, the storytelling aspect of country and folk music appeals to me. There’s a cinematic element to The Byrds‘s impression of country. The unhurried, unglamorous, wandering tunes bring to mind lonely vagabonds on film, wandering from town to town, trying to feed the relentless hunger of an aimless young life.

Country music critics pointed out how the album sounded more like an impersonation than a genuine country album. And I don’t know enough about country music to write in defense of the band in that way, but to a non-country listener, I think the music on this album is charming and captivating. Part of what I love about Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) is what I love about Bob Dylan and The Band’s the Basement Tapes (1975). It is laid back and pensive, and reflects an instinct to leave standards at the door and just play music in a way that sounds good to you.

In a place where people are super sensitive about toeing cultural lines, crossing over genres is presumably a pretty big deal. For a band as big as The Byrds were in the 60s to find and mine that middle ground between rock n’ roll and country music—I don’t think it’s a stretch to compare it to Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus coming out with Old Town Road. Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968)‘s legacy of country rock crossover can be traced to Gram Parsons‘ participation in The Byrds, and is shared with artists at the time like Bob Dylan, whose entire ethos was about folk music from wherever there was folk music to be found.

What we’ve been gifted since Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) is a lineage of country music that is less conservative and kind of a vagabond, leaving assumptions at the edge of town and carrying a gleam in its eye for that long, lonely road ahead, where the only way to find your own story is to cross all kinds of lines.

FAVORITE MOMENTS

Earlier in this session, I listened to Otis Redding’s Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965) and picked You Don’t Miss Your Water as one of my favorite moments. And it’s marvelous to hear it again in a different arrangement, in a different genre, and see how well the sense of longing translates. Otis Redding‘s version cuts a soulful ache on the gentle and restrained original by William Bell. In The Byrds‘ version, that soulful commiseration is a group effort. You’re not crying for water at home by yourself, wondering how you chased love right out your front door. You’re at the bar with friends, chasing the cure for a broken heart straight to the bottom of a beer bottle or ten.

FURTHER DIVE

Graham Parsons was a really important factor in how The Byrds came up with Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968). I’m definitely going to check out his work with the Flying Burrito Brothers at the end of the year. You can do a further dive into his vision for psychedelic country rock with the Gilded Palace of Sin (1969).

I also mentioned that I came into this album with a lot of love already for this kind of sound and I owe it to the Basement Tapes (1975) by Bob Dylan and the Band. The music on this album was famously recorded in a basement in Bob Dylan‘s house in 1967 and it really captures the collaborative imagination between Bob Dylan and the members of The Band—Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, and later on, Levon Helm. It was made during the time when Dylan was recovering from a motorcycle accident. The Beatles had just come out with Sgt. Pepper’s (1967) and there was an all-around push for avant-garde rock. The Basement Tapes (1975) represents Bob Dylan doubling down on the folk rock direction of his music to come, as seen in probably one of his best albums ever, John Wesley Harding (1967), which was recorded shortly after the basement tapes were made.

FOR YOU

What did you think of the album? Send me your thoughts! mxaboha@gmail.com!

1. Do you have a basement at home? What do you do in your basement?
2. Have you ever watched Godless on Netflix? It’s a really good show. The guy behind The Queen’s Gambit is behind that.
3. Do you remember where you were when you first heard Old Town Road? What did you think?

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Sweetheart of the Rodeo (1968) Copyright to the Byrds and and Columbia Records.