Rags and Bones

An Exploration of The Band

Jeff Sellars, Kevin C. Neece, Jeff Sellars, Kevin C. Neece

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781496842985
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496843029
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Folk Music

Contributions by Joshua Coleman, Christine Hand Jones, Kevin C. Neece, Charlotte Pence, George Plasketes, Jeffrey Scholes, Jeff Sellars, Toby Thompson, and Jude Warne

After performing with Ronnie Hawkins as the Hawks (1957–1964), The Band (Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, and Levon Helm) eventually rose to fame in the sixties as backing musicians for Bob Dylan. This collaboration with Dylan presented the group with a chance to expand musically and strike out on their own. The Band's fusion of rock, country, soul, and blues music—all tinged with a southern flavor and musical adventurousness—created a unique soundscape. The combined use of multiple instruments, complex song structures, and poetic lyrics required attentive listening and a sophisticated interpretive framework. It is no surprise, then, that they soon grew to be one of the biggest bands of their era.

In Rags and Bones: An Exploration of The Band, scholars and musicians take a broad, multidisciplinary approach to The Band and their music, allowing for examination through sociological, historical, political, religious, technological, cultural, and philosophical means. Each contributor approaches The Band from their field of interest, offering a wide range of investigations into The Band's music and influence.

Commercially successful and critically lauded, The Band created a paradoxically mythic and hauntingly realistic lyrical landscape for their songs—and their musicianship enlarged this detailed landscape. This collection offers a rounded examination, allowing the multifaceted music and work of The Band to be appreciated by audiences old and new.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Honky-Tonk Hawkin’
• Chapter 2: The Day the Music Lived: How Bob Dylan and The Band Paved the Way for Southern Rock
• Chapter 3: Reading Baldwin’s “Sonny Blues” while Listening to The Band
• Chapter 4: Big Sound from Big Pink
• Chapter 5: “Caught in the Spotlight”: The Band’s Performance Anxiety in Stage Fright
• Chapter 6: Chasing the Music: The Sacred and Profane in The Band’s Early Years
• Chapter 7: Half Past Dead: Remnant Identity in The Band’s America
• Chapter 8: Entanglement and Sainthood: Carrying “The Weight” across the Endless Highway
• Chapter 9: Loud Prayers: Communion, Transcendence, and the Blues in Scorsese’s The Last Waltz
• Bibliography
• Discography/Filmography
• Contributors
• Index