It Still Moves

Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American Music

Amanda Petrusich

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780865479500
• eBook ISBN: 9781429957557
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Folk Music

In "a terrific piece of travel writing" a music journalist and New Yorker staff writer "takes us on a tour through the roots of American rural music" ( The Guardian).
"Where lies the boundary between meaning and sentiment? Between memory and nostalgia? America and Americana? What is and what was? Does it move?" —Donovon Hohn, "A Romance of Rust"
Part travelogue, part cultural criticism, part music appreciation, It Still Moves does for today's avant folk scene what Greil Marcus did for Dylan and The Basement Tapes. Amanda Petrusich outlines the sounds of the new, weird America—honoring the rich tradition of gospel, bluegrass, country, folk, and rock that feeds it, while simultaneously exploring the American character as personified in all of these genres historically. Through interviews, road stories, geographical and sociological interpretations, and detailed music criticism, Petrusich traces the rise of Americana music from its gospel origins through its new and compelling incarnations (as evidenced in bands and artists from Elvis to Iron and Wine, the Carter Family to Animal Collective, Johnny Cash to Will Oldham) and explores how the genre is adapting to the twenty-first century. Ultimately the book is an examination of all things American: guitars, cars, kids, motion, passion, enterprise, and change, in a fervent attempt to reconcile the American past with the American present, using only dusty records and highway maps as guides.
"Like a smart, genial Persephone, Amanda Petrusich wanders the underworld of American roots music and reports back her insights with an open mind and an open heart." —Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone
"Sharply observed, intensely felt." —Simon Reynolds, author of Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–84

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Author’s Note
• Introduction: Goodbye, Babylon
• Chapter 1: Ain’t It a Pity, I’m in New York City!
• Chapter 2: Bluesland: Beale Street, Memphis
• Chapter 3: Young and Loose and Full of Juice: Sam Phillips, Sun Studio, and the Birth of Rock “n” Roll
• Chapter 4: I’m Going to Graceland
• Chapter 5: Trail of the Hellhounds: Clarksdale’s Deep Mississippi Blues
• Chapter 6: Music City, USA: Building the Nashville Sound
• Chapter 7: I’m Going Where There’s No Depression: Alternative Country
• Chapter 8: I-64 West: Charlottesville, Lexington, Charleston
• Chapter 9: Country Rolls On: Minstrel Shows, Race, and the Rise of Radio
• Chapter 10: Ain’t That a Pretty Ole Mountain? Appalachia, the Carter Family, and Early Country Music
• Chapter 11: The Little Old Country General Store from Lebanon, Tennessee: Cracker Barrel’s Americana
• Chapter 12: A Matter of Song! John Lomax, Lead Belly, Moses Asch, and Folkways Records
• Chapter 13: Making Familiar Strange: Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music and the Birth of Smithsonian Folkways
• Chapter 14: You Won’t Find It So Hot If You Ain’t Got the Do Re Mi: Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and the Folk Revival of the1960s
• Chapter 15: The New, Weird, Hyphenated America: Indie-Folk and the Next American Revival
• Epilogue
• Selected Bibliography
• Index