Yesterday, while giving you some personal thoughts about my loose connection to the Harvey family and what they meant to so many people, I tossed in a reference to "New South Gothic," the subgenre that some critics have used to label the House of Freaks' music. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his music (or perhaps know him only from Gutterball or other side projects), I wanted to provide some more links to their discography--especially a great site that gives liner notes by Bryan for many of the songs in their catalog--and also a photo gallery of shots by Oz Geier, but also to flesh out and explain what I think the NSG label means, and how it applies to House of Freaks and particularly Bryan's lyrics.
First of all, I confess that I've modified the more generic phrase "Southern Gothic," first to distinguish it from the literary reference to mid-century works by authors like Faulkner and O'Connor, and secondly to emphasize the ambivalence that "old" southerners more generally may have lacked towards their heritage and mythology. There is a duality to the new presentation, to include the changing mores of the South since WWII that traditional Southern Gothic writers probably couldn't have perceived. JD Wilkes of Th' Legendary Shack Shakers tries to spell it out:
"It's different than Gothic. It's Flannery O'Connor and Harper Lee and Faulkner and all that. It's sort of the dark, seamy underbelly of the South, but there's a mystical quality too. It's not like the Jerry Springer, nasty, dysfunctional South that the media likes to paint the picture of. This is more of a Gothic, grandiose version of the grotesqueness of the South. It's all the cross-cultural dynamics of race and class and religion and all those things that cause trouble, but the beauty they reveal in art and life. So it's very much based in reality, whereas Gothic literature is a medieval fantasy. Southern Gothic is the reality around us down here in these parts. It's like the sideshow and the circus and all that. It's entertaining but there's something sick about it at the same time. It's where we're from, so it's what comes natural. We're trying to tell big stories, trying to portray something bigger than ourselves and more epic than ourselves."
Perhaps the most famous or well-heard example of NSG would be Fables of the Reconstruction, REM's third album. Songs like Driver 8, Can't Get There from Here, Wendell Gee and Good Advices share a sense of place and a storytelling lyricism divorced from typical boy-meets-girl pop pap. There are other examples: Cat Power is often cited by other bands as a NSG influence, explained here by Verbena frontman Scott Bondy:
"She's from a storytelling tradition," he said. "There's just serious darkness, like, if you're brought up in the '40s or '50s in the South, your dad could go to work at the mill or on the farm and come home losing an arm. Those kind of stakes — there's just something so much more respectable about that way of life. I don't know, there's like a sense of honor, or whatever, like in a David Lynchian kind of way. There's also like a really large underside of the iceberg — the darkness of it."
Exploring that darkness in his songs, Bondy has created a timeless rock sound, a sound that he believes has a universal appeal. He said he turns to like-minded artists — such as Lynch, the Coen Brothers and the White Stripes — for inspiration. "Anything...that paints a portrait of [the] America that doesn't exist anymore...," he said. "It's almost like those things are timeless. They're telling stories that you don't know when they're set.
So that should give you a reasonable idea of what I'm talking about when I refer to House of Freaks as part of the New South Gothic. Probably the best unified example of the style in their catalog is the 2nd album, Tantilla. Themes of race, religion, hard labor and family abound, tied together by a spare but mostly thundering arrangement by producer John Leckie. (In the liner notes I linked to, Harvey declares the production result a disappointment, but as someone who grew to love the album without the benefit of that knowledge, I'm unswayed in keeping it as my favorite of theirs).
The two tracks that I think best express the duality in NSG themes are White Folks' Blood and Family Tree. Harvey is explicit about the dark side of the Southern legacy:
I was really getting into that suthern thang around this time. Being in L.A. made me acutely aware that I was from the south. My southern accent became even more pronounced. I was really trying to dig into all those things that make a person from the south what he is...you know, the lost cause, racial guilt and that sort of stuff. I think these lyrics are pretty good. I was particularly disturbed by an old photo from the 30's of a dead black man who had been lynched. He was tied to a tree, with his hands tied behind his back and had been tortured with a blow torch. I still can't get images like these out of my head. It makes me hate humanity sometimes, and confirms my feelings that we live in a godless world.
Here are the lyrics:
What mysteries flow through these white folks' blood?
What secrets do they hide within?
What sickbed words pass across their lips?
And what passions lie beneath their skin?
Are their fortunes made in their pool halls?
And their lives played out like children's games?
Under the summer sun with a knife and a gun
A festered wound never heals
On the back porch, in the pawn shopsDusting off their fathers' guns
Words like worms crawl through their brains
Sermons fly from the preacher's mouth
But the auction block still remains
Gagged and tied to a tree trunk
After a fox hunt chase with dogs and chains
In a field of white in the broad daylight
The earth is black, black with blood
They were friends and they were brothersLife goes on across the railroad tracks
A flood of tears has come and gone
Autumn comes, white folks settle down
And the preacher quotes from Luke and John
And there is peace and plenty in the country
And the way we are, we will remain
The world keeps spinning round and around
Just keep spinning around and around and around
Everything is still the sameLife goes on like before, on the streets, on the porches
In our homes, in our towns, what we see all around us.
Life goes on like before, while we sit by the doorway
All around, all our lives, all we do, no surprises
The irony of course is a white person hypothesizing on what exists inside the heads of white people, to behave as they do in the lyrics. That detachment persists for much of the song, suddenly shifting with the line that continues to give me chills each time I hear it: "and the way we are, we will remain." For anyone who has lived in Richmond at least, that line should ring harshly true. What HL Mencken once called a "happy dullness of intellect" seems to pervade Richmond--the sense that things are as they are, that tradition and familiarity trump progress and change, and that another 40 years of the same sounds pretty good, all in all. "All we do, no surprises." The shift from third- to first-person in midsong exemplifies the approach to NSG sentiment: the past is the past, and no one feels personally responsible for its horrors--but the baggage has made it for the train trip to the present, and here Harvey is keenly aware that they are his bags to pick up.
In Family Tree, however, there emerges a softer side--a sentimentality for the comfort of the very same familiarity and tradition that's viewed with suspicion in White Folks' Blood. As primarily expressed by Bryan, this more gentle view comes out in strong themes of ancestry and family connectedness. Sun Gone Down, another track from Tantilla, is obliquely about the death of Harvey's father, but in Family Tree the connections are explicit:
A wind is rising outside
the houses are trembling
the trees are shiveringout in the fields where we walked
the roots that support us
have built a fortresswell they grow with the breeze like a family tree
whose seeds were planted here
well they rise up tall in my memory
they doWho were they, where are they now?
Just faces and photographs
letters and lithographs
drunkards and fathers they were
preachers and soldiers
upon their shoulderswell we grow with the breeze with a family tree
whose seeds were planted here
well they rise up tall in my memory
they dotheir houses are crumbling
the wells dried up long ago
water stops flowing
this tree will always growthe wind is rising outside
the branches are swaying
children are playing
between the earth and the sky
between we're the pages
they live through the ages
well they grow with the breeze like a family tree
whose seeds were planted here
well they rise up tall in my memory
they do...they grow with the family tree
Apart from admitting there might be a drunkard or two sitting in the Harvey family tree, there is a strong benevolence towards the past in this lyric. Note that as with White Folks' Blood, the view backwards is relatively detached-- a look through old letters and pictures, crumbling houses and dried up wells. But here, rather than being cowed by the sense of continuity and linkage, it's a source of strength and food for the future.
Clearly, these are not themes you'd find on a Britney Spears record, which is perhaps why House of Freaks never had more than one weak hit single. But that sophistication of thought and personal transparency that Bryan lent to his songs are much of why House of Freaks is still well regarded critically, and why a suprising cadre of Freak followers still exist today, coming out of the woodwork to offer tributes and express sorrow at the passing of an unknown legend (as Neil Young might say).
--TJ
Ahh, it's good to see a fellow House Of Freaks fan.
I'm so sad about Bryan Harvey's death. It's beyond sad. It's even worse to think that a family friend dropped off one of his daughters, and the friend saw his wife who opened the door and was shaken - but she said she was just under the weather.
It's beyond sad.
Here's a link to my HoF post:
http://jalpuna.com/2006/01/please_remember.shtml
Posted by: Jalpuna! | January 06, 2006 at 00:53
Like so many “loosely connected” others, I’m wondering if I have a right to this keening grief. But I know how real it feels, and I think part of the answer rests in the shared experience (NSG, if you like) of a time and a region and its palpable history. And it makes me wonder how loose our connections to one another actually are. My thoughts, respectfully...
It is of some comfort to find such thoughtful appreciation of Bryan Harvey’s work. And at this early stage, it is a compassionate and even courageous thing to be doing. Thoughtful words such as yours offer a pinpoint of light – a bit of hope for the many (like me) now staggering around their worlds (virtual and real) looking for some thing that will help. Something beyond the news, ugly details and uglier fallout I sense is yet to come.
I was at VCU on the cusp of the ‘80s. “Bryan Harvey” was a “Dad” then, an occasional, beautiful nod and smile in passing. The Village was where I waited tables, and my boyfriend (now husband) was in another band. Facile anecdotes are useless in conveying the experience of what a life in the Richmond crucible was like back then. Fleeting, sensory images do it best. Leather jacketed punks sunbathing on the grass surrounding the Robert E. Lee memorial. Sultry spells spent on an Oregon Hill porch in late July, the deafening whir of cicadas signaling that summer will, eventually, fade. Thick, sweet, air heavy with the scent of tobacco, paper and vanilla. Winter ice like glass, in the trees crackling, underfoot. And a thought that now chills me to the bone: that “safe as houses” feeling of walking the streets of the Fan on a frigid winter night, past windows draped and glowing, stoves burning wood, the faint sting breathing it in.
And everywhere, music.
These slipping glimpses, in light of your rich insights, are hopelessly inadequate descriptors of a time spent living a “New South Gothic” existence. It may be near impossible to pin down, but you couldn’t go through it and not know, somewhere inside, that something was having its enveloping effect. Pervasive, far-reaching words like fabric, atmosphere, tapestry and web come to mind. I’ve always bristled at the word “roots,” never thinking I had a one. But the news about Bryan pulled me back to Richmond like a riptide. There was no alternative but to go back – physically, emotionally and spiritually – to people and places I hadn’t seen in 20 years or more. I have been wounded at the heart of who I was, who I am. It is a deeply private pain that does feel sacrilegious in the telling of it and mysterious in the shared sense of it.
As for my own part in it all, I am angry. At myself. I feel a dull, senseless ingrate, cheated by my own blinkered laziness. I listened to my first House of Freaks song only two days ago. A sound... so familiar, easy, and blessedly authentic to my ear. How do I mourn something I want only now to celebrate? It feels far too small and trite a tribute to Bryan, his family and his music to say that I will hold tightly now the connections I have left, especially to my Richmond music friends. Except that it’s true.
There is no tidy summation to be had here. I am humbled and grateful to have had this forum. Thanks and love.
Posted by: VCU 82 | January 12, 2006 at 14:08
I hope the animals who slit the throats of that family and those little girls are electrocuted. Have you ever heard the noises the throat makes as the blade is slid through the skin from ear to ear? You can't even scream!
I hope those murdering bastards gurgle when the switch is flipped. This "massacre white folks" robbery tactic is the new larceny. Demand action now!
Posted by: Robo | January 15, 2006 at 09:55
I find it tragically ironic that the three people involved in his and his family's murder were black. Maybe someone should write a song that condemns black atrocities for once. I really do tire of all of these "hate Whitey" songs and anti-White attitudes condoned by an anti-White mass media.
Posted by: S. English | January 15, 2006 at 10:40
You think this is something...ever hear of the Zebra killings?
Some say the blacks might have killed over 200 whites. The prefered way was hacking them to death.
How about the two brothers in Wichita named Jonathan and Reginald Carr? They killed four whites and left them naked in the snow to die...the fifth that was shot in the head, she crawed naked in the snow for two miles before finally being found.
The two brothers watched as they made the white men have sex with the white girls for hours before they killed them in the snow.
How about the black cult that a man by the name of Yahweh ben Yahweh (Hulon Mitchell).
You could only become a member by killing a white person...they killed at least 22 before being caught.
Bet you didn't hear he only did 10 years and is out of prison now too...did you?
I bet there's not much made in your newspapers or on TV about blacks doing over 51% of ALL murders in the US and being only 12% of the population.
How about the old argument that poverty causes crime?
In 1994 for every black living in poverty there were 2.75 whites in the same condition...that means for every 100 murders blacks did there should have been 275 murders by whites...was that the case? NO! For every 100 murders by blacks there were only 88 done by all other races combined in that year.
What did we get in return for all our kindness here in Houston when Katrnia happened? We now have in the last 2 months a 70% jump in murders here....and riots in our High Schools...thanks to a sacred cow named diversity.
Bet you didn't hear about that either did you?
Well that's ok I guess...if it had not been for some of the so called "racists" sites like NationalVanguard I would have not heard of your friends either....why?
Because someone is hiding all of this from the average white person. Not just here...but all over the world.
Roiters in France are called "Angry French Youths"...Whites there wont even admit they are hated, and those they tried to help would destroy France in a second if they could. Zimbabwe? Did you hear about the white farmers being killed there? Their farms being taken away? A country that was once one of the worlds biggest food exporter is now begging for food.
How about Haiti? A place that once was the crown of the French trading impire. There was more money there than the rest of all America combined...until the blacks there killed somewhere between 20,000 to up to 35,000 whites....in some of the most horrible ways a human can die. Ever hear of that? I bet you have heard of how horrible it is to live there now.
The same as it is in Haiti, all of Africa, Detroit, Washington DC, now South Africa (The rape and aids capital of the world now), from there to the blood stains on the floor of what's left of your friends burned out home. It will always be the same.
WAKE UP!
Posted by: Lee | January 15, 2006 at 12:40
WWW.NationalVanguard.com
Again....WAKE UP!
Posted by: Lee | January 15, 2006 at 13:00
well,it looks like the aggrieved white hatemongers have arrived. Welcome! Now go away.
Posted by: Torrid | January 15, 2006 at 13:04
Thanks to the Harvey family for their wonderful contribution to their community!
I'll be sure to "remember them well."
Posted by: Fervid Ro | January 15, 2006 at 13:18
For their so called contribution and love for diversity (that song comes to mind), they were treated well by their new found friends huh?
And Torrid...instead of calling people names when being faced with facts like so many of your kind do...get a new line.
You have worn out the "racists" thingy.
Posted by: Lee | January 15, 2006 at 13:34
Lee--the facts are that it was a random break in and killing. How did they know the race of the people inside? Your racist conspiracy theories, that try to make a behavioral theorem out of black on white violence, don't persuade.
You've made whatever point you came to express. I know your intention, and I won't sponsor it any further here. Further posts in this vein from you won't stay up.
Posted by: Torrid | January 15, 2006 at 14:23
Calling Lee a hatemonger is easier than rationally addressing his point. In the seventeenth century folks voicing "unpopular" facts or views were called witches. A random act, you say? If true, then the "American" African butchers who slaughtered this family are the worst type of killers.
Posted by: Glen | January 15, 2006 at 15:22
I just did address it, Glen. He never makes a race connection to the killings.
Posted by: Torrid | January 15, 2006 at 15:28
That's very disingenuous of you, Torrid.
Lee made the race connection: "You think this is something...ever hear of the Zebra killings? Some say the blacks might have killed over 200 whites. The prefered way was hacking them to death."
And you certainly had no difficulty understanding Lee: "Your racist conspiracy theories, that try to make a behavioral theorem out of black on white violence, don't persuade."
Why not admit that you're uncomfortable with linking race to the savage details of the Harvey family's murder?
Posted by: Glen | January 15, 2006 at 15:53
Glen:
Why not admit that you're uncomfortable with linking race to the savage details of the Harvey family's murder?
Torrid:
I thought I just did. I'm uncomfortable with the linkage because it's functionally irrelevant.
Posted by: Torrid | January 15, 2006 at 16:26
By the way, it's interesting how focused all of you seem to be on "slicing the throat," but later police reports refuted that this in fact occurred. Sorry.
Posted by: Torrid | January 15, 2006 at 16:27
when you go through a neighborhood you KNOW who lives there....and the two guys are suspected in about 6 other killings of whites in the same manner. But you KNOW who lives in a neighborhood
Posted by: Shakim Manashaka | January 15, 2006 at 16:33
Torrid writes: I'm uncomfortable with the linkage because it's functionally irrelevant."
Calling the linkage "functionally irrelevant" is certainly easier than responding to the facts concerning African criminality.
Functionally relevant is the statistical fact that if Africans had been repatriated or never brought here in the first place the Harveys would have survived New Years Day.
Care to deny it? Or does obfuscation and name-calling better suit your style?
Torrid writes: "By the way, it's interesting how focused all of you seem to be on 'slicing the throat,' but later police reports refuted that this in fact occurred. Sorry."
Blame the press for the throat-slicing reports, Torrid.
Please forgive me but it sounds like you're expressing happiness and relief that Harvey's wife and daughters were, perhaps, butchered in a "kinder and gentler" manner.
Posted by: Glen | January 15, 2006 at 23:16
Glen, you're the one who apparently gets a little hotter and more supremacist over the idea of slit throats; I was merely correcting your facts. Your opinions here likely can only by corrected by intervention.
Posted by: Torrid | January 15, 2006 at 23:28
I come from Japan.
My mother country is very selective about who we let in. That's helped us in coming back from the disaster known as World War Two. Some even call us "racists." So be it.
Japan we has almost no natural resources ... some coal, but other than its people, almost everything we make is made from raw resources being brought in, then turned into products that the world buys; Starting with those little plastic toothpicks that were sold to the USA to decorate pastries in the mid 40's, to becoming one of the world's foremost manufacturers of autos, computers, the lists goes on and on. We are very proud of this. I'm sure most of you know the story of our success.
I, for the life of me, cannot see why Americans make so much about taking in a foreign people like the black Race, spending so much money trying to educate them and trying to make them civilized, so to speak.
In my country where your armed forces still are, our women are being assaulted all the time by the blacks in your military. We are ready to see you go, not just over this, but this is one of the main problems we face as a people when trying to deal with you.
These people you keep trying to insert into your society come from a continent that seems to have everything. Gold, oil, diamonds, the lists there goes on and on also.
Our PM once said that you wont be a great country for very long because you have too many blacks to take care of and someday that will cost you. It will cost you your leadership and status that you know enjoy in the world.
What happened to your friends was horrible and sad. But seeing what has been said here makes me think all of you Americans are blind. Not all but many of you live in a world of fantasy.
Blind or not me and most of my countrymen, as you seem to like to call those that live in other lands and yourself, want you and your military out of our country. It is not just the blacks because others do wrong too, but that is one of the things we want to be done with. Here in your country I have acted with respect to your laws and customs.
I promise to go when I am done with school.
Please promise to leave my country, and please take them with you.
Posted by: K. Tanaka | January 16, 2006 at 13:32
looks like you don't need to be American to hold ignorant, racist viewpoints on an entire race of people. "Take care of blacks?" And I thought our president was bad!
Posted by: Torrid | January 16, 2006 at 15:42
I was born and grew up in and still live in South Africa, the rape and murder capital of the world as Lee so eloquently put it. I was brought up to respect all people but I am more against multiracialism and am more of a 'racist' than ever. And believe it or not, this is a common tendency by all race groups in South Africa, i.e. Indians, Malays, Chinese, Portuguese etc except for the black race, or so they profess. But if you look and listen carefully you'll see the barbaric 'racism' inherent in African blacks. If Torrid cannot see the obvious then perhaps the old saying of "There are none as blind as those who will not see" applies perfectly. The only reason why African Negros, which is incidentally the only race group that makes such an issue about separate development and segregation, so avidly oppose this natural principal is because their common tendency is similar to that of parasites. We, the Europeans, Asians, Indians etc. that have succeeded in improving our environments by our own doing are the hosts to the parasitic black race. Torrid has no clue what his talking about and probably has never been to Africa. Why is it that Africa north of the South African borders are so chaotic and an absolute dump so many years after the so called 'colonial oppressors' have left? With the lion's share in mineral resources and oil wealth it is still the poorest continent and will be, no doubt, for the next thousand years, unless you bring the white oppressors back to ensure you have proper healthcare, clean drinking water, effluent facilities so you do not have to drink the water your neighbour shits in, and an abundance of food. I am a firm believer in the premise that all people have the same right to be on this planet but I definitely cannot see how anyone in their sane minds can equate them as equal. Of course, it is the Torrids of this world that will promote that fallacy because that is what parasites do, kill you while it makes you believe it is for your own good. Let it be said, the whites have much to blame for here because they are gullible enough to believe that parasites can be benign. As Lee put it, Wake Up people, take a close look at what has happened in Africa and what will eventually happen in South Africa. It is as sure as death…
Posted by: Mark | January 25, 2006 at 05:15
another ignorant foreigner. "The parasitic black race?" Did they blow up all the libraries in South Africa recently? Sad.
Posted by: torridjoe | January 25, 2006 at 11:04
Yes, you are ignorant, I can tell. What explanation, O' Wise One, do you have for the absolute destitute, poverty stricken black Africa do you have? This foreigner you are referring to happen to live here where it is happening and I am witnessing the decay and rot setting in first hand. Eleven and a half years on after the so called democratic black government came into power the black people are worse off than they were under the so called 'oppressive white regime'. It seems, being able to vote, murder, rape, steal was more important than being able to feed yourself and your family. But then again, let the evidence speak for itself.
As for blowing up all the libraries, not yet, but it is happening because unfortunately the new parasitic rulers cannot fathom the importance of administrating libraries as a source of knowledge. Democracy was supposed to uplift but yet only the top echelons are drowning in wealth stolen through affirmative action campaigns and so called Black Economic Empowerment. Take your head out of your ass and look for yourself. It is the black people now burning trains and buildings and each other here because of poor service delivery, ten years after 'democratic' rule. But then again, some excuse will be conjured up to blame the whites or God, anything but take responsibility. It is pathetically sad. What is even sadder is that there are some good black people looking on in disgust to what is happening but are powerless to do anything. Say anything and you'll get your limbs hacked off or hands tied behind your back, a tire slipped around your waste, doused with petrol and set alight in the middle of the street with chanting, dancing lunatics frothing around the mouth watching this spectacle as you are burned to death.
Of course, this will never be aired on your little boxes because you are all in denial. The whites have done more for the black people of Africa than they have done for themselves and if you take your head out of your ass for just a few minutes and actually be capable of being totally honest with yourself you'll recognise the inevitable truth. But alas, ignorance is bliss... Wake up Americans, attempting to integrate a third world mentality into a first world mentality can and will not work. Blacks are not stupid by nature but the value systems and principles are far too different. K. Tanake and the Japanese PM are correct; Americans are naive and gullible and will eventually loose their status as a great nation as is Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Australia. The rot from the slums are spreading and will overtake you all if you do not sanitize soon. The saying goes, give a man a loaf of bread and you can feed him for a day but teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for a lifetime. Why is this not happening in Africa or anyplace where Africans settle, even in the middle of first world economies? Africans have been given the pot of gold and all that was achieved is corruption and mass murder. Black leaders on the African continent are building themselves palaces with the financial aid gained from the whites while their own people are dying of hunger and disease, yet the western white first world economies just keep on giving. How pathetically gullible you are….
Posted by: Mark | January 25, 2006 at 21:41
A white South African complaining about brutal racial treatment--that's awfully rich! Now I _know_ there are no books nearby to help you toss your sad beliefs into the ashcan. A little history of South Africa might have clued you in to the long legacy of white on black violence. Were whites the parasitic race before apartheid ended? If only you had access to a 3rd grade biology book, you'd be cured of your ignorant nonsense. That's how elementary the knowledge is that you're missing, or refuse to recognize. You've been brainwashed, and I hope you get help for your hate. Start with a little education.
Posted by: torridjoe | January 26, 2006 at 08:52
[comments deleted--I'm not going to allow people to call blacks "a less evolved race" and compare them to chimpanzees on this site. Sad that people can still be this poorly educated to believe it.]
Posted by: Mark | January 27, 2006 at 02:58