CD's are much cheaper in Canada. That is a very good thing as my new CD's are providing me with some comfort here at 4 am as the rest of Japan sleeps. When I was home I got Emmylou Harris, Red Dirt Girl, and Steve Earle, Just an American Boy. And so far I am loving them both. The good news is that music with lyrics that go beyond "do me tonight" is out there, the bad news is that you almost never find it in the mainstream. You gotta dig for it, but the internet is making that easier. On with the revolution.

Emmylou Harris is starting to write her own songs and I am glad she is. The first track, The Pearl, has a lyric that is one of those that makes you think the writer must know you:

Our path is worn, our feet our poorly shod/
We lift up our prayer against the odds/
And fear the silence is the voice of God/

And we cry Allelujah

Steve Earle's new one is maybe less spiritual, but man is he getting political. The CD is a recording of a live performance where he has lots of criticisms to make on what he sees as the attacks on democracy by his current government. In Amerika 6.0 he's singing,

...letters to the editor and cheating on our taxes is the best we can do

And the rocker-in-a-country-musician's-body type music that he writes still really appeals to the hillbilly in me. I remember as an overdramatic teenager, locking myself in my room and listening to a song from Guitar Town, where he sings about being stuck in his small town and how he is "gonna get outta here someday". Well, I've been gone from that small town for quite a while, but I am still listening to Steve Earle. I guess you can take the boy out of the country but...