In his new song, the contemplative and forlorn “The Country Doesn’t Sound the Same,” John Baumann laments the direction that the world is moving in and how he feels a darkness settling. For Baumann and the overall state of being, there’s not much to look forward to… the world is crumbling and there’s not much to save it.
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“Without a doubt, the song seems to have an even stronger relevance to current times, given the political climate – but it’s not a message about taking sides,” he explains. “It seems like, at one point, things were not so complex or complicated, and it’s comforting to think they could be that way again someday if we want them to.”
Within the universe of the song, however, hope and optimism seems fleeting, if unattainable. Nature is getting overrun by commerce and industry and it’s impossible to halt its course. “I think of my grandmother’s farm 20 years ago, and how it used to be a quiet, idyllic place – where you were free to roam unbothered, and the sounds were natural,” he reflects, gazing through sepia-toned memories. “While the farm is still a rural outpost, it has been encroached upon all sides by a variety of businesses: mobile home parks, landfills, gas stations. And something feels like it has changed and won’t ever be the same again.”
This impending feeling of change creeps steadily throughout the song. It’s suffocating and claustrophobic. “Times are always changing / Are the good times gone? / No more open sky above me /No more soul left in the song,” he sings in the bridge, mourning its loss.
“I thought of sitting on the porch at my grandmother’s house when I wrote this song, thinking about how you once could hear cicadas and coyotes, and now it’s highway buzz and speaker systems carrying over the trees,” he sighs, the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“’The Country Doesn’t Sound the Same’ is my favorite song on the record, as well as one of the last songs I wrote for Country Shade,” he recalls. “I remember listening to the rough demo that I had recorded, before even going into the studio, and thinking that the song has something living deep inside of it. Something that is hard to explain, like some kind of magnetic force pulling you in. Maybe it’s the steadiness of the finger-picking, and the way the bass notes resonate like a church organ. Or how the harmonica at the end fees like it’s releasing you from all of this pain, worry and sorrow. Maybe it’s the message and the sound of the song coming together in some way that feels powerful to me.”
For Baumann, the song itself can feel like a thinly-veiled political and social commentary on the socio-political state of the country, but he explains while there are those overtones, it’s not just about that. “I used the word ‘country’ in three different ways, relating to the state of country music, the state of rural America, and the state of our country — how all are changing,” he dissects. “Without a doubt, the song seems to have an even stronger relevance to current times, given the political climate – but it’s not a message about taking sides. It seems like, at one point, things were not so complex or complicated, and it’s comforting to think they could be that way again someday if we want them to.”
But for Baumann – musical, agricultural, political and otherwise – everything about the ‘country’ just “doesn’t sound the same.”
