And I’m already back. Who’d’ve thunk? Since I took care of all the rigmarole in the last entry, let’s not fuck around with anything: today we’re talking about Carolina Chocolate Drops. I was originally going to include Rhiannon Giddens in this, but after musing on it, I honestly think she just deserves her own article at a later date. It’s not fair to her to write an article about a band she was in 8 years ago and have her as a passing note when she has more than established her own country sound in the interim. Same incredible voice, but the vibe is all her own.
So Carolina Chocolate Drops. A group of multi-instrumentalist Black artists and vocalists, doing old-time music, americana, and classic country. And already, I can here some Nice White Person™ clacking away at their keyboard, ready to tell me how CCD isn’t really country. 1: I refer you back to the article by Elamin Abdelmahmoud I referenced in the Charley Pride entry and 2: if you really want to quibble about whether a group playing bones and banjo and fiddle and singing about cornbread and living in the South is country or not, I guess you can, but that seems like a hard stance to defend.
CCD brings together many aspects that I absolutely live for in country, with the two biggest being incredible vocals and incredible, unique instrumentation. And off and on, they’ll include other things I’ve talked about. In the case of this first song—my introduction to the band—that is a cover. Except I didn’t know that it was when I first heard Hit ‘Em Up Style.
It was actually about six months later when I finally stumbled across the original Blu Cantrell track. And while this is all just a matter of taste, I like CCD’s cover considerably more than I like the original. That’s not a slight at all against Cantrell. But the juxtaposition of the composition with the acoustic, country sound of CCD just really does it for me. It’s not rewritten to “be more country.” It’s essentially just reorchestrated for banjo and fiddle, and that place where the two different sounds collide could have been a disaster. Instead, that friction created magic.
Carolina Chocolate Drops pulled that off in large part because they are so talented. Every single member, and it’s evident any time you listen to them. Like, there legitimately is not just any band who could have pulled off that Hit ‘Em Up Style cover. A lot of that comes down to their sheer skill with their various instruments. I mean, the whole thing started at a banjo festival. They’re going to have to have some real chops when it comes to their instruments. And I can’t think of a better example of that than Snowden’s Jig.
(Yes, the cleaner studio version is on the same YouTube account. But this is just so cool, I went with this.)
While it doesn’t feature all the instrumental talents of every member…I don’t think it would be feasible to do that. Not when some of the members play, like, five instruments. But what it does do is showcase their intense familiarity and skill with not only the instruments on display, but their understanding of traditional music styles.
Snowden’s Jig features some amazing playing of bones, which is a sound I wish we heard more of in music today. But more importantly, it evokes something. It’s a strange combination of emotions. The backing percussion is driving, constantly moving forward. But Giddens’s fiddle adds this almost melancholic air to the whole piece. But not actually melancholic? I always recommend that you listen to every song I talk about, but I especially think you should listen to this one to understand the sound and emotion being produced by Snowden’s Jig.
All the more, Snowden’s Jig is a traditional song. The history of American string music is full of Black artists who we just don’t talk about, or who maybe didn’t even make it into the historical record. But they were there, forming the music that would eventually spawn country, and CCD is carrying on a lot of their traditions.
Another string-heavy song from their repertoire is Country Girl. It would frankly be at home in any country fan’s playlist, a musing on life in a small southern town, working the earth, and eating damn good food.
But what truly stands out about this song, at least to me, is how infectious the sound is. The fiddle in the background just absolutely going to town. It just absolutely screams into the opening, and you can’t help but pay attention to it. It draws you into the song and doesn’t let you go until you’ve heard the whole message.
And while I don’t want to make everything about race or racism, I think the message is worth looking at through that lens: it’s a song about belonging and being a country girl. And especially given the climate of the genre into which it was released, circa 2012, it almost seems to stand as a challenge, daring anyone to tell CCD that they don’t belong.
I’m not here to weigh in on that. You know my stance on who belongs in country (Everyone), and that would have been the same then. I’ll leave it at that, but if you do want more thoughts on Black artists and fans in country, seriously, the Charley Pride article has not only more of my thoughts, but more importantly, articles by actual Black people in the country music community, because you really shouldn’t be forming your opinions on this subject by listening exclusively to some white Millennial blogger like me.
(Also, to be clear, this is not me putting words in the mouths of CCD. I don’t have any reason to believe that any of that was at all considered when writing or playing or recording Country Girl. This is just how I see it.)
Another couple songs that are really good at showcasing the band’s instrumental skills are Cornbread and Butterbeans, a fun, flirty little number, and I Truly Understand That You Love Another Man. And the bonus is both of those tracks also feature strong male vocals, because CCD really was talented all the way around. It’s not a band that just hinges on Rhiannon Giddens’s ability to bust out some amazing singing. Every member is incredible, and the work they’ve individually put out in the intervening years all holds up just as well.
We’re getting down to the wire of this article, and there are, as per usually, tons of songs I want to talk about. But I think we should at least dip a toe into the bluegrassier side of CCD. A fair number of CCD songs are covers of classics and standards, and Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man? is right in the mix, there.
Bluegrass is a natural fit for Carolina Chocolate Drops, since it’s a type of music that relies a lot on the skill of musicians, particularly string musicians, to pull it off correctly. The banjo picking in CCD’s version is really something to behold. Plus more bones, which is always a plus for me. Giddens’s voice also really carries through here, with her clean, clear high notes juxtaposed to the earthy, fast-moving foundation throughout the verses. There’s a reason this song is a bluegrass standard, and Carolina Chocolate Drops’s version is really among the best, in my opinion.
The final song, at least this time, was not difficult for me. There’s one CCD song that I want to end on, and that I’ve wanted to end on since I first decided to do an article on them. But I would also be remiss not to throw in a few others. Well, two others for sure. These are decidedly not country songs. CCD is a country band, but that doesn’t mean they’re just a country band. The lineage of traditional string bands they carried on is not one of specific genres, but is rather inclusive.
Why Don’t You Do Right? is a lounge-singer, classic pop, bluesy staple that CCD manages to deliver beautifully. You might know the song itself from Fallout: New Vegas if you’re a nerd like me, and their cover is really incredible, showcasing better than almost anything their range as a band. The fact that they can cover so many genres is a testament to their skill as musicians.
The other one I really have to mention is Reynadine. It’s a traditional ballad, and if you want to talk about range? Oh man, this is some range. Going from Hit ‘Em Up Style to this, which sounds most akin to an Irish folk song, is just…honestly, I still don’t fully have words to wrap around it. But it’s a testament to CCD, and specifically to Giddens’s vocal flexibility.
Plus, like, more nerd points because Reynard the Fox. And I know that’s not the super traditional context of the song, but it’s certainly a traditional context of the song. Just let me have my mythology nerdery and be a Gunnerkrigg Court fanboy for two seconds, okay?
So with those out of the way, what’s the one song I really want to talk about here at the end? It’s a divorce song, because I would pick a divorce song, right? I ended the last article with one, even though that one wasn’t even supposed to come out when it did. But I have to say, the juxtaposition between The Chicks’s divorce album and No Man’s Mama is truly a delicious coincidence.
And okay, we can get it right out of the way: this is the least country song of the five I presented. I can accept that. I can own up to it. But I also hold firm in my belief that, if this song popped up on country radio, nobody would bat an eye, other than to be shocked that something so unique and different was suddenly playing.
This is another classic song, but it’s such a lovely departure from most divorce songs. Usually in country, women sing about how sad or angry they are to be getting divorced, and men sing about how nice it is be rid of their horrible shrew of a wife. Obviously, there are exceptions. Reba’s Strange and Zac Brown Band’s Highway 20 Ride come immediately to mind. But we’re talking trends here, and the trends tend to be women upset, men happy about divorce.
So this song turns everything on its head. We don’t have to hear about how terrible the husband was. We don’t hear about how she ran him over with a pickup truck. We don’t hear about how she can’t get out of bed because all she can do is cry. No. She’s just fucking happy that she’s out of this relationship, and she’s ready to live her life and do whatever the heck she wants. And that’s the entire lyrical content of the song.
The guy in question doesn’t even get a passing mention. It’s a divorce song that focuses wholly on how good this woman feels to finally be out of her marriage. Why she wanted out and what the ex is doing? Irrelevant.
And Giddens delivers all the fun and freedom of the song beautifully in her voice and her musicality. It’s playful. It’s pleasant. It’s lovely. And it’s my favorite Carolina Chocolate Drops song.
Shocking none of you at this point, there are of course songs that I didn’t include that I love. Trampled Rose is good when it’s Tom Waits singing it and it’s good when it comes from CCD. Pretty Bird is gorgeous. Read ‘Em John is a wonderful display of the harmonies they’re able to muster.
But the note I really want to leave on is that this is not The Band Perry. This isn’t a group that was together, but you can never get this sound again. Yes, none of their individual projects quite have the same thing as CCD, but Rhiannon Giddens and Dom Flemons and Rowan Corbett and, to my knowledge, every other former member of Carolina Chocolate Drops, are still producing music. If you want to hear any of them, it’s not going to be CCD. But it is going to be damn good music, ranging from country to bluegrass to Piedmont blues and americana, and on and on and on.
If anything, we should be happy to have this plethora of music still being produced after all this time.
I’ll talk to you all next week…when hopefully I’ll have some of these earworms dislodged.
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