This summer, I watched the Springfield, MO music documentary The Center of Nowhere, which was a lovingly-made bit of boosterism that included some genuinely cool interviews and historical footage. It was pleasant, if a bit sad, to watch it in a year when I can’t get back to Springfield for the usual occasions. I found after watching the film that I was immediately assembling my own list of my favorite songs by Springfield bands. And so, after a few months of hemming, hawing, and typing, I have assembled a list of my ten favorite songs of Springfield, MO. It would be much more fun to drive down to the Ozarks, catch up with friends, and argue about this stuff over a whiskey or four, but I guess a blog post will have to do for now.
The number of years since I moved away from Springfield at age 18 far exceeds the number of years that I lived there when I was growing up. Listening to music from the Ozarks has long been a way to feel connected to a place that still means a lot to me, even if that place seems to the rest of the world like a backwater.
I hope that the following list will be taken in the spirit intended, which is as one music fan’s love letter to the town where he grew up. I have no more authority than anyone else to make such a list, and far less authority than some people. So think of it as a mixtape as much as a ranking. And I always scribbled way too many liner notes on mixtapes.
Okay, some caveats and clarifications:
*I make no claims to this list being definitive. If you care about Springfield music, your mileage will almost certainly vary, and that’s a wonderful thing.
*I’ve listened to a lot of stuff from Springfield over the years, but as I said, I haven’t actually lived there full-time since 1995. So I don’t necessarily know all the new bands, and what I do know is inflected by the recommendations of friends. Brett Miller and Jenny Edwards in particular have pointed me to a lot of good stuff, though neither of them bear any blame for my deficiencies of taste.
*There’s obviously the question of how to define “songs of Springfield.” I’m defining it to mean songs written and performed by artists associated primarily or exclusively with Springfield or its immediate environs. There are obviously other ways one could do this. A list of nationally known artists who spent some small portion of their career performing or recording in Springfield might lean heavily to Brenda Lee, the Carter Family, or Robbie Fulks; a list of songs written by Springfieldians but made famous by national artists would give you “Danger Zone,” “The Letter,” and “Always on My Mind.” But my list is about songs that are of, by, and to a great extent for Springfieldians.
*I am the age I am, and like anyone I’m partial to the music of my teens and twenties. In my case, this means the 90’s and 00’s. I also have my own genre preferences. I particularly enjoy Americana performed by smartasses and indie rock performed by dorks. I like hooks. I mistrust virtuosity. All of that is reflected here.
*This is a Springfield list. Not a 417 list. There’s no Branson. No Knobbers. No Shojis. Anything located within five miles of a fucking wax museum is out. That said, I did consider including the “Fire in the Hole” theme song.
*Okay, that’s enough throat-clearing. Here’s my list: The EG Revue’s Ten Favorite Songs of Springfield, MO.
10 (tie). Izabel Crane, “Spring Fed River” (2019); Dragon Inn 3, “Bad Boy” (2018)
Everything else I’m putting on this list is at least ten years old. I really like both of these songs, but I haven’t yet had the chance to burn out on them and then come back later, which is always the biggest test. So, they get placed in a #10 tie, which will probably strike me as far too low or high a few years from now.
Izabel Crane on “Spring Fed River” continues the long tradition of Springfield artists revisiting gospel in other genres. It’s a baptism song of a sort, but a decidedly secular one. I could imagine Isabel Crane gaining an audience beyond Springfield. Certainly anyone who likes Gillian Welch ought to give this a listen.
Dragon Inn 3’s Double Line is one of my favorite albums of the last couple years. Philip Dickey of Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin near-fame (more on them later) went out and recruited a band of vocal ringers, and they recorded some synthed-out Crockett-and-Tubbs jams. “Bad Boy” is the best thing the 1980’s have given to Springfield since Charlie Spoonhour.
9. Honky Tonk Chateau, “26 Miles” (2002)
It’s possible that Matt Netzer, who sings on this one, is a good enough friend that I should exclude Honky Tonk Chateau from consideration. But on the other hand, this song’s great, so I’m rolling with it. Also, I didn’t really know Matt yet when this album came out, so I first experienced it as “a thing I bought at CD Warehouse”[1] rather than “a thing I bought at my friend’s album release show,” which seems an important distinction.[2]
There was plenty of hard-driving grain belt rock coming out of the Show-Me State right around the turn of the century, and this song is a fine example of the form. I’m not entirely sure what the song is about beyond “relationship troubles” and “driving,” but what other topics do you really need?
8. The Skeletons, “Thirty Days in the Workhouse” (1987)
7. Big Smith, “No Sir” (2000)
The subtext of this list is whiteness. This is a very white list of artists, and while some of that is due to the limitations of my own listening interests, it is also a reflection of the fact that Springfield is one of the whitest cities in the US. Springfield was 89 percent white in the 2010 census, and remarkably enough, that means the city is much more diverse than it was when I grew up there during the 80’s and 90’s. The musical genres to which Springfield has made its biggest contributions reflect those demographics: country, rockabilly, folk rock, roots rock, bluegrass, alt-country, indie. We haven’t made a dent on the polka charts, but give it time.
Both of these songs are about white privilege and law enforcement. In “No Sir,” Big Smith’s Mark Bilyeu writes about an anxious traffic stop in Oklahoma, where he definitely doesn’t want his car searched. But in the end, he doesn’t have much to worry about. The fact of the matter is that “The only words in Spanish/ On Highway 44/ Say ‘Checkpoint straight ahead’/ So you know who they’re lookin’ for.” The young white protagonist is able to “wriggle through the net” of the justice system, free to pursue a career performing hillbilly music, well-aware that people who don’t look like him might not have fared so well.
The Skeletons are even more blunt in their rewrite of a Leadbelly classic: “Thirty days in the workhouse,/ Don’t you shed no tears./ If I’d been a black man/ They’d a’ give me thirty years.” It’s “don’t you shed no tears” that makes this one sting. Lou Whitney was willing to lean into unlikable narrators, and it’s plenty revealing that the speaker assumes we would shed tears for the slap on the wrist given to a white shitheel but not for the thirty years given to a black man. The Skeletons tended to play this song with a manic, unhinged intensity, whereas Big Smith’s take on the same basic topic in “No Sir” is mournful. But perhaps manic and mournful is an appropriate set of responses to an American reality that sits at the intersection of tragedy and insanity.
6. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, “Sink/Let It Sway” (2010)
SSLYBY is my favorite Springfield band by a pretty wide margin. They were attuned to the blog-rockin’ 00’s in a way that gave them a small-but-devoted audience well beyond Missouri, but they’ve always sounded to me like a band from the Ozarks in the same way that Big Star or REM or the Elephant 6 bands sound like they’re from the South. They don’t play it up, but it’s in there.
“Sink/Let It Sway” is one of Yeltsin’s catchiest songs, and a real showcase for what a great guitar sound they had. And while it’s true that “Best Music Video from Springfield” is a fairly slim category, the Point Break tribute filmed for this song is without rival.
5. The Smarties, “He Fixes Things” (1996)
I’ve always remembered this song as a fun little quick-hitter of 90’s alterna-pop, but listening to stuff for this list, it jumps out to me how much “He Fixes Things” sounds like the Skeletons: it’s got driving growly guitars and tight drums, it’s hooky, it’s unafraid of being a little silly, and it’s not a second longer than it needs to be.[3] Much of the best music out of Springfield has been willing to indulge in not just humor but corniness (Springfield ain’t Branson, but it ain’t far from Branson). “He fixes things but he broke my heart” seems at first glance like it ought to be the chorus of an AM country song, but it works delightfully as a 90’s rock song.
This song always reminds me of that era when downtown was nothing but Nonna’s, the antique stores, the DMV, and the weirdos. Every time I get back to Springfield, it seems more and more impossible that such a time ever existed.
4. Ronnie Self, “Ain’t I’m a Dog” (1957)
It’s fun to imagine the reaction of some University Heights father walking past his daughter’s room, just a few months before she graduates as part of Parkview’s first senior class, and overhearing her listen to this growly rockabilly record. “Linda,” declares the paterfamilias, “if this boy takes these kinds of liberties with English grammar, what other liberties might he take?”
I hope Linda was done being grounded in time to join her fellow Lassies at the sock hop.
“Bop-a-Lena” was a bigger hit for Self (and “I’m Sorry,” which he wrote for Brenda Lee, was a way bigger hit), but to these ears, “Ain’t I’m a Dog” is the A-side.
3. Ozark Mountain Daredevils, “Jackie Blue” (1974)
Alright, time for some honesty that might anger some Springfieldians: I kinda hate the Daredevils. “If You Wanna Get to Heaven” is boring. “It’ll Shine When It Shines” is saccharine. “Chicken Train” makes me want to go full Belushi on a mouth harp.
But then there’s “Jackie Blue.”
“Jackie Blue” is so good, y’all. “Jackie Blue” sounds like someone raised on Ozarks church music discovering cocaine, malaise, and women who like cocaine.[4] No matter how good your stereo is, “Jackie Blue” always sounds like a tinny speaker nailed to a utility pole at Hydra-Slide. It sounds like denim cutoffs and root beer at the Fair. It sounds like a lifeguard at Fassnight Pool who’s more worried about her tan than her job.
As far as radio airplay is concerned, this is the biggest rock song ever recorded by a Springfield band. And so the Daredevils’ smoothest contribution to the freaky 70’s lands at #3 on this list, which was also its peak position on the Billboard Hot 100.
2. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, “Think I Wanna Die” (2008)
Back when SSLYBY still played shows it seemed like the crowd mostly got excited about the more anthemic stuff, but for me “Think I Wanna Die” is their greatest hit. Lyrically, it has quite a bit of fun wearing a Morrissey mask. Musically, it’s a sidewinder—it spins and darts and hesitates and builds, hooky as hell the whole time.
The line where they apologize for being twee cracks me up. Most of the music on this list is more than a little chicken-fried, and when SSLYBY came along one of the many delightful things about them was that they were perfectly willing to be the least dangerous band in Springfield. Which in this case extends not just to being twee, but apologizing for it.
1. The Skeletons, “Trans-Am” (1981)
Springfield is the birthplace of Route 66. That isn’t a marketing slogan, by the way. It is literally true that some guys sat down in a hotel in Springfield in the 1920’s to select a number for the Chicago-to-LA highway. And so, the top song on this list almost has to be a car song.
“Trans-Am” is an upbeat song, but there’s also some darkness here. The speaker longs for a Trans-Am, but does not actually have one. The second verse is about the shoddiness of American cars, and the third is about registering for the draft, which adds a note of urgency to what is ultimately a carpe diem song. “Ride around while you still can,” we are told by a band called The Skeletons. And how do you say carpe diem in the Queen City of the Ozarks' English? By emphasizing “car,” of course.
Everybody now: T-R-A-N-S-A-M!!!
[1] It was disc #20510 in the CD Warehouse file cabinet, per the “Disc at Counter” sticker I still have on my copy.
[2] Speaking of things your friends made, thanks for reading this blog!
[3] Skeletons frontman Lou Whitney has an engineering credit on the album. Of course, he probably has an engineering credit on like 70 percent of the rock albums made in Springfield from 1980 to 2010.
[4] I should note that I have no proof of what substances the Daredevils were actually into. On the other hand, they were a popular rock band in the 70’s. I just opened to a random page in Supe Granda’s autobiography (which actually exists) where he talks about touring with The Steve Miller Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers. On the next page I turned to he talks about transporting “fresh green buds” direct from a farm in the Ozarks to the A&R Department of his record label. I’m done researching.
