Now that Pitchfork scribe Amanda Petrusich has gone and made the investigation of the connection between the old and new “Weird America” all official with her excellent book It Still Moves, the work of artists like Nimrod Workman has become even more paramount to our understanding of the elements that compose American folk music: the thematic ever-presents of God, love, murder, and justice, the lonesome tones of strained voices and the inherent multi-national, multi-racial aspects that manifest themselves as Nimrod Workman (named for his Cherokee grandfather). Unaccompanied by any other voice or instrument, Workman sings songs ranging from self-composed tales of lust and murder, to British and Scottish traditional ballads and spiritual devotionals.
I Want To Go Where Things Are Beautiful contains just a small chunk of the 18-hours' worth of recordings that musician and folk historian Mike Seeger made of Workman at his home in Mascot, Tennessee in 1982. At 87 years old, Workman proves strikingly lucid; between the songs, he often takes time to elaborate on their origins, explaining that his uncle Peter McNeely took him aside as a young boy and taught him songs he wouldn’t teach anyone else. He details his struggles as a coal miner union activist, fighting to gain medical compensation for exposure to coal dust that led to black lung. The conversations between Seeger and Workman are warm and often given to laughter, as Workman details where he learned the songs, as if by recording them with Seeger he is to some degree passing them down to future generations as they were passed down to him.
Workman’s voice, shrill and heavily accented, is the perfect vehicle for the songs. As he describes singing in the coal mines, alone and in the dark, it becomes clear that his songs serve a higher function than mere entertainment. Songs like “Shady Grove” and “Gabriel’s Trumpet” long for a kind of beauty, sounding like survival tactics against the harsh backdrop of dirty, desolate mines. As he belts out “Coal Black Mining Blues” and describes his battle against the injustice of the mining business, a line connecting Pete Seeger to Billy Bragg and The Clash becomes apparent, with music as a message of social change. Just as Bukowski spent a good chunk of his life slagging it out in a sea of crap jobs, only free to truly explore the “fullness” of artistic life after retirement, Workman only began singing professionally after 42 years of mining, forced into retirement by a slipped disc and black lung, and the years of work are clear in his ringing voice as they are in Bukowski’s writing.
Workman shines when walking the line between the sacred and the profane, offering Pentecostal blessings in the same company as murder ballads (and sometimes even merging the two) or depicting Jesus as an avenging warrior in “Hewed Out of the Mountain,” conjuring images of a “stone rolling down from Babylon.” “Oh Death” and “Great Big Hand of God” feature similar dread, recognizing that at the core of the smiling-pastor visage of Christianity is a pretty terrifying book, full of rivers of blood and sacrifice. Workman is careful not to sermonize too much; however holy the Sunday mornings are, the Saturday nights seem pretty wild, as Workman describes calling out girls, drinking in the bar, and generally having a great time with the ladies when he’s not disposing of their bodies in the river.
But it’s not all so grim. “Good Morning” finds Workman blasting out some rapid-fire talking blues, genially rapping, and the smirk on his face is practically audible. As the record concludes, Seeger has wisely left in Workman’s goodbyes to him on that particular day. Among the colloquial “y’all comeback now”s, his gentle nature shines through. A classic storyteller in a uniquely American fashion, his tale is one that embodies all that’s notable about “traditional American” music. Though he passed away at the age of 99 in 1994, Nimrod Workman’s songs contain the threads that our modern folk -- indie or otherwise -- is built upon, the tightrope walk of spirit and flesh, the pathos of love and murder, and, above all, the idea of music as lasting salvation.
