Brass Ponies: Charlie Faye & Sturgill Simpson Make Americana Horny Again

The life and death of horns in Americana music produced by Caucasians can be traced back to two classic rockers, Bruce Springsteen and Glenn Frey. Watching Springsteen on his River tour last month in Seattle, Jake Clemons—succeeding his late uncle in a deftly touching manner—and his saxophone were absolutely central to the E Street Band’s instrumental milieu. Back to back with the boss, the Big Man’s little man had taken the brass baton and shepherded it across yet another generational divide.

As for Frey, I’m certainly among the minority of listeners who were more profoundly impacted by his January death than that of David Bowie’s eight days earlier. Bowie was unimpeachable and wholly original, whereas the polarizing Frey was ripe for analysis. He and his Eagles took an emerging sub-genre (alt-country), polished and buffed it, and made a ton of money off the more accessible result. This is musical capitalism at its most unfiltered, and led a lot of purists to demonize Frey and his bandmates. I, for one, am extremely fond of most Eagles songs—good in their own right, they serve as a gateway to the same artists the band borrowed from.

One thing Frey the solo artist should be universally loathed for, however, is his attempt to murder horns in popular music. “The Heat Is On” and “You Belong to the City” are among the worst songs in the the entire American canon, and the saxophone solos in each are enough to make you wish you were temporarily deaf.

But thanks to Charlie Faye and Sturgill Simpson, Americana’s horny again. After putting out several solid albums as a sort of indie Sheryl Crow, Faye’s taken a retro detour with her upcoming LP, Charlie Faye & The Fayettes (out June 10). The Fayettes are the Benetton of girl groups—Faye’s white, BettySoo’s Asian and Akina Adderley’s black—and Steve Elson’s saxophone, coupled with a tasty “Franklin’s Tower” guitar riff, makes “Eastside” one of the more danceable numbers of the year (note: the live version included below features no horns). There’s more to Faye, though: Alongside her obvious admiration for The Ronettes and Shirelles is a lyrical tendency to address modern themes—female sexuality and gentrification among them—in a manner that doesn’t wallop the listener over the head.

While Faye employs horns somewhat sparingly on her fine album, they’re all over Sturgill Simpson’s stunning new LP, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth (out April 15). Despite being heralded as central to outlaw country’s new wave, Simpson recently told The New York Times that he’s far more influenced by Elvis Presley than Waylon Jennings. You’d have been forgiven for thinking the opposite after listening to Simpson’s last two albums, but on Sailor’s Guide, the Dap-Kings’ brass section is so muscular that it all but drowns out Laur Joamets’ great guitar runs. Simpson might call Nashville home, but just cut a metamodern Memphis classic that’s light years ahead of his peers.