Sebastopol: “A small semi-urban community located on the western edge of the Santa Rosa plain in Northern California. It is 50 miles north of San Francisco, and about 15 miles from the Russian River. The city, incorporated in 1902, currently has a population of about 7,900 people.” (Source: website for the City of Sebastopol.)
Sevastopol: “The largest non-freezing commercial and fishing Black Sea port of Ukraine. Located in the southwestern part of the Crimian Peninsula, on the site of the ancient Greek colony Khersonesus. The city itself and the Black Sea Fleet, based in Sevastopol, have occupied a prominent place in Russian and Soviet history. Its population is 390,100.” (Source: website for the City of Sevastopol.)
Vestapol: An open-G guitar tuning, “favored by blues and slide guitarists as well as many folksingers and modern fingerstylists.” (Source: website for Acoustic Guitar magazine.)
Tracing the trail in Jay Farrar’s thoughts, from experiments in guitar tuning to a bucolic little burg just north of the Bay Area, sheds a little light not only on the title of his new album, Sebastopol, but also on his nonlinear approach to music in general.
“Vestapol is a guitar tuning; originally I was thinking of using Vestapol” as the album’s title, Farrar attempts to explain. “Because Vestapol comes from ‘Sevastopol’, which was an early blues song, I guess named after a city in Russia.” (Actually now the Ukraine, per the sovereignty of several Russian provinces in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise a decade ago.)
“That’s what piqued my interest, is that whole concept of a blues song about a city in Russia. But anyway, from there it just went to Sebastopol. It just sounded better. And at this point, maybe there’s a linguist or some blues authority that would know if there may be a connection between the two, Sebastopol and Sevastopol.”
Turns out it’s more of a historical matter, actually a mildly interesting one, if veering onto yet another entirely unrelated tangent. “The name of Sebastopol first came into use in the late 1850s as a result of a prolonged and lively fistfight in the newly formed town, which was likened to the long British siege of the Russian seaport of Sevastopol during the then-raging Crimean War,” reports the City of Sebastopol website. “Britain, France, Sardinia and Turkey fought Russia in this war, one of the first wars to be directly reported by journalists and photographers….Evidently, many Americans in the West sympathized more for the Russian than for the British cause, as there were at one time four other Sebastopols in California.”
None of the songs on Sebastopol, Jay Farrar’s first solo release after four albums with Uncle Tupelo in the first half of the 1990s and three with Son Volt in the latter half, have anything to do with Northern California or the Crimean Peninsula — though they might relate in more general terms to the earth as a whole as it stretches between those opposite edges of the globe. “The world is gonna burn up four billion years from now/If it doesn’t happen anytime soon,” he observes on the opening track, “Feel Free”. On the album’s first single, “Voodoo Candle”, Farrar sings of being “Caught between two worlds.” Later, on “Direction”, he watches as “The world spins around, in step with the best intentions/It’s what we’re here for/So dear to die for.”++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This is an excerpt of the article which appeared in The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music, which features 25 of the finest articles from the magazines back issues, and was published in 2005 by University of Texas Press to help celebrate the magazines 10th anniversary. Due to our agreement with UT Press we are unable to include this article in our online archive.
The Best of No Depression is the only place you can find these articles other than our back issues. Visit the No Depression store to buy your copy for only $10.
The 300-page volume includes co-editor Grant Aldens award-winning 2001 feature on Billy Joe Shaver, co-editor Peter Blackstocks 1998 Artist of the Decade piece on Alejandro Escovedo, senior editor Bill Friskics-Warrens 2002 cover story on Johnny Cash, contributing editor Paul Cantins deep exploration of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era Wilco; and many other high points from our print heyday.
Table of contents for The Best of No Depression:
Preface, by Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock
Los Lobos, by Geoffrey Himes
Alejandro Escovedo, by Peter Blackstock
Jon Dee Graham, by Peter Blackstock
Billy Joe Shaver, by Grant Alden
Ray Wylie Hubbard, by John T. Davis
Flatlanders, by Don McLeese
Ray Price, by David Cantwell
Johnny Gimble, by Bill C. Malone
Johnny Cash, by Bill Friskics-Warren
Rosanne Cash, by Lloyd Sachs
Lucinda Williams, by Silas House
Buddy & Julie Miller, by Bill Friskics-Warren
Kasey Chambers, by Geoffrey Himes
Loretta Lynn, by Barry Mazor
Patty Loveless, by Bill Friskics-Warren
Kieran Kane, by Peter Cooper
Paul Burch, by Jim Ridley
Hazel Dickens, by Bill Friskics-Warren
Gillian Welch, by Grant Alden
Ryan Adams, by David Menconi
Jay Farrar, by Peter Blackstock
Jayhawks, by Erik Flannigan
Wilco, by Paul Cantin
Drive-By Truckers, by Grant Alden
Iron & Wine, by William Bowers
