"Big Easy Express"

Image from mxdwn.com.

I stumbled across this film because it was listed in NPR's "2012 In Review: 50 Wonderful Things From The Year In Pop Culture" article. I don't watch a lot of documentaries, but I like live music, and it was cheap to rent on Amazon, so I watched it!

The premise (subject?) is that three super cool bands (listed above) toured together, traveling by train and playing at all the stops on the way. The movie is mostly just beautiful shots of them playing and singing, both on the train and at the concerts, cut with occasional clips of the band members talking. Over-all, I enjoyed it-- it had some gorgeous cinematography and the sound quality was excellent, and obviously all of the bands are really great. (I am personally very fond of Old Crow Medicine Show!)

But what it made me most think about, and what I want to talk about, is the "artificial" creation of an experience.




These bands are all part of what I might describe as a "new folk" or "new bluegrass/country" movement-- "new" simply to signify that they have adopted a lot stylistically and thematically from old country/folk singers and made it their own. A lot of what they appear to be going for is a very old-school down-south kind of feel, emulating music about things which they might not have personally experienced. (I'm not aware of whether they have or haven't.)

This documentary tracks them on a journey that they decided to take which mimics a kind of idealistic experience that isn't really available anymore-- one that I'm sure they had to pay a great deal to have. Towards the beginning of the film, this is what stood out to me most: the juxtaposition of concept and reality. The tone of the movie is of a group of friends travelling through the country, experiencing the land and the people in a very low-key, romantic way. Realistically, it must have taken a great deal of money and a great deal of work to orchestrate something like that.

At the beginning, it really bothered me. I sat here thinking, this is so fake. No one these days would have this experience. No one would need to.

The longer I watched the film, though, the more I thought about it-- is there even such a thing as an "artificial experience"? Does having orchestrated something negate the actual experiencing of it? Maybe. But halfway through, when Mumford & Sons stopped at a local high-school to play for their marching band and have that marching band play back-up for them that night, I thought: this experience isn't fake for those kids, who will forever remember playing on stage to a massive, enthusiastic audience. Besides, people pay for experiences all the time-- in a world where seeing the Mona Lisa costs the price of entrance to a museum, paying for a cross-country train ride doesn't seem all that weird.

The truth of it is, for a lot of people (the people reading this blog, or renting this movie, most likely)-- you don't have to do anything. A person can grow up in a town, have the same friends, move only a block over, get a job that keeps them indoors-- it's not uncommon, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just that for most of us, any experiences we do have, we have to manufacture. We go to parties, we travel, we try bizarre new things. The same desire which compelled Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes to tour by train compels others to become Civil War reenactors, or go camping, or even knit.

Everyone on the train looked like they were having the time of their lives, and that's real: something people should keep in mind (myself included) when judging "authenticity" of experience.

Watching "Big Easy Express", I want to go out and create more experiences for myself.

Grade: A- (beautiful, nice listening, thought provoking-- I would have liked to hear more thoughts from the band members, though)
Buy: An assortment of places.