Lew Card’s “Condo Town Rag” Video Brilliantly Encapsulates the Concern
Gentrification within America’s artistic communities and entertainment corridors is one of the greatly overlooked and fundamentally underlying reasons that music and other artistic expressions are under siege in the modern age. Affordable housing and friendly, inspiring environs are as significant of factors into the fostering of of the creative process as anything. The two major epicenters for American country and roots music—Nashville, TN and Austin, TX—are both going through eerily similar and equally sweeping changes to their urban landscapes, and it’s affecting the music directly.
Cool old buildings and affordable living spaces are getting bulldozed in lieu of boxy and unimaginative condominium developments, eradicating communal points where artists can congregate and concentrate on their art as opposed to having high rents and other responsibilities hanging over their heads. It’s asked often why well-intentioned artists move to music towns only to lose touch with their principles and start cranking out commercial material, and it’s party because the next rent check is due. Historically, low rents have been the harbinger for marquee musical groundswells in places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Greenwich Village in the 60’s, and Austin and Nashville in the 90’s.
Austin songwriter and mandolin player Lew Card has just released a new album called Follow Me Down that takes his “low country hi-fi” sound and spices it up with a bit of old school blues and Leon Redbone-style ragtime jazz. Having played with so many other Austinites both on the stage and in the studio over the years, he calls in favors in his Rolodex and gets folks like Johnny Cash’s piano player Earle Poole Ball, fellow songwriter Doug Strahan, and The Tijuana Trainwreck Horn Section to stop by the studio and lend a hand.
Lew Card then took his song “Condo Town Rag” and teamed up with Seymour.tv to create a brilliant depiction of how when a city’s identity changes, so do our memories and sense of home and place. Using historical photos matched up with modern-day perspectives, it shows the troubling way the Austin skyline has been retooled in recent years by people who move there to take advantage of the artistic community, but ultimately become the catalyst for its demise.
In 2015, Saving Country Music didn’t bestow its annual “Video of the Year” award from the weak field of candidates. In 2016 we already have our second strong candidate in as many months (see the first).
February 4, 2016 @ 10:47 am
Cool video. I would argue that the rush to build “affordable housing” is as much to blame as anything. These scumbag developers are making a mint building “affordable housing.” We pay for it with tax subsidies and outright payments to the developers and they get to stand there and act like they are doing something great for the community by pocketing a shit ton of money and moving criminals into decent neighborhoods.
February 4, 2016 @ 1:12 pm
RD that’s not what I’ve observed in Austin. What I see is high rises full of $575,000 two bedroom condos, more of them then you can wave your pecker at, thousands and thousands of them every year, and old neighborhoods and weird old Austin stuff disappearing underneath an onslaught of nice kids from the midwest who moved down to work at this that or the other high tech startup, sitting around brand new cookie cutter bars drinking small batch bourbon or triple strength IPA’s while talking about how much they love the city.
There are worse ways for a city to die, but gone is gone and the past ain’t never coming back. Hopefully the Continental Club, the White Horse, and the Broken Spoke survive until the boom ends.
February 4, 2016 @ 1:20 pm
That is definitely happening, too. Though, in my neck of the woods, most urban neighborhoods were ruined 50 years ago, so there is not much worth saving anyway… The problem seems to be more acute on the coasts, where carpetbaggers and foreigners are driving up housing (for sale and rental) costs to such a degree that the long-time residents can’t afford to live there anymore.
February 4, 2016 @ 5:41 pm
Very cool.
February 4, 2016 @ 6:00 pm
They say they are building those places because people are more and more opting to live in urban centers rather than suburban outskirts. Historically, it is actually cheaper to live in the suburbs(according to experts) than in the city, on kpft, they said this building is done in a bid to lower rent and increase capacity. Austin is about the only urban area I have considered moving to, and that’s to be near the music scene. Houston is more spread out but a little less diverse.
February 4, 2016 @ 9:47 pm
Neat video. As for 2015 videos, i would have nominated Israel Nash’s “LA Lately” and Alex “Crankshaft” Larson’s “Any other way”.
February 5, 2016 @ 10:01 am
What’s that tall tower that appears at about 2:00? Does that exist now??
Jesus–what a fucking metropolis! There has to be 2 million in the metro area by now, no?
Fuck that.
February 5, 2016 @ 11:12 am
Yes, it’s called the Austonian, and it is America’s great phallic edifice to gentrification.
February 7, 2016 @ 2:13 pm
Well you could do this same video with SF’s most iconic views and buildings. People say it won’t happen to the GG Bridge. LOL! Just give it time that is a great view for people who like penthouses right next to it.
Cities are starting look like every science fiction book cover or computer screen wallpaper I’ve seen of a metropolis.