‘Down From The Mountain’ Showcases Bluegrass At Its Best

Sometimes, a movie soundtrack manages to separate itself from the film and take on a life of its own. This usually happens when the music for the movie also defines the times, like the Bee Gees’ soundtrack for “Saturday Night Fever.” The music for the Coen Brothers’ 1999 film “O Brother, Where Art Thou?,” though, comes from seventy years ago. It is roots country and bluegrass in the age of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, and yet the soundtrack has managed to sell over four million copies and jump-start an old-time concert revue. What’s the deal?

Part of the music’s appeal is its deep tradition. You’d have to be living in a place more isolated than an Appalachian cave to not have heard “You Are My Sunshine” or “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Other songs pop up in the oddest places — I originally heard the traditional lament “O Death” on a Camper Van Beethoven album. This music permeates most of American music, and listening to it is like stirring a universal memory, where you can remember hearing the music in another life.

The soundtrack’s mix of sly humor and sincerity is also hard to come by these days. “In the Jailhouse Now” is a wry anecdote, folksy but still with a bite as the narrator, who has detailed others’ misery, relates that now he’s in the jailhouse. The hobo in “Big Rock Candy Mountain” sings of a place where “Yo never change your socks / And little streams of alcohol / Come trickling down the rocks.” Little dashes of wit that rely on clever turns of phrase and sad irony will never grow old.

The spirituality that is the bedrock of many of these songs is also timeless. Instead of Creed’s mealy-mouthed Hallmark platitudes, these songs offer a Christianity that recognizes the misery of earthbound life and celebrates the joys of Heaven without condescension. “Down to the River to Pray” is a gorgeous hymn that manages to be celebratory even as it rarely rises above a whisper, while “Angel Band” starts out cheerful, nearly drowns in weariness and is redeemed as the singer is borne away on “snow-white wings to [his] eternal home.” This is the type of spiritual music, like John Zorn’s Masada works, that can be enjoyed regardless of the listener’s religion.

There were few recording devices available for roots and bluegrass musicians back in the 1920s and ’30s, and nothing as widespread as FM radio. Their music was more often heard live, whether on a porch, in a bar, or at a fair.

The Down From the Mountain tour attempts to replicate that fair atmosphere, bringing most of the bands present on the “O Brother” soundtrack to the stage, mixing and matching members while retaining a smooth flow of wonderful music.

The tour sprang from a special concert and filming organized in Nashville after the soundtrack began to sell like Beanpot tickets. The concert was supposed to be a one-off event, but the huge response provoked the tour, which stopped at the Wang Theatre last Saturday. Judging by the packed seats and $70 tickets, the phenomenon is still going strong.

The music from the soundtrack translates even better live. Chris Thomas King, who appeared in the film as the soul-selling guitarist Tommy Johnson (the guy Robert Johnson ripped his “crossroads” myth off of), played a gut-wrenching version of “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues,” and contributed a new piece called “John Law Burned Down the Liquor Store” that retained the whimsy and cheek of classic roots music. Norman Blake was joined by his wife Nancy for a more fleshed-out rendition of “You Are My Sunshine,” their voices melding together perfectly. Tim Blake Nelson stopped by to perform his hilarious drawling vocal on “In The Jailhouse Now,” throwing in a few yodeling solos to the delight of the audience.

All of the musicians performed excellently, but the highlight of the show was vocalist Ralph Stanley. With a voice that chills you like the wind coming down Commonwealth Avenue, he sounded like Death himself on “O Death,” and emphasized the desperation at the heart of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” which was sung much more upbeat in the film.

The show concluded with every performer singing “Angel Band” a capella, and Stanley leading his congregation, call and response style, through “Amazing Grace.” Stanley sing-calling out each line and joining the other performers in the reverent echo was both one of the most interesting and moving things I’ve heard at a concert, and one of the oldest ways of group singing in American culture, going back to times when you didn’t even have to read to sing with soul. As fads and trends go, we could do a lot worse.