{"id":10882,"date":"2025-04-02T15:41:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T15:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=10882"},"modified":"2025-04-02T15:42:58","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T15:42:58","slug":"big-ugly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/02\/big-ugly\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Big Ugly\u2019s Country Friends<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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On Big Ugly<\/em>, North Carolina band Fust are homesick for a home that no longer exists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By John Silver<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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At the exit of the Country Music Hall of Fame exhibits in Nashville, there\u2019s a notebook. It lies open to the following scribbled lyrics: \u201cI can still hear the soft southern wind in the live oak trees. And those Williams boys they still mean a lot to me, Hank and Tennessee. I guess we\u2019re all gonna be what we\u2019re gonna be, but what do you do with good ole boys like me?\u201d This is the chorus of songwriter Bob McDill\u2019s masterwork, \u201cGood Ole Boys Like Me,\u201d recorded in 1979 by Don Williams. Though the title conjures images of flags waving from $40,000 pickup trucks, the song is a profound tragedy, much more akin to The Sound and Fury than \u201cCourtesy of the Red, White, and Blue.\u201d It belongs to the great country subgenre of heartbreak songs about a home that has changed forever. This subgenre of futile homesickness represents the modern experience of so many Americans. We leave our small town homes and return to find they don\u2019t feel like home anymore. All the people we knew have left or died. The WalMart supercenter is the only store now. Or, most tragically and most likely, we ourselves have changed so profoundly that the place doesn\u2019t fit anymore. It still pulls us as strongly as ever: it just doesn\u2019t satisfy upon arrival. \u201cWhen I was eighteen, Lord, I hit the road,\u201d Williams sings, \u201cbut it really doesn\u2019t matter how far I go.\u201d Home still calls, whether it\u2019s there or not.\u00a0

The band Fust have heard \u201cGood Ole Boys Like Me.\u201d It sounds like it might be their favorite song. The title track of their new album ends with the lines \u201cI\u2019ve got the mud of Big Ugly running through me, and I\u2019ll never get it off or get it out though I know what the rain can do. Oh I love this town, it shows me my lonesome\u2019s written in the stars.\u201d Big Ugly, a great album name for a band with a less than great name, is taken from an unincorporated town and tributary in Lincoln County, West Virginia. The band is based in Durham, NC, but songwriter Aaron Dowdy is originally from Bristol, Virginia, the birthplace of country music (and NASCAR\u2019s fastest half-mile), and is himself a distant descendent of the Carter Family. Big Ugly serves his stories here as a stand-in for Bristol like Faulkner\u2019s Yoknapataphaw County. He populates the songs with mountain convenience stores, beers under bridges, and back-home people. He calls them \u201ccountry friends\u201d whom he will see again once he makes it up that mountain he must climb to get back home.\u00a0

These \u201ccountry friend\u201d characters are Big Ugly\u2019s greatest strength. For the most part, we find them out of work and drinking or worse. But they\u2019re more than that. They\u2019re helping each other out of jams and building master craftsman furniture as thank-you gifts (\u201cMountain Language\u201d and \u201cGateleg\u201d), and they\u2019re in love. \u201cMe and Jody\u2019ve been at this since high school,\u201d Dowdy sings on \u201cJody,\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ve been at this now longer than we\u2019ve not. And I think that as I watch her stir her heavy with her finger, I\u2019ll never get enough of what I\u2019ve got.\u201d This is a couple deep into their habit. They\u2019d be more at home in a notorious Breaking Bad episode featuring a stolen ATM machine than a sweet country love song. But, somehow, Dowdy pulls off a sweet country love song about them. He\u2019s a master writer when it clicks. He changes Jody\u2019s name when the narrator addresses her directly at the end of the song. \u201cJo, put me down from this big world,\u201d the narrator pleads over and over to fiddle runs and a Springsteenesque backbeat. These are the \u201ccountry friends,\u201d and Dowdy loves them deeply and painfully.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Home hasn\u2019t changed, it\u2019s gone forever, lost to mortality and then to the man-made mortality of a changing landscape, a hospital room levelled to an empty field.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sonically, this album fits comfortably into the resurgence of country rock being labeled on streaming service playlists, somewhat offensively, as \u201cIndie Twang.\u201d They\u2019re the latest example of Carolinan musicians to become darlings of indie rock critics, a trend so dominant it has all the makings of a \u201cscene\u201d like Athens, Georgia in the late \u201880s. With MJ Lenderman producer Alex Farrar enlisted, the album sounds like the sweet spot standing back by the soundboard in a 1000 capacity rock club. It\u2019s dynamic, with rockers, like \u201cGateleg\u201d which sounds like the best of The Heartbreakers updated for mulleted Gen Z-ers, and with swelling ballads like \u201cSister\u201d in the spirit of Jason Molina\u2019s \u201cHold on Magnolia.\u201d Dowdy\u2019s voice serves the songs well throughout. He builds melodies from an ambling legato delivery that finds the note, true and clear, but then fades away, not to make a big fuss. His voice is emblematic of his characters, who would be embarrassed to find out there\u2019s a song about them.\u00a0

\u201cSpangled,\u201d the lead single and opening track of the album, is Dowdy\u2019s \u201cGood Ole Boys Like Me\u201d and probably his best song to date. It takes place, like all the greatest songs in American music, on the road. \u201cThey tore down the hospital,\u201d Dowdy sings, looking out the window, \u201cout on Route 11. I\u2019m not sure what happened. It seems like repossession.\u201d He\u2019s back home, and it\u2019s changed. And then come some of the best lines of the past year, \u201cI\u2019m not one to try to get all the way to heaven. But I can\u2019t even visit the last place it was relevant. No, I can\u2019t even visit the last room I may have been in it.\u201d Home hasn\u2019t changed, it\u2019s gone forever, lost to mortality and then to the man-made mortality of a changing landscape, a hospital room levelled to an empty field. But there\u2019s hope here still, in the form of those country friends. Dowdy dedicates the song to them by name. \u201cGive my love to Amy. Give my love to Kevin. They tore down the hospital. And I\u2019m left floating, in room 305, I\u2019m floating forever, 305.\u201d Big Ugly opens with a personal heartbreak of a lost sense of place, then spends the next 40 minutes making you fall in love with that place and its people. By the end, if you\u2019ve been listening closely, the heartbreak is your own. \u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Joseph Collum<\/strong>\u00a0is a 2022 graduate of Dartmouth College with a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. Born in Mississippi and raised in Kentucky, he now lives in Philadelphia where he is teaching high school English. He is also working towards his Master\u2019s of Education as a member of the Alliance for Catholic Education at St. Joseph\u2019s University.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Big Ugly<\/strong> was released on March 7, 2025. It was produced by Alex Farrar. You can buy it here <\/a>and stream it here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Big Ugly, North Carolina band Fust are homesick for a home that no longer exists. Review by Joseph 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