As an industry town, much of Nashville is dedicated to making music for the widest possible distribution. Another Nashville, though, makes music for people close at hand—for people who are likely to notice. Within that more private world, a sort of inverse of the Music City that everyone else sees, John Allingham figures prominently.
Allingham is a well-established figure on this latter scene, thanks to his involvement with musical enterprises that share the smoky dive Springwater as their hub: the Working Stiff Jamboree and the fringe folk band the Cherry Blossoms. Allingham has been making music in this circle for 30 years, playing acoustic music that seems more in tune with the spirit of punk rock than with Americana or folk reconstruction.
Growing up in Fullerton, Cal., Allingham always knew that he wanted to get out of Southern California. In the early '70s, he saw a TV show about Kris Kristofferson and other young Nashville songwriters and decided to move here. Playing out a classic Nashville arrival story, he showed up in 1975, got swindled out of some cash by the first guy he met, and found a room at the Bell Hotel downtown.
Allingham was in town for a bit before he ever played in front of people. In 1976, he found his way into a songwriter's group that played at Frank N Steins, a bar in the basement of the building that now houses St. Mary's Bookstore on West End. A friend had to coax him onstage, but once he got up there, a rush hit him. "I had this almost territorial sense, like, 'This is my space, I'm up here and I've got to own this little spot where I am,' " Allingham recalls. He's played out regularly ever since.
The group that gathered at Frank N Steins included several people who would become better known. Don Schlitz, who wrote "The Gambler," a No. 1 country hit for Kenny Rogers in 1978, went on to become a big-time songwriter. Schlitz's cousin Tom House has released several albums of his brilliant, too-dark-for-primetime songs to critical acclaim, but to no commercial avail. Mark Germino, another trenchant songwriter, had a run at a major-label career in the 1980s.
Frank N Steins eventually became a punk club and then went out of business, sending the songwriters in search of somewhere else to gather. In 1979, they found a home in a club facing Centennial Park called Norma's that now is known as the grimy and beloved (or despised) Springwater. In 1985, after several years of intermittent writer's nights there, Allingham and singer-songwriters Rob Stanley and Allison Moore started the Working Stiff Jamboree, a regular open-mic night with a loose, family atmosphere. The Working Stiff revolved around a core group that included Allingham, House, Stanley and Ann Tiley, each of whom is still involved today. Others came and went. Kurt Wagner came with a group called Poster Child, which later became Lambchop. Dave Cloud showed up and brought rock 'n' roll to the party.
In 1991, Allingham and Peggy Snow started playing together and by 1993 this had evolved into the Cherry Blossoms. The group's lineup changes, but what makes them the Cherry Blossoms is Snow and Allingham playing together.
The band's songs include originals, many of which have a countercultural message and an intense engagement with nature. The Cherry Blossoms also play odd covers, such as the "Whiffenpoof Song" or a Mahler lied. The group blend several guitars, kazoo, slide whistle, kalimba, drums and percussion into a billowing mass. Their sound is closest to that of an old string or jug band, but Allingham considers the music a success when the Cherry Blossoms achieve a Dixieland-like interweaving of sounds in which the voices of the group's members move in and out. Sometimes, with their skipping guitars and whistles, the band take on the light tone of a South African township group. Allingham's cadences seem to roll forward with an asymmetrical gait. He seeks to build rhythms that open people up to what he describes as "an unselfconscious, instinctive place."
The Cherry Blossoms have a self-effacing character that matches Allingham's personality. Pieces sometimes start with almost idle strumming, only to unravel rather than end with a flourish. Drummer Chris Davis uses brushes and sticks with little plastic soccer balls on the ends that muffle the sound. While Snow's clear, vulnerable voice carries well above the shuffling, churning bed of instrumentation, Allingham mumbles his lyrics, but does so in a way that feels confident and comfortable, rather than scared. Even when speaking, he closes off the sound of his words and mutes them.
In large part, the murkiness of The Cherry Blossoms' performances is the product of the poor sound system at Springwater. The band's mostly acoustic music blends with the bar noise and becomes ambient. One might long to hear them in a "proper" audio context. The club, though, is the music's native environment, where it blends with its surroundings, mixing even with the smoke and the Pabst Blue Ribbon.
Between the Cherry Blossoms and his other projects, an Allingham sound emerges that almost says, "Why are you looking at me?" It stands in stark contrast to the eager pursuit of attention that seems necessary to sell records or even to get one made. It also represents a kind of subterranean Nashville sound. Allingham offers the most unvarnished form of this sound, but it's just as evident in the music of fellow Working Stiff Tom House. While his voice projects more than Allingham's does, House sings about a murky world and often drops words in favor of nonsense syllables. Kurt Wagner of Lambchop sings so laconically that his deep voice seems to wind down into drowsiness. Ann Tiley's songs are simple and understated, her prodigious output as a writer making them a part of daily life.
An essential part of Allingham's aesthetic is keeping money out of the music. He made a pact with himself in the 1970s, just as he was getting started, never to rely on music for his living. Given life's inevitable inconsistencies, his anti-professional ethic betrays certain contradictions, including his respect for music made by professionals. Still, Allingham's music reflects an effort to form human bonds outside the marketplace, a living dream of interdependence and interrelationship. People pick their kin, fictive or not, sometimes with sound as the intermediary. For John Allingham, the idea of a musical family goes beyond rhetoric and shapes the sound itself.
