Bartees Strange
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\\u201cYou gotta remember, I wasn\\u2019t really shit until about a year-and-a-half ago,\\u201d Bartees Strange reminds the crowd at Nashville\\u2019s Basement East just before performing his song, \\u201cHennessy.\\u201d \\u201cI was just in my basement playing guitar. And my wife was like, \\u2018Do the dishes ... Do something other than play guitar.\\u2019 Now all I do is play guitar again [laughs].\\u201d
Strange (born Bartees Leon Cox, Jr.), is a sponge and synthesis of everywhere he\\u2019s been and everything he\\u2019s seen or heard. Born in England and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his experience performing with Brooklyn-based post-hardcore outfit Stay Inside and a later move to Washington D.C. have all contributed to his singular cosmic sound. He notes during the Rundown that, as an adolescent, his guitar heroes were Thomas Erak of the Fall of Troy and Omar Rodr\\xedguez-L\\xf3pez of At the Drive-In and the Mars Volta. But in the next sentence, he confesses his love for Nelly.
\\u201cI always thought people aren\\u2019t really honest all the time with what they\\u2019re listening to,\\u201d asserts Strange. \\u201cI think a lot of people like a lot of things. I grew up in a pretty country town, and everyone would say they just like country music. But I was like, \\u2018You like the Nelly record, dog. You like Get Rich or Die Tryin\', man, and you also like LeAnn Rimes and Toby Keith songs, and Brad Paisley\\u2019s guitar playing. But you also jam B2K and pop songs, too.\\u2019 I\\u2019ve never been afraid or ashamed of what I like, so it all goes into my own music.\\u201d
What he\\u2019s been saying through 2020\\u2019s Live Forever and 2022\\u2019s Farm to Table has been connecting with fans and critics alike. The magnetism is Strange\\u2019s smooth synergy. This allows him to touchpoint influences from albums like Nelly\\u2019s Country Grammar, At the Drive-In\\u2019s Relationship of Command, the National\\u2019s Boxer, and Phoebe Bridger\\u2019s Punisher into one harmonious, original package that has landed him on dozens of year-end lists and earned him an 83/100 rating from Metacritic for both of his full-length releases. [Editor\\u2019s Note: The Metacritic website uses their proprietary Metascore to distill the opinions of the most respected critics\\u2019 writing online and in print to a single number.]
Finishing his earlier thought to the Nashville crowd, he summarized: \\u201c\\u2018Hennessy\\u2019 is a song I wrote when I was a kid, and growing up I thought there was all these weird stereotypes I had to get over to become who I am \\u2026 [The hook of the song is meant] to kind of say, I know there\\u2019s all these expectations of what a black person does \\u2026 but I just want you to see me for who I am and for what I\\u2019m trying to say.\\u201d
He might not have been \\u201cshit\\u201d 18 months ago, but he\\u2019s certainly on his way to becoming the something of the sort in the coming years. We\\u2019ll be here listening and appreciating.
Ahead of Strange\\u2019s final 2022 tour date supporting Farm to Table, Bartees and his guitar-playing compatriots welcomed PG\\u2019s Chris Kies onstage at Nashville\\u2019s Basement East to talk shop. During the interview, the trio explained how their \\u201cguitar wars\\u201d create a compatibly melodic arms race and structure their cohesive sound. We get introduced to a collection of oddball axes and go through their collective...'