Hank Williams in analysis.

12 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Roots Rock, ROCK: Americana



Details:
Chris Dingman's Crooked Road:

"I was born in a little New Hampshire town of about a thousand people, with the white New England church around the town common. I spent a lot of my childhood wandering the woods that enclosed us on all sides.

You could say I was raised atheist, but when I heard my mom's Beatles albums, I remember thinking if there is a God, he's speaking through these guys. It must have spooked me, though, because I didn't pick up a guitar until I was 21-when I first heard Dylan's Freewheeling. There was something ghostly in his off-hand but incredibly tender singing. And his rough edges made you feel like you could do it too. That summer I was also reading D.H. Lawrence and Nietzsche-writers that stir up your whole body, not just your mind. I was at Harvard at the time, but the summer I heard Freewheeling made school seem beside the point.

Eventually I wound up in California, thinking of myself more as a writer than a songwriter. I wrote poetry and screenplays, optioning one to Warner Bros. But as the option money dwindled, I realized screenwriting wasn't doing it for me. Music was.

"So, now I find myself here, with a CD of original songs and a band called Crooked Roads."