The Labyrinth

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One Wrong Turn

Occasionally, on social media, I’ll see photos someone took of a little stone labyrinth. It’s usually at a tourist destination, or out on a hike, or something arranged at a local farm, and the spiraling path is outlined perfectly in little stones piled up about a foot tall, and I’ll stare at it and think well, what’s the point?

If one is able to, at any moment, just step over the wall that’s trapped them, then they weren’t really trapped. The endless circling and back-pedaling are all just for show. If you can easily step out of your prison, why wouldn’t you? Why go along with it?

I don’t think these things because I would like to be trapped in a 10ft tall labyrinth. Labyrinths aren’t mazes, where you enter one end and leave through a solvable linear path. A labyrinth is a circular collection of passageways that leads to a center chamber, and those passageways are full of dead ends and confusing forking paths. Even if you do solve a labyrinth, you find yourself trapped in the center, wishing you could remember if you turned left just before right that last time, and if it would be possible to follow those instincts in reverse now that you were facing the other direction.

I find myself navigating a labyrinth every day, and wish it had one-foot tall stone walls. I would simple just step out of it. Brush the dust from the front of my pants, and go about my day. It’s not always possible, though, because some afternoons I try to relax on our little back patio, and I decide to listen to an Emmylou Harris album, and finally hear her cover of “Together Again.”

Elite Hotel 1975, 0:32

It was a lovely Sunday, and warm. I decided to go record browsing, so I grabbed a tote and wandered out to the two record stores that are walkable in my neighborhood. The clerk at the first place helped point out where I could find an ATM without withdrawal fees if I ever needed one, and the clerk at the second store told his coworker about his liar of an ex the whole time. All in all, it was a successful haul, and when I got home to spend time listening to music in the sun, I was pleased.

Until.

Just around thirty-two seconds, right before Emmylou and the band get into the chorus, there’s a quick chord change. It only lasts for one measure, but the effect it has is mesmerizing. Most casual music listeners might not pick up on it right away, but that quick shift knocks you off-kilter, hints at the melancholy behind the lyrics.

There’s an amazing Cocaine & Rhinestones two-part episode about Buck Owens and Don Rich, and you can listen to Part 1 and Part 2 if you’d like an intensive background for this newsletter, but thankfully the show has transcripts for each episode so I can just quote the relevant parts here. Tyler Mahan Coe’s assessment of the song “Together Again” is truly wonderful, and helps set the stage for why this is all relevant:

It’s important to note, however, that the version of “Together Again” that Tyler Mahan Coe is talking about is the original studio recording, which doesn’t have this chord change in it:

Together Again / My Heart Skips A Beat 1964, 0:30

It also doesn’t exist two years later, when Buck played the song live on his syndicate TV show:

Buck Owens Ranch Show 1966, 0:32

Or on the live version recorded for the Buckaroos appearance at Carnegie Hall:

Live At Carnegie Hall 1966, 0:32

Or on the live London album the Buckaroos cut in 1969:

In London 1969, 1:30

One might assume that this was just artistic license by Emmylou Harris or her producer, Brian Ahern, when the album was being recorded. And Tyler Mahan Coe even hints at this a bit when he references Harris’ version of the song:

I have to imagine the “even more broken, even more wrong” line is referencing the chord shift moment, because that’s exactly the effect it has. When I tried a long shot tweeting at Tyler Mahan code asking if he’s ever noticed this moment, I was lucky that Nashville-based musician Jerry Roe was online at the time to help identify what this shift was:

When I asked Jerry how quickly he was able to identify that it was a flat 7 in the song, he replied Well, you mean like when I first played that version in lower Broadway? Jerry went on to explain that he wasn't really sure about this version of the song as a recorded track, but he could guarantee that it was the version that would most often be played at honky-tonks, which he knew from playing the song at honky-tonks.

Most bar bands and live acts will get bored playing songs the exact same way, Jerry explained, so they’ll often start to mess around with the structure of the song to keep it interesting. One of the main ways to most country musicians have to make money is by playing in sessions for big recording sessions for major-label backed musicians during the day, and one of the main ways most players get to blow off steam is by playing the songs the love at night at the bars around town. But, as Tyler Mahan Coe pointed out in his Buck and Don episodes, The Buckaroos were a top notch live band before they ever hit the studios. While most country acts were backed by players they would work with who’d rotate in and out over the years, Buck Owens and the Buckaroos cut their teeth playing the honky tonks in Bakersfield. Tyler Mahan Coe had this to say about the Live at Carnegie Hall album:

He also talks about how often The Buckaroos would mess around on stage. They had canned jokes and built in-banter, and they would often switch things up live on the fly to make each other laugh or keep each other on their toes.

It all started to make sense. For you see, dear reader, the reason that the Emmylou Harris version sent the hair on the back of my neck upright was because I had heard this version before. I heard it from Buck Owens on his 1970 Live In Scandinavia record.

Live In Scandinavia 1970, 2:28

It’s an odd record. Half the album is just The Band, who serve as the opening act. And then Don Rich comes on and plays a few songs himself, with The Band backing him. Finally, the back half of the record is Buck and the Buckaroos coming in to blaze through their hits. It opens with a medley of “Act Naturally” and “Together Again,” with “Act Naturally” played so fast and sharp that it could serve in the great porto-punk canon. By the time the band jumps directly into “Together Again,” the crowd cheers hugely, and the band vamps for a few measures on the intro to wait for the applause to die down, and even then Buck says “Aw, I love you” while laughing a bit, going into the first verse.

It’s the hallmark of a band who was already a little tired of playing these songs live for six years, non-stop. Given how emotional this song is at it’s core, this sort of brush off feels flippant, like a Buck’s almost rolling his eyes while playing it. And then it hits.

The flat 7.

The first time I heard it, I had the same chills up my spine that I got when I heard Emmylou sing it. It’s an unmistakable gut punch, and it’s wild to have the realization of how powerful a single chord can be. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was feeling, but Jerry, once again, was able to sum it up for me perfectly:

He nailed it. The flat 7 is the sound of reflection, not loss.

Around and around the paths go, forking in different directions. Most people might find themselves in this moment having their curiosity satisfied, but for me, each new forking path sees the walls around me getting higher and higher. While I had assumed that maybe this was Brian Ahern looking at the arrangement for Emmylou’s cover and saying “let’s try out this live version from that one Scandinavia album,” my friend Jackson supposed that it was probably Emmylou Harris herself who picked out this newer version, as he surmised that there’s probably no bigger fan of country music than Emmylou Harris herself.

And there we have it. The Buckaroos got bored playing the song live, started messing around with it, and music nerd Emmylou Harris wanted to pick out the new version for her album, the one Tyler Mahan Coe described as “even more broken, even more wrong.”

Except that’s not how this works. The walls get higher with each forking path.

He may have done it first, but I highly doubt it, Jerry typed to me. I was missing something. Buck Owens might not have originated the flat 7 in live versions of “Together Again.” That meant that there was some unknown bar player who maybe kicked it off sometime in the mid-to-late 60s, before Buck recorded the regular version for Live at Carnegie Hall in 1969, and somehow Buck decided for his 1970 show in Scandinavia, he’d swap to that bar version instead. The one with the flat 7. The flat 7 version could have been the standard bar version for years.

These are the sorts of thoughts that, if I wake up before 5am, will worm their way into my thought cycle and swirl around until my brain won’t allow me to fall back asleep. It’s the ultimate unknowable. No matter how many versions I can find recorded of this song, the first person to insert a flat 7 into this track was likely never recorded, and therefore trying to find the originator would be a lost cause. Forever.

The path forks once again, the walls get higher.

* * * * *

Some time had to pass before I found some acceptance in this position. Labyrinths aren’t mazes — there’s no one solvable path that leads to an exit. To solve a Labyrinth, you end up in the center chamber, where the walls trap you and turn you around, forcing you to work your way out backwards. And here I was, at the center of a new Labyrinth, an empty, walled chamber somewhere in my consciousness, trapped once again in a cell of my own creation contemplating my own failure to find the originator of the flat 7 in “Together Again.”

It didn’t need to be that way. There was an answer. And the info for it was there the whole time. Jerry himself was trying to beat it into my skull.

The idea that the flat 7 version of “Together Again” was the honky-tonk bar-band staple version was the key the whole time. It didn't matter that Buck recorded it live once and then Emmylou Harris put that version on the album. It wasn’t likely that the one rare recording of Buck Owens and the Buckaroos playing a flat 7 was what inspired the Emmylou Harris version.

Jackson had the key to unlocking it, too. Emmylou Harris, the consummate country music nerd, wouldn't have been crate digging for alt-versions of songs she liked they way I would be. She’d be out at shows, in Nashville, at the honky-tonks, watching the session guys blow off steam at night. That was the version she put on her album. The live version, the one everyone in town already knew, not the deep-cut hidden gem from an out of print live album.

It wasn’t a mystery to anyone from Nashville. It wasn’t a mystery for country music fans. It was only a mystery to me, an outsider, who just happens to love country music. And suddenly, of course, it’s clear. The labyrinth doesn’t actually have walls, it never did. It’s just a series of circular paths outlined by little piles of stone, only about a foot high, and whenever I wanted to, I could just step over them and be free.

But then again, what’s the point? 

* * * * *

As a post-script note, the flat 7 version seems to be the one Buck stuck with. You can hear him play it on his 1988 Live In Austin performance, and it’s really great to see how wonderful the song still is, and especially great to hear Buck sing this version live without laughing through it, and giving the song the emotional weight it deserves.

Live From Austin 1988, 0:30

Thanks to Jerry Roe, a Nashville based musician. You can find out about all his projects, including the band Friendship Commanders, at this link here.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.