It wasn’t Mississippi, but the muddy banks of the Cumberland River rang with the sound of a roots music revival on Saturday as the Grand Ole Opry celebrated 25 years of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.
Featuring artists from the original motion picture like Alison Krauss and Dan Tyminski – plus Billy Strings, Emmylou Harris, Del McCoury, and many more across the roots and bluegrass spectrum – a sold-out crowd marked a watershed moment in American music, which, even after a quarter century, is still making waves.
As the live broadcast began with Krauss and the Fairfield Four, it was clear that this would be no typical Opry program. Rather, it was a night dedicated to one of the most transformative recording projects of the modern era — born from a film about escaped convicts on a twisted treasure hunt in the Depression-era South, starring George Clooney. Today, the Coen Brothers’ film is credited with a traditional-music resurgence, which helped lead to the development of “Americana” itself.
The O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack, originally released via the recently relaunched Lost Highway label, sparked “a renaissance of roots music, bringing bluegrass, gospel, blues, country and folk all back into the spotlight,” said Opry announcer Mike Terry, introducing the 5,226th Saturday night performance of the Grand Ole Opry. “And like the Opry has done now for over 100 years, tonight we’re going to be honoring the music, the legacy, and the timeless sounds of the American South.”
Produced by T Bone Burnet, the soundtrack to that Oscar-winning 2000 film sold 8 million copies and spent 683 weeks on the Billboard 200, where it stayed at Number One for months at a time. It also won the 2002 Grammy for Album of the Year, and was ranked Number 13 on Rolling Stone’s list of the 101 Greatest Soundtracks of All Time. Much of the credit goes to Burnett.
Pulling from a deep well of knowledge, the enigmatic producer sourced material from the earliest years of American music, tapping the songs of pain and paradise that would eventually coalesce to create country, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll. From gospel hymns and African spirituals to work songs, folk songs, and Appalachian soul, Burnett’s vision for the soundtrack was gritty, tragic, and beautiful all at once, much like the people it championed.
Onstage at the Opry House, the artists gathered around a single microphone and didn’t just re-create the soundtrack as it’s known — they gave it new life, with a top flight backing band including Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Mike Compton on mandolin, Jerry Douglas on dobro, and Dennis Crouch on bass. By the show’s conclusion, Burnett had directed yet another masterpiece.
Old Crow Medicine Show got the crowd going on the up-tempo “Big Rock Candy Mountain,” imagining a hobo dreamland where living rough is easy. Sarah Jarosz inspired the night’s first singalong with the bittersweet “You Are My Sunshine,” and the Whites’ version of “Keep On the Sunny Side” felt more like a plea than a reminder.
The dozen members of the Fisk Jubilee Singers helped Krauss earn one of countless standing ovations for the swirling “Down to the River to Pray,” while Harris and Molly Tuttle joined Krauss for another a cappella standout on the evocative folk hymn “Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby.”
After intermission, the bluegrass superstar Strings ripped through a troubled tale of gun fights and regret on “Wild Bill Jones,” then stuck around to join Tyminski, who famously voiced Clooney’s character on the film’s musical highlight, “Man of Constant Sorrow.” Together, they delivered a spine-tingling harmony blend on “O Death,” originally sung in the film by the late Ralph Stanley, before Tyminski brought the audience to its feet for “Man of Constant Sorrow.” With a gravel-and-velvet baritone, the tribute to hard living sounded every bit as “swampy” and impassioned as it did in the film, before it became an unlikely international hit.
“I was the biggest afterthought of any part of this movie,” Tyminski said during a fan Q&A after the show. “George Clooney can sing. But because he said, ‘I’ll act and you sing,’ I got to pay off my house and put my kids in college and raise a family.”
Living legend Del McCoury wowed the audience with his impossibly high-lonesome vocal, and a pair of actors from the film reprised their career-altering songs. Tim Blake Nelson, who played Delmar O’Donnell on screen, turned on the affable down-home charm for a yodeling lead on “In the Jailhouse Now.” And Chris Thomas King stepped back into the role of bluesman Tommy Johnson for the slinky, raw “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues.” With a resonate voice steeped in his family’s Louisiana juke joint, he still can’t fathom how big the movie soundtrack became.
“T Bone was connected to something very special because these songs have been around forever, and I have been singing some of these songs for a long time,” King said during the Q&A. “But you don’t expect them to become arena material and to compete with Britney Spears like we did with the Down From the Mountain Tour. I was in awe.”
There is still some debate over the soundtrack’s real impact. It’s a bit of a chicken or egg situation, with plenty of reasoned arguments as to why a roots revival was already underway when the project arrived. But there’s no denying what came after. A wave of traditionally influenced artists solidified into the genre known as “Americana.” In the mainstream, new acts like Mumford & Sons scored chart-topping hits, while icons like John Prine and Guy Clark enjoyed renewed appreciation. Even artists from the soundtrack made commercial leaps. Krauss teamed up with Robert Plant on the Grammy winning Raising Sand, and Tyminski had an EDM smash with the late DJ Avicii.
All across bluegrass and beyond, crowds got bigger, and opportunities grew.
“We had a diverse crowd of people that we just weren’t used to seeing, and everyone with the same question: ‘Where can we find more music like this?’” Tyminski explained. “This music owes a huge debt to O Brother, Where Art Thou?”
Perhaps the best evidence of its influence was the night itself. Tickets to the sold-out show were going for nearly $500 on the secondary market. At show’s end, Burnett finally appeared to a chorus of cheers, saying this film was about the history of American folk music. It speaks to everyone.
“I hear bad things about our country, but if you want to know what’s good about the United States, listen to our music, because the music in the United States is the best music in the world,” he said. “People have come from all over the world in different languages, different religions, different politics, different all of it. But the musicians have all listened to each other and we’ve made harmony.”
The Opry program ended in that very same harmony, with every performer singing the refrain to “I’ll Fly Away,” and the crowd clapping along, on their feet. In that moment at least, there was little sign of constant sorrow.
