Uncle Tupelo - Influences

Influences

As The Primitives, Tweedy and Farrar were highly influenced by punk bands such as The Ramones and The Sex Pistols. However, they began to listen to country music because punk rock was not well received in the Belleville and St. Louis music scenes. While they originally were introduced to country by their parents, it wasn't until this time that they began to listen to it for leisure. Farrar typically wrote songs about Middle America, while Tweedy wrote about more mainstream topics such as relationships. Farrar took influence from authors such as Kurt Vonnegut and Jack Kerouac, whom he read while working at his mother's bookstore. As the lead singer of Uncle Tupelo, Farrar's lyrics would be front-and-center during performances, but the band's musical style was mostly driven by Tweedy and Heidorn (seen in the music's Minutemen-influenced start-stop arrangement). Jeff Tweedy said in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

We probably have more influences than we know what to do with. We have two main styles that have been influences. For instance, we like Black Flag as much as early Bob Dylan and Dinosaur Jr. as much as Hank Williams ... To us, hard-core punk is also folk music. We draw a close parallel between the two. We'll play both in the same set if we get a chance. We don't have any biases as far as music is concerned.

Tweedy in particular was inspired by the Minutemen, and wrote a song about D. Boon following Boon's death in a van accident. The band has released songs originally performed by Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Carter Family, Leadbelly, Gram Parsons, The Soft Boys, The Louvin Brothers, Texas Tornados, and The Stooges. Releasing March 16–20, 1992 when alternative music was breaking through was a move inspired by Neil Young's decision to release the challenging albums On the Beach and Tonight's the Night immediately after the commercially successful Harvest. Critic Michael Corcoran likened the band's musical style to "Bob Mould fronting Soul Asylum on a speeded-up version of a Gram Parsons song."