JEFFERSON DAVIS
By Palookaville

Listen to the song! (Format: MP3)
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Robin Allen: lead guitar
Jenna Bauer: bass
Kevin Buckley: fiddle
Mike Enderle: drums
Bob Reuter: guitar, vocals

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BOB REUTER

Most of the truth about the St. Louis roots music scene hasn't been written in a book (we're waiting on Roy Kasten for that), but David Goodman writes the following in Modern Twang, an Alternative Country Music Guide and Directory: "Bob Reuter was a key figure in laying the foundations for the current generation of St. Louis alternative country. As a solo or with Kamikaze Cowboy, he has been putting down solid country/roots rock since the late 1970's. In the early 1990's Reuter labored in relative obscurity, recording several self released cassettes, but in 1995 and 1996 came successive CDs -- Bob Reuter, This Much I Know and Kamikaze Cowboy, Hurry Sundown -- that brought him greater recognition. In the wake of the current alt. country resurgence, Reuter is being rediscovered and given his due as musician and pathbreaker." Bob now also works with a new mostly acoustic band, Palookaville, which recorded this song. Whatever popular or critical acclaim may come Bob's way, or avoid him completely, he will always be a songwriter's songwriter. Anyone who cares about the shape of a song, and knows that craft from the inside out, tends to grow very quiet and attentive when Bob Reuter picks up a guitar.

Palookaville site: www.palookaville.net

Note: Bob is also an award-winning and soulful photographer, as his personal Web site -- http://www.mphase.com/reuter2.htm -- makes evident.

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Jefferson Davis and Me
by Bob Reuter

When asked to write a song about an American president, I tried to think of one that inspired me, one that I could relate to -- I was hard pressed. When I was a kid (late fifties, early sixties), I guess there was the hundred year anniversary of the Civil War, and my generation was inundated with it: games, toy guns, caps, Confederate flags and TV shows ("Johnny Yuma was a rebel, he roamed through the West..." went the song). James Dean had been a rebel without a cause, and who couldn't relate to an underdog?

Apparently, there were boys from both sides of my family who fought on both sides of the Civil War. My dad's sister (a sort of family historian) pushed the Southern leanings of that side of the family. Hearing that made me happy. At home, school and around the neighborhood, I was already a misfit, so the ragtag Southern army really appealed to me. As a kid, the race issue didn't play big into this fantasy (though, to be honest, it was a central issue in my neighborhood). My family and those I grew up with were prideful lower-class people - strong individualists, not to be changed or re-formed by demands of the power elite. I don't think that can or should be underplayed in any discussion of the American Civil War. For me, the truth is that, yes, there was undeniably a racial issue involved, but the common Southern people were not really fighting for slavery -- it was more of an issue of being told what they could and couldn't do. I'm thinking that slavery was already on it's way out -- it just wasn't that simple.

Jefferson Davis was President of the Confederacy almost by default. It was a job thrust upon him; he had not sought it out, but when called upon by his homeland, he took the job. Not a lot is known about the man's personal life. I did read that he married a much younger woman, who wrote to a relative that Davis was a man with a presence -- probably too old for her, but that when she looked into his eyes she saw a young man there. Davis had none of the personal charisma or daring of Robert E. Lee -- he was blamed for problems by his own people and represented, in the eyes of the North, all that was evil about the South. When the war finally ended, Robert E. Lee was given a formal pardon while Davis was hounded until his dying days. It wouldn't have been good business to hire a man with that kind of baggage, so he lived out his days in relative poverty. What the world really hated him for was the fact they could not make him, and that he would not apologize for what he had done.

In the end, I'm not really sure why I picked Davis as the president I wanted to write about, except for the fact that I was raised to be rebellious -- I grew up with prideful people and I just didn't want to play within the rules of the game. That's why I wrote this song about Jefferson Davis.