[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLcNmeXMk5U]

I thought this was a smoking hot YouTube clip of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings from the documentary film called:  Down from the Mountain.   Down from the Mountain is documentary about the music and people behind the music in the film:  O Brother Where Art Thou

When you travel this country, you realize we indeed are individual States.  For as many people who think they are so American to the core and so on board with patriotic righteousness, it never ceases to amaze me how much insecurity and ignorance abounds among Americans who have neither traveled to or spent any time other than the comfort of ‘home’.  Or when they travel, they stay at resorts and get the “Hollywood” and capitalist view of a place and think they got a feel for California by spending the weekend at Venice Beach staying at some 4 star hotel and going to every tourist destination possible, for example.  Nope, you are a kook.  You have to be able to filter out the garbage and noise, just like in swimbait fishing.   It’s really lame to talk trash about a places and cultures you’ve never lived among or experienced, and it shows your ass.  It is along the lines of reviewing tackle or talking about fishing techniques that you have no experience in or have even caught a fish doing.  We celebrate the many cultures, lifestyles and people that make each State, and try to Unite the States via sharing each State’s people, places, culture and fishing.

We don’t pretend bass fishing is an extreme sport or that we can land a switch stance fakey reverse shove- it 720 tail grab in the vert competition in X-Games on a skateboard.  Pretending bass fishing is extreme is silly.    It’s really hard to talk about bass fishing and culture.  We attempted to capture and celebrate the music of the Appalachian and Ozark mountains in Southern Trout Eaters, and the funny part is how many of my sophisticated and super cultured colleagues in the industry (who don’t fish much, have any bigbait skills, or basically are the reason why bass fishing culture is so phony) choose to pick on the bluegrass music of the film as their number one talking point, critique, or feedback.  Really?  What about the fishing?   How many films come out each year?  How many bigbait films have ever been produced?  How many from outside of California?  There were no other topics that came to your mind from watching the film? Do you even fish?  Do you own a fishing rod that is 8 feet long?

If you need fireworks and loud music to get yourself fired up and pumped to go fishing, please know you won’t find that here, ever.  Fabricated extremeness and a phony spin on fishing is exactly what we are trying to avoid.     Take a listen to Gillian Welch and David Rawlings performance above.  Probably one of the most profoundly sincere and honest performances I’ve ever seen, and I thought I’d share, in the case you are actually secure enough with yourself and your abilities to stray outside of pop culture’s and bass fishing culture’s norms.