hot doc alert: any day now

Last night I finally got to see Any Day Now, the feature-length doc about Nashville's Ten Out Of Tenn, a collective of songwriting artists who've released three compilation CDs, embarked on three significant tours and generally bolstered each other's careers. The project works at a lot of levels. Economically, it's smart because it pools resources, like a bus, that would be out of reach of the artists individually. It's building a trusted brand and franchise by letting in only exceptional artists. It creates a whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts vibe that generates a lot of enthusiasm and passion. It re-brands Nashville as Music City for all, not just country.

And unlike almost every other artist development plan I see playing out in this new music business, TOT either got smart or lucky and had filmmaker Jeff Wyatt Wilson document the first tour. The result is Any Day Now, and I'm happy to say it's elegant, entertaining and important all at the same time. Wilson defines the personalities of the artists so that by the end we know ten distinct voices rather than a crowded stage. We learn just enough about how the group came together and how it threw together rehearsals and made the most of everyone's skills as musicians. We feel life on the bus, and if the artists spend a lot of time hamming for the camera, at least the filmmaker picked some damn funny bits to keep the levity up. Above all, the music is simply extraordinary. When did you last see a music documentary without a single weak song? And how did these guys pull together such rich arrangements of complex pop and rock songs in just a couple days? And what must these performances sound like NOW after three tours? 

A DVD is in the works. Here's the trailer:

Last note: It is my mantra, my soapbox speech, my self-interested marketing spiel that Nashville needs WAY more documentary about its music in this post TNN, post MTV, post radio world than it is making. Stop spending so much money on publicists to pitch your story to a dying print infrastructure and instead spend a little money making the story you want to tell in the medium of today and then send it directly to fans and fans of other artists like you. With Any Day Now, these savvy artists and their savvy behind-the-scenes folks have not only made a piece of art. They've made a giant and lovely commercial for what they are. And when historians rifle through the archives of Nashville circa 2008 one day, they'll find this film and say thank god somebody thought to do this.

Comments

[Angie]

So glad you liked the movie! I saw it at its premiere in April, and I'm really hoping the DVD becomes available at some point.
One correction, though, is that the tour they taped was not their first tour. Ten Out of Tenn actually rotates artists every so often, to allow new faces to show their stuff. The tour that was featured in Any Day Now showed off the second lineup they toured with.
I love this movie because I think it shows off what so many artists love about Nashville... the sense of community amongst artists. They are more inclined to help each other than compete with each other in any way.
And I agree that the song choices were well-planned. Even though I've heard the songs many times, a few of them still give me chills when I see them done live in the movie. Kudos to both the artists singing them, and the folks behind the scenes who helped pick which tracks to use!