The SunPunchers are a Phoenix band who describe their sound as a hybrid of Americana and desert soul. But they’re also avid students of music history.
As part of an ongoing residency at Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, they’ve been presenting a series of shows with different musical themes. For a recent installment, the theme was “murder ballads” — songs that tell stories of crime and depravity. In spite of the horrific nature of these songs, they’re some of the most enduring and compelling works in American music.
SunPunchers lead singer Betsy Ganz joined The Show to talk about why she finds them so fascinating.
Full conversation
BETSY GANZ: You know, without romanticizing crime or sensationalizing crime, it was a form of communication and oral tradition, it told a story, and it typically deals with the consequences. And so it was a way of saying, this is something you don't do, cautionary tale.
SAM DINGMAN: Kind of like somewhere between like a parable and a history lesson in song.
GANZ: Yes, and nobody had, you know, phones, TVs, radios and, you know, even in the early 1900s they had ballads that were almost like, like a New York Post that were a little bit sensationalized, you know, and also to debunk the, I think, the romanticism around crimes of passion, you know.
We have one from an artist called Amy LaVere, who's wonderful. She wrote a song … “killing him didn't make the love go away.” And those were the words that a woman said as the news crew, you know, captured her, she was being taken away by the police when she, you know, her husband was cheating on her.
DINGMAN: It's a haunting song, and it does not play necessarily just like a straight cautionary tale. You get the sense a little bit, and I'm obviously inferring here that Amy understands every facet of the main character in that song's experience, the love that she still feels for her husband, but also the desire to do him harm. And I'm curious, is any of that true for you? Like, how did you go from knowing about the existence of these songs to wanting to play them and perform them and write them?
GANZ: Well, you know, I've only written one, a draft of one, and it was from the perspective of black widow spider. So more, more of a biological bent to it. But, you know, I just was curious as to, how did it, you know, tap down cultural behavior, very interesting.
DINGMAN: You know, in getting ready to talk to you, I was thinking about the first time I heard the song “Long Black Veil.” There was just something about it that I couldn't shake. I had just never heard a song that did what this song did, which was to tell this unbelievably tragic story about this wrongful death and this guy who's being hanged because he had been with his best friend's wife, and now she's in the crowd watching him die, and they can't, neither of them can say anything, and every night, she cries over his bones like and that the melody was really intense, but it also felt like, I don't think I had words for this at the time I heard it, but it just felt so daring to make something beautiful out of something so hideous.
GANZ: Yeah, and I think the juxtaposition of those two elements make it hard to turn away from. I mean, even the lyrics of the “Long Black Veil,” “that slayer who ran looked a lot like me,” you know, you kind of internalize some of it like, do I is, do I have it in me to, to be that violent, huh? It's very interesting to consider that scary place.
DINGMAN: Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I hadn't remembered this until you just said that. But one of the other concrete thoughts that I do remember having the first time I heard this song is, could I ever love somebody as much as this? This person in the song who's being hanged loves the woman in the crowd because he's willing to die rather than impugn her honor. And I remember thinking like, what a love, you know.
GANZ: Honor and virtue were everything and so that was quite a gesture. You would say, my goodness, yeah. But there's, you know, the folk murder ballad, but there's the pop murder ballot. What about Foster The People, you know, “Pumped Up Kicks” that is heavy and scary. I think we collectively are trying to understand and trying to solve and trying to heal through the arts and music. We're problem solvers by nature. We want to close that loop. We want to understand, yeah, and so when we can understand it's so confounding that we're drawn back to it to try to see, well, if I look at this again, maybe, maybe it'll make more sense. Have I grown as a person to understand this or not understand this? Do I understand more about the human condition?
DINGMAN: What do you make of the fact that, I mean, I think it's a similarity between true crime podcasts and, like, I know people who listen to “Serial” once a year, it's something they go back to, almost like listening to a favorite album, just because they like.
GANZ: Yeah, or reading a book, yeah? Reading that book.
DINGMAN: And obviously, you know, we do that with our favorite songs. That's much more common to do that with our favorite songs. You know, a lot of people are troubled by that idea that there's this kind of morbid fixation on, like, “I just want to be in that story again. I want to be in that song again.” But from the way we're talking about it, it seems like, well, maybe there is value in that. Maybe there is value in sitting in communion with this thing that is so tempting otherwise, to turn away from and not consider.
GANZ: I agree with that, I do think it's some of these songs are a mirror, like the “Long Black Veil.” I'll go back to that one lyric where it said, “the boy that was running away looked a lot like me.” I think you throw on that suit and see if it fits. I think it's an exercise in imagination. It's confounding, and it's a good thing that you can't fully understand. I think that's the gift.
