Stewart Lane


Stewart Lane Music
Composer Performer Cultural Activist
Tales From The White Frontier
released 2008


Photography/artwork Ross Clifford
Notes
This album is my homage to North American culture. My initial exposure to it came through mainstream film and TV, and from my teens, I became increasingly fascinated with the subcultures that grew in opposition to it. These were the artists who recognized that the ‘American Dream’ was an illusion—and weren’t afraid to say so. Growing up in 1960s and 70s Britain, it was impossible to avoid American exports: music, film, TV, and later, art, all while omnipresent advertising seeped into everything. Through this kaleidoscope, I crafted my own vision of America—a land of wide open spaces and towering cities that seemed to promise the future. I imagined vast Alaskan tundras and desolate prairies, landscapes of rock formations so immense they felt like the fossilized ruins of cities built by ancient super-beings. Yet the wisdom once embodied in these remnants had withered, leaving only scattered pockets of insight. Modern humans seemed doomed to fumble through a world consumed by commercialism, ego, and greed.
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Despite only visiting America once, and that being just New York, my imagination had already been captivated by the country’s impossible beauty, grotesqueness, and contradictions. National parks and small-town apathy. Shattered utopian dreams that gave birth to visionary art. The people who made it all. Ferocious consumer appetites. Political giants. Irreconcilable ideologies. Freeways cutting through the landscape like veins. Corporate dynasties that could rival anything medieval Italy had to offer. The looming Gothic doom of mega-corporations wrapped in the sleek modernist sheen of concrete, steel, and glass. Capitalism, endlessly self-congratulatory, commodifying people into tidy, ergonomic units. All of this—this idiosyncratic mindscape—has shaped much of my creative output.
I watched as Britain, somewhat feebly, tried to adopt the ways of its American cousins. Politicians in particular sacrificed our unique identity in favor of becoming a pale, hand-me-down version of America, clinging to the 'special relationship'—a bond that exists more in their imaginations than in reality.
Perhaps because America has been at the forefront of world politics and culture for generations, many people I’ve met harbor deep dislike for the country and its people, often without ever having visited. This is an attitude I can’t understand. Throughout my life, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many Americans in various parts of the world, some of whom became close friends. Their uniqueness, intelligence, and diversity are a testament to their homeland. From America’s melting pot came visionaries like Bob Dylan, Noam Chomsky, Diane Arbus, Steve Reich, John Cage, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Lester Bangs, and more.
So this album is my imaginary road trip, my paean to the vast and varied musical output known as Americana—an inspiration for a land of my own invention. It’s my tribute to that great place and all its people, and to the ongoing, ever-evolving cultural crucible that is its living history.
The White Frontier refers to regions beyond ordinary human perception, spaces that seem to cause us the greatest struggles—both personally and collectively. It is the membrane between dimensions.
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It’s a place defined by principles of uncertainty—questions about the 'future', identity, faith, meaning in life, and our mistrust of the present. It’s a recognition that much of what we call 'reality' is an illusion.
The songs in this collection explore key moments in American history that have rippled through the world: the assassination of JFK, 9/11, the encroachment of global corporate elites on human rights, political disenfranchisement. They touch on social movements and champions like Woodstock, Stonewall, Martin Luther King, and the Black Panthers, as well as subcultures that helped shape the cultural fabric of America, including transgender and intersex people, itinerant outsiders, and great writers like Burroughs, Kerouac, Gysin, Di Prima, and Thompson. This is a portrait of the collapse of the American Dream and the flourishing of new consciousness in its wake. These are my tales from The White Frontier.