Allen Lowe writes: America: The Rough Cut is my statement not only on American music and American song, but also my commentary on the way American musicians of all styles handle that old-time music and those old song forms. Nearly everything I listen to that is supposed to reflect an alliance with older musical styles sounds denatured, bland, overly worshipful and musically conformist. Everybody loves the blues (just ask Nicholas Payton) but few people, in my opinion, truly feel it at gut level. The old things - not just the blues, but gospel music and pre-blues shouts and language, plus hillbilly/minstrel song and medicine show irony - reflect a disinterest in the polite trappings of (primarily but not only white) society, an implicit rejection of basic tonal, sonic, and harmonic rules. "Noise" has, over a long time, come to be an accepted creative strategy for many musicians, with diminishing results.