Cultural chitchat about human character seems inexorably to roll back to the old nature-nurture wrestling bout. It's reductive but compelling, this bogus Darwin-versus-Freud cage match. Yet as in most pairs, the terms here twist around each other like a double-helix -- or maybe a Mobius strip -- whenever you look long enough.
Artistic legacies make that paradox mud-clear.
If musicians' kids become musicians, you wonder if they're taking an "easy" out. When your last name is Dylan, Guthrie, Lennon or Coltrane, people take a proprietery interest: They may be suspicious, ready to find fault; or they may long secretly for a dynasty to confirm that those magical notes all issue directly from the DNA. (Letting the rest of us off the hook.)
Personally, I'm surprised by the lack of rebellion, the come-what-may attitude it implies, especially when the preview has not promised fortune but a bumpy ride down fame's backroads. In Ontario, the Whiteley family is a good test case.
The clan's younger members -- singer Jenny Whiteley, who recently released a self-titled solo CD,and her brother Dan, formerly partners in country-bluegrass band Heartbreak Hill -- may have had their first Juno nominations before their first kisses. They sang on children's records with their father Chris and uncle Ken. But that was about as glamorous as it got for those respected but hardly renowned regulars on the folk-blues circuit.
"I never started out to be a roots musician," says Jenny Whiteley, not yet 30. "My brother and I have often said, 'Would you have imagined as teenagers that we'd ever end up doing this?' " But blood -- or early musical exposure, or . . . well, something -- would out. And in roots music, so full of family bands such as the Carters (and Carter-Cashes), the Stanleys, the McCourys, the incestuous is an occupational hazard.
So, after university in the early nineties, the younger Whiteleys suddenly found themselves in a bluegrass band. "Well, bluegrass is kind of the punk rock of folk music," Jenny laughs. "And when I started writing my own songs, they came out a little more country and more pop than what my family has done."
Heartbreak Hill's long "High Lonesome Wednesdays" residency at the Silver Dollar club helped build up the unusual bluegrass youth scene Toronto can boast today. And soon they had a Juno nomination in their own right. But Heartbreak Hill ended, as things do -- they reunited for a tour this summer, but by that time Jenny had recorded her less-bluegrassy tunes for a solo outing.
"There's really only one bluegrass tune on this album, maybe two. Everything else was stuff I knew wouldn't work with Heartbreak Hill -- no banjo, but drums, electric guitar -- more like George Jones-style country music."
Yet Whiteley translates these styles into a modern young woman's voice, unlike, say, Steve Earle's straight bluegrass outing last year or California traditionalist Gillian Welch. "I approach it song by song -- if an idea's worth writing a whole song about, then it should be written in its own way. Gloria is about a farm kid that's adopted into a family and used as labour; you could do it however you want, but for me it requires an old-timey feel. The scope of my influences runs through the whole CD."
Whiteley also cites the "simplicity" and narrative force of Lucinda Williams, for example, and friend Fred Eaglesmith serves as surrogate family, writing or co-writing a few of the best songs on the disc. (Eaglesmith performs tonight at the Horseshoe Tavern, 370 Queen St. West, $8).
In the New Year, Whiteley is heading south to kick up support in Nashville. Meanwhile, tomorrow night's show at the Silver Dollar (486 Spadina Ave., 10 p.m., $10), will be a reunion of young Toronto country-bluegrassers, featuring the new-minted Toronto Bluegrass All-Stars, Whiteley backup singer Amy Millan doing her own songs, and country group Luther Wright and the Wrongs -- who, just to keep things interesting, will play Pink Floyd covers.
There are the families you're born into, and those you invent -- and sometimes they have a lot in common. Maybe the reason is as simple as having learned to sing in harmony. cwilson@globeandmail.ca