Things Done Changed

As someone who lives, performs, conserves, and preserves the traditions of Black American folk music, I recognize Things Done Changed as more than an album—it's a living archive, an aural ethnography of Black traditional expression. Jerron Paxton isn't just playing old songs or mimicking styles; he's embodying, breathing, and disseminating a deep cultural inheritance. With this Smithsonian Folkways release, Paxton situates himself among a long line of tradition bearers who move beyond performance to evoke memory, region, and ritual through sound. This album is comical, reverent, and raw, grounded in the rural and urban blues continuum, while honoring the nuances of Black musical lifeways across time. In short, Paxton doesn't just represent the tradition; he is the tradition.The opening title track, “Things Done Changed,” speaks in the language of Mississippi country blues. From the moment the guitar strikes up with thumbed bass runs and high-note triplets, we're home, in the yard, on the porch, in the juke. The phrasing is familiar but not cliché, rooted but never stiff. The song's storytelling offers reflection. It's about what has been lost, but also about what has been learned. As a tradition bearer myself, I recognize the emotional clarity in Paxton's delivery as one of the most authentic signs of a cultural practitioner.“Baby Days Blues” opens with harmonica and guitar interplay, and what stands out is how the harmonica adds a character to the song, not a weeping blues harp but one that gestures toward the medicine show or the vaudeville act. It's light, sly, and grounded in showmanship. The harmonica isn't trying to dominate the story; it's having a conversation with it. This is an old tradition: the musician and their music in deep dialogue while the audience gets to listen in.The turn to “It's All Over Now” expands the album's scope with a hard-driving string band arrangement. Clawhammer banjo, bones, and Paxton's rhythmic vocal delivery signal a deep immersion in pre-blues Black musical traditions. This is not a performance of old-time music; it's a transmission. What strikes me is Paxton's ability to localize each tradition he draws from. He might be highlighting string band on this track, but you'll still hear the undercurrent of blues in the phrasing or the bounce of the rhythm. This layered delivery is key to how Black folk traditions actually function, never siloed, always intersecting.“Little Zydeco” takes us out west, not in the Hollywood sense, but in the reality of Black cowboys, Creole trail rides, mining camps, and the folkways of Louisiana and Texas. The song captures the feel of a bonfire gathering, music played among working people who carry traditions wherever they travel. It's that kind of movement-based sound that speaks to the history of Black migration, labor, and resilience.One of the standout moments of cultural commentary and communal relief comes through “So Much Weed.” At first listen, it's funny, even satirical, but listen closer, and you'll hear the tradition of coded relief songs, porch humor, and minstrel satire performed by and for the working class. It's a survival song, not because it mourns but because it mocks hardship in the way only those living it can. This song is deeply rooted in a blues tradition that holds space for laughter as liberation.“What's Gonna Become of Me” returns us to the banjo, but here, the instrument is played almost percussively, like a drum or steel wash bucket. The rhythms pulse with echoes of African and Afro-Indigenous traditions, creating a soundscape that's rhythmic, ritualistic, and reflective. As an ethnomusicologist, I hear not only genre here but geography, kinship, and resistance. This is a track that holds space for the memory of communal ceremony, of Black sacred and secular life intertwined.“Mississippi Bottom” reminds us again that while the album is wide in its sonic palette, it is fundamentally blues-rooted. From the delta to the hill country, the track evokes early twentieth-century rural styles while maintaining Paxton's distinct interpretive presence. He doesn't perform as if he's from that time; he performs because he is a part of the lineage. This is blues music that lives in the now while still remembering how to speak its ancestral language. Paxton's interpretive choices are uniquely his own. There's a centeredness in the way he delivers these songs. That voice is a vessel of Black vernacular knowledge, deeply informed, culturally grounded, and never performative for spectacle's sake.One of the blessings of a Folkways release is the inclusion of a full liner booklet, and this album is no exception. Lynell George's contribution places Paxton in the context of a lesser-discussed western Black migration, from Louisiana through Oklahoma to South Central Los Angeles. That framing is critical. It reminds us that tradition doesn't always move northeast; it also heads west, grows roots, and makes music in unexpected places. In his liner notes, Paxton writes about folk music as the cultural lifeblood of his community, art created in response to survival, oppression, and joy. That sensibility is felt in every cut of this album.Tracks like “All and All Blues” pull from the inherited delta bass lines that traveled through Son House, Rube Lacey, and Charlie Patton, while “Brown Bear Blues” offers lyrical tribute to complexion, identity, and Black pride. “Oxtail Blues” gives us a welcome detour into piano blues, reminding us of the barrelhouses where such music made space for both joy and pain.The album closes with “Tombstone Disposition,” a song that evokes the spirit of Tommy McClennan with its moody pacing and grounded delivery. And across all these tracks, Paxton's role as a multi-instrumentalist stands out, not in a showy, virtuosic way, but as a testament to the depth of his understanding and the breadth of his commitment to the culture.What resonates most for me is that Things Done Changed doesn't feel like an album created to “preserve” something as much as it feels like one created to live in it. For audiences to live in it! These are original songs that honor the form and the folk, speaking from and to our time without sacrificing any of the tradition's integrity. Paxton isn't re-enacting the past. He's showing us how tradition functions in real time, as both heritage and practice.