Ain't That News

Chicago folk singer-songwriter Tom Paxton’s second record, AIN’T THAT NEWS, was unleashed in 1965 as the people of the United States were waking up to the notion that Vietnam was more than a routine occupation. The record opens with a mission, rousting the protesting troops on the spry title track, before an eloquent trilogy lamenting the rising human cost overseas. “The Willing Conscript” balances the coy and the sincere in an innocent’s address to his sergeant on war’s absurdity, while the naked “Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation” cuts at the president with lines like "to help save Vietnam from the Vietnamese," before “Hold on to Me Babe” whispers the love cry of a soldier back from war. Beyond the stirring cries for change, AIN’T THAT NEWS finds the artist maturing into the master of the haunting, elegiac ballad with the enduring classic (and perhaps Paxton’s signature song), “Bottle of Wine,” that hopeless alcoholic’s lament.