My New Soundtrack

My gap year has instilled in me a false sense of permanence. I feel like I have all the time in the world to do all the things I want to do. Which of course means that, as my year goes on, I am doing less and less. But now it's started to ramp up again with plans, responsibilities and travel dates. So, now- sandwiched into another coach seat off to another adventure- is a perfect place to play catch- up.

The most monumental and important change that has taken place in my life is my recent interest in Country music. Baxter, my brother, was forced to listen to Country by the chef of the restaurant in which he worked. The song that won him over (and eventually me too) was "My Big Green Tractor" by Jason Aldean, whereby, with some close lyrical analysis, "taking a ride on my big green tractor" appears to refer to "having sex".



The biggest challenge for me in accepting Country music was severing the connection I had in my brain between intelligence and musical talent. I had always assumed that the people who make the music I love would also be people who I would like to get to know- people who had a lot in common with me and shared many of my same values.

Having grown up listening to Ani Difranco and The Flaming Lips, this assumption is probably pretty accurate but when Country music enters the picture, things get confusing. Killer guitar riffs and fantastic instrumentation of fiddle, banjo, and mandolin are offset by lyrics like "I want to check you for ticks", "she thinks my tractor's sexy" and the line to one of my favorite songs by Josh Turner in which he muses over a girl's smile by comparing it to "butter beans, cherry pie and an old wheel barrow filled with summer rain".



But already having acquired a taste for bluegrass, in which the musical abilities of the musicians can often overshadow their blind and at times, garish, devotion to Christian dogma, I was able to ease myself into being able to respect and genuinely enjoy the music without expecting to respect and share the extraneous viewpoints of the musicians. (Hopefully the former fans of Tiger Woods will pick up on this important distinction and remind themselves what the man is famous for.)

Now I can even appreciate the very things about Country that initially turned me off of the genre.

1. Most of the songs, if not all, are really simple. There are no elaborate metaphors, no probing questions, no esoteric references. Everything is simple. It's about plowing the field, making fried chicken, how nice a good pair of jeans feels, trying to get a girl to sleep with you, or working hard all week to put beer on the table.

2. Country lacks the smug competition of most other genres. Nobody, in Country, is trying to outdo anyone else or reinvent themselves.

[Just a little side note to emphasize Country music's adamant adherence to tradition:
Hank Williams' son, Hank Williams Jr., was criticized for making music that (within the genre of Country) differed from that of his father. So Jr. wrote a fantastic song called "Family Tradition" basically telling everyone that although he respects his father's name, he's going to make whatever kind of music he damn well wants to. And that settled that. Until HIS son, Hank Williams III diverged in his own musical expression beyond the comfort zone of Country- even becoming the principle member of punk metal bands Assjack and Superjoint Ritual.

To which, his father, Jr., responded with the country song "You Just Don't Use the F Word in Country". After this tactical move on Jr.'s part to publicly denounce his son's divergence, Hank Williams, Jr., and Hank III all got together to record the album "Three Hanks: Men With Broken Hearts", uniting over a topic familiar and relatable to most everyone, which happens as well to be the founding theme of Country music.]

3. Everyone has the utmost respect for the classics- Loretta Lynn, George Strait, Hank Williams- and if any novice wants to pump out a country song of their very own, they can just follow the formula: upbeat guitar intro, simple twangy chorus, quiet low didactic bridge, and then the last three decisive chords and the finishing concordant slide- at which everyone jumps up and starts clapping and whooping because they know that those three chords mean the song is over and now it's their time to jump up and start clapping and whooping.

As a way of life, no- I would not like to live like this. But as a form of music that I can pop into my stereo system whenever I want to- I love it, love it, love it! The fall-back formula is a good one and the stream of amusing lyrics never stops a'comin' in.