Origins: Country

Yeehaw!
I mean, I live in Texas, so I'm required by law to enjoy country music.  Right?  No?  Well, I have to say that I was late to the party, and I am not a faithful follower of the genre, but there are certain segments of country music that I love.  So, how did I get there?

My first memories of country are from my dad.  I can remember, to the limited extent that he ever listened to music, my dad chose country in the truck or in his woodworking shop.  I can also recall times that he would pick me up from some activity - scouts or sports or youth group - and he would be listening to the bluegrass specials they played on the NPR station sometimes at night.  But the old man never really listened to music, so there was never a hard push or draw to go along with that genre.  

By junior high/high school, I would not have been caught dead listening to country music.  We are talking about the days of Shania Twain, Garth Brooks, Reba, Randy Travis, Clint Black, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson, and Alabama.  There are people in the world who love those artists, but when I was 12 to 16, they were about the worst kind of music to ever exist on the planet.  I'd choose my mom's nap-inducing classical sonatas over having to listen to Alan Jackson drawl about rocking the jukebox or Garth Brooks warble on about how God answered his prayers by helping him hook up with the right lady friend while self-important strings swell behind him.

Oh, dear Lord.  Look at that hair feathering out from beneath that hat.  Oh my.

I was edgy!  I was jamming R.E.M. and learning the dance steps to Stand!  I was rocking Midnight Oil and thinking about the raw deal the aborigines got!  I was singing along with U2 and feeling alone and very important.  No way in the world was I going to associate myself with the "kickers" who listened to country music.  Not going to happen.  Maybe, just maybe, I was a massive nerd and the kickers wanted nothing to do with me, but I'm going to assume for the purposes of this story that they would have accepted me with open arms if I had just bought Red Wings and a copy of Song of the South.

But, the tentacles of down-home musicianship worked their way into my brain anyway.  The first and main culprit for that transition was summer camp.  I started going to Laity Lodge Youth Camp when I was 7 or 8, and continued going and working there into college.  It was the greatest place on the earth - still love it and am excited to be sending the boy there for the first time this summer.  Every session, they have a legitimate rodeo, by summer camp standards, with horse riding and calf wrestling and pie eating.  Good fun, followed by the rodeo dance.  The rodeo dance was a blast, but it was also fraught with terror.  You got IBC root beer in a bottle, the work crew strung lights up and set hay bales around the edges of the dance floor, and everyone had a pretty good sweaty time under the bright stars of the Texas hill country.  BUT, you also had to dance with a girl if you wanted to dance - none of that grooving in a crowd, trying to impress with your hip thrusts and thumb throws.  And asking a girl to dance was terror incarnate for years.  But I digress, this is about country music.

At the rodeo, one guy was in charge of the mike for years, Doug Cooper.  He was a HUGE lover of Bob Wills, and would brainwash all of the kids into professing their love for Bob Wills in order to win spirit points, and he would make some young camper girl sing Faded Love in front of the whole rodeo crowd at each rodeo.  From my well-faded recollection, he would push that way beyond the point where it went from fun to ridiculous, but my memory of it is good, so must not have been too bad.  After the rodeo, all of the music at the rodeo dance was, of course, country music, so I was then exposed to all of the popular country of the day.  I recall the dudes performing sit-ins in the center of the dance floor during Shania Twain's Any Man of Mine, and people doing extremely complicated twisting dance moves to John Michael Montgemery's Sold.

And we ended the dance with Shake Russell's Deep in the West.  I have no clue who found this song or chose it to close out the dances, but it still makes me feel happy and wistful at the same time right now.  Such a great song, and perfect to sing to a camp crush who you think is going to last forever.

Apart from the rodeo and dance, camp counselors also played good country and helped me wade through the Nashville garbage that was so heavily promoted out in the real world.  I started learning about Willie, Jerry Jeff, Robert Earl, and Willis Alan Ramsey out at Laity, and started to realize that country itself wasn't bad, just the over-processed garbage playing on the radio.

Then I went away to college and joined a fraternity.  Two things about that.  First, in Sherman, Texas, there was one real bar in the entire town, called Calhouns, where they played top 40 country and the Electric Slide every single damn night.  We went there at least once a week, and after the garbage country gets familiar, it stays terrible but at least feels better to sing along with a big pack of friends.  Second, when you have nothing to do (like in Sherman), drinking beer and listening to beer drinking songs becomes a darn fine way to pass the time.  So you end up listening to Viva Terlingua and The Road Goes on Forever about eight million times while sitting on a moldy couch in front of a rental house.

After college, I moved to Dallas right when KHYI started broadcasting with a great mix of classic country and newer Texas-centric artists who were picking up the torch from Jerry Jeff and Robert Earl.  I immediately got in to Bruce Robison ("Wrapped" should have been my first dance at my wedding, but I wasn't thinking straight), Charlie Robison, Slaid Cleaves (Broke Down is a classic, with "Lydia" one of my favorites), and Chris Knight, and then started going back to some classics from Cash, LeDoux, Steve Earle, and Waylon Jennings.  It was an eye-opening time for me to realize the depth of great song writing available in the country genre if you had a well-curated playlist provided to you.

In the years since then, I've grown less enamored by the "Texas Country" or "Outlaw Country" sound that has followed behind Pat Green and his progeny.  I don't categorically dislike new country like I used to, but for the most part I feel like a lot of it is just trying too damn hard.  What I'm left with enjoying:

• the classics like Jerry Jeff (give Viva Terlingua a shot if you need a suggestion), Willie, Robert Earl (go Gringo Honeymoon for my fav), Johnny Cash, Bob Wills, George Strait (but not all of King George, stick to the older classics), Steve Earle, Slaid Cleaves, Bruce Robison with Kelly Willis, etc.
• the new wave of bluegrass type tunes: Nickel Creek (still the best, hope they are really getting back together), Punch Brothers (Who's Feeling Young Now is amazing), Sarah Jarosz, and even Trampled by Turtles.
• and a few new acts:
• I've liked getting to know the Turnpike Troubadours through this blog.  Good stuff.
• Kasey Musgraves is a bad ass country woman.  "Merry Go Round" is fantastic (link below) with a line that has stuck in my head for months - "Just like dust we settle in this town."  That is money.  One of two CDs I have actually bought this whole year.
• Nikki Lane is another bad ass, who has a new album produced by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach and has a classic meets new thing going on that is great.

As evidenced by the recent "Country" issue of Rolling Stone, this music is HUGE these days.  I'm not buying in to the large majority of the popular country sound that they are talking about in there - rock and roll guitars, good times with your honey in the tight jeans down by the river on an old dirt road, or empowered ladies whippin' ass because their man's a cheatin' jerk - but I'm happy that innovators like the Punch Brothers and Kasey Musgraves are out there updating the sound and making country music exciting again.  Give them a shot and let me know what you think.