why?

I talk about going to this

... but then she goes and beats me to the punch and buys the tickets first.

Best. Girlfriend. Ever. 

:doug @ 12:37 AM

in defense of country music

Country music, has it in the elements of romance, if we're using the old Arthurian definition - good country songs either deal with death, life or honor in the eyes of our fathers. Bare-handed pursuit of value, the value found in sweat and tears. There's also usually a poetically failed relationship with a woman to compliment those themes.

How fitting then that when my parents seperated, my mother began to play bluegrass music in the car and listen to Garrison Keillor on public radio. You can imagine how alarming a development this was, her raising my siblings and I on 80s mix radio. Something more sinister was afoot here than backseat station wagon suffering to Christopher Cross' "Sailing" or being trapped in the three hour drive out to the beach with Spandau Ballet's "True" grating the ears of adoloscents. This was... "fucking WHITE". Not a sublime, waspy white of that era's England-born fascination with the synthesizer, but a blatant attack of folksy a teenager can not bite his tongue over, but a hokey, cheesey, down-home assault to the senses.

We wondered what had happened to our once beloved matron - what could have been the genesis for this abandonment of good taste? Naturally, a new love interest had turned her onto this music. Maybe she could be saved, maybe she could be turned back to the light side of the force.

Attempts were not made in earnest, a refusal to bear it was honored by her which later led to a reluctant curiosity. We tried in vain to deconstruct her new music tastes as we listened along with her. Then we began to laugh at the inherent wit involved in the production of the aforementioned radio show, respect the talent involved it must take to play a mandolin, "Well that CAN'T be easy!..."

I don't know when I began to actually like it, it was slow and sneaky. You know good pop or least infectious pop when you hear it. It's ridiculous and pointless, but it strikes quickly and plants it's hook in your memory. you're done after a listen or two.

The fiddle however, the banjo and the pedal steel - they have to work at you like the way you learn to like coffee or beer. you find a flavor in there you appreciate or a desired effect it has on you and you learn to ignore the bad as your palate changes to suit it. That's country music.

I would be remiss if in continuing I failed to mention the early suggestion planted in the infant memory of those of us born in the 70s. The Allman Brothers Band, Lynard Skynard, and even CCR were in the background while we played with our Lincoln Logs and Legos. While no one disputes their musical credentials and relevance, I don't think enough credit is given to their place in how people of our generation came to enjoy the alt-country boom of the late 90s. These are the bands our current crop grew up with and consider influences. Listen to Jeff Tweedy relate his love of Big Star, who definitely made some of the best soft-country pop of their time. Find the plenty of Jay Farrar quotes where he talks about Woody Guthrie. Country music is steeped in tradition so much more than innovation.

So it grew in me, I began to ask who was performing which songs we were hearing. I unearthed my father's 45s of Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, staples of any military man turned construction worker. I downloaded mp3s of "Long Black Veil" and Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. I told no one, I hid my shame, I had betrayed my fellow indie-rock brethren. This hidden love of old outlaw country and folk lay dormant for three or four years. I went to Fugazi shows, Afghan Whigs shows, listened to Mos Def and The Roots crew and kept my mouth shut.

2001 was the year the American world changed and I couldn't have cared less. I felt nothing about the 9/11 attacks or the subsequent war-mongering our country delved into other than that I was right in my prediction that electing the favorite, and massively underqualified, son of a Republican dynasty, galvanized by the right wing Christian base, was a mistake. But I wasn't alone in that, more than half the country agreed. 2001 I met my friend John, a Kansas-Chicago-Arizona raised left-wing friend who loved this band called Uncle Tupelo and their offshoot mutations, Son Volt and Wilco. John tried in earnest to recruit me to the alt-country fold, playing his music in the bar I began my bartending career in, playing it in on the shitty cd player of my dying Honda Accord, playing it in the our apartment a good year and a half after we became friends and thus roommates - all to no avail, it never took.

I was taking a long drive out to see some girl an hour and change away when I grabbed his copy of Wilco's "Summerteeth", having grown tired of my own musical catalog. It was during that drive out into the countryside of Western Maryland where it all came together. The next day I stopped in a small roadside bar off Route 15 and had a whiskey on the way home, got back in the car and ran the album over for the 3rd time in 24 hours.

Later Bret would come along with his Ryan Adams, and Tim would pass along My Morning Jacket, I would find Rilo Kiley and the Whiskeytown back catalog. Here was the music I needed for my twenties. Long, arduous, suffering melodies of love-lost and embracing loneliness. In the time of my life where endeavors yielding nothing abounded, where tireless panning in the streams turned up fools' gold, where failure and embarassment further thickened my hide, that's where I found country music. Softly nestled in the bittersweet hearts of the tired. 

:doug @ 12:27 AM

words of wisdom

Eat your vegetables, kids. Study your math and go to bed early too - maybe you won't grow up to babysit drunk people for a living just so you can make rent and buy groceries.

Knowing is half the battle. 

:doug @ 11:47 PM