Country Confession

I have to come clean.  I’ve been keeping this a secret for a long time now, and in order to be true to myself, you know, all that “walk the walk, talk the talk” stuff I’ve been preaching forever, I have a confession: I think I like country music.  Maybe more than a little.  It kinda gives me this warm feeling inside that I haven’t felt before.  OK, I am active country music listener.  

I know some of you have been wondering for a while.  I mean, there have been some hints and clues, right?  Maybe it was my predilection for boots and jeans, or that I ride horses and can drive a tractor, or perhaps the not so subtle big-ass Dodge 1500 Big Horn truck? Or have you been digging a little deeper and recognized the South Dakota grasslands in my Facebook cover photo, or read the longing in my poetry, or saw my blush when they kid behind the register called me ma’am with just a hint of a drawl?  Or did I out myself when I forget to change the radio from WPKQ back to NHPR?  Whatever...now it’s out there and I can’t take it back.  

I first got the inkling that I might be a country music listener three years ago.  I came to it late in life, you see.  When most people are first starting to experiment with music,  I was completely shut off from it.  Even though I was surrounded by country music growing up,  I can hear my mother saying, “Not in this family you don’t.”   You see, it’s not that country music isn’t accepted where I’m from; it’s just that my people don’t accept it.  The country station, which happens to be the one that always comes in, was completely bypassed with a quick scan through.   Instead I was given a healthy diet of Vietnam protest songs and Motown with a smattering of Blues and Soul, coupled with my own generation’s moody cynicism packaged haphazardly in Seattle Grunge and European techno.  It was all about the irony, the disaffected malaise and angst of many young people with purple hair and extensive black wardrobes.  Country was just so, well, country.  

But how could I hide that I was a country girl!  My dad was educated but blue collar and my mom stayed home. My best days were spent playing in the barn, and my best friend was my horse.  Any weekend from Memorial Day to Columbus Day could find us at a horse show, where the experience really wasn’t complete until one of us got dumped into the manure pile.   We had dogs and trucks and we all knew how to muck stalls, throw hay, and use power tools.  But man, don’t let any of my friends at school know all that.  All of those kids who rode on the circuit or I sat with in the bleachers at the Fair- a nod in the hall will do, thanks.  They understood: vo-ag kids don’t talk to the weirdo theatre chicks.  And they certainly don’t share music.  

So there I stayed in the closet until a fateful day in June of 2010 when I drove from Denver to Rapid City and the only stations to come in in my rental car were country.  And for some reason, as I crossed state and county lines, the Muses felt I needed to hear “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” about ten times. After nearly choking on my expensive iced coffee the first time, then really listening and laughing every time thereafter, I started to hum along.  Just a dip of the musical toe, you see.  

But then I arrived at my destination, just west of Pierre, SD. Country music heartland.  And these people didn't just listen to country, you see, they lived it.  Land stretched forever under skies ripe for fireflies and thunderstorms, casting a golden glow over round bales and countless head of cattle.  Pickups abounded, farm trucks and dualies, big jacked up toys. I swear, there is not one foreign car in the whole damned state.  It’s like they are illegal.  You have never heard a country song about a Prius, but at least twenty-five percent feature as a central character a pickup, tractor, or combine.  And the people...”Yes, ma’am” is not sass talk.  It’s real.  They are truly being polite.  Even the little boys in their boots and cowboy hats. Women may be expected to help castrate bull calves and feed twenty sweaty ranchers, but they are still treated like ladies.  And hats get tipped, or at least a finger to the brim and a nod.  They have high school rodeo teams with national champions and everyone stands for The Pledge and sings along to the National Anthem.   They go to church on Sundays and real men believe in the power of Jesus and their mamas.  Just like in the songs.  It would be like going to Seattle and realizing everyone does wear flannel all the time and they really are pissed off and disaffected, and totally like, whatever, dude about everything.  This was a much kinder, gentler reality.  

So I started out experimenting.  You know, a little here, a little there.  Maybe only in NPR wasn't coming in.  But then I found myself actively seeking out the stations, yearning for twangy guitars and songs about country kids on the farm, girls who like boys in trucks, boys who like tractors.  This liberal agnostic found herself singing along to songs about trusting God and letting Jesus take the wheel. And once that sweet boy from South Dakota, the one with the truck and the dog and the ranch and the tractor, started sending me song lyrics, I knew I was done for good. I found songs that fit my life and my longings and melodies that stuck like honey. Eastern grunge techno cynic be damned.  Yes, ladies do like country boys, just like the song says.

"The Blowup," by Tim Cox.
A reminder to save a horse, ride a cowboy.

It was hard to break my newfound love to my family.  I did so gently, easing them in with crossover music, and reminding them that they had voted for Carrie Underwood on Idol.  I was met with raised eyebrows and smirky smiles.  Really?  Country? Are you sure?! Don’t get me wrong, they are getting better, but it’s still going to take time. My dad will now sit in the same vehicle where it is playing, and my younger brother is kind of bi-musical (Bluegrass being the happy medium); my mother, however, it still a bit of music bigot. “It’s ok if country music stars are on reality television, but please don’t let me have to listen to them sing.”  Although she does like Luke Bryan’s butt (who doesn’t?).