Want reality? Try country music

Want reality? Try country music

By Don Audette

Special to the Rappahannock News

I bought a new car last summer. The radio has a button that scans for nearby stations, which in perryville means mostly country music. Country music tells you what is really going on in the world.

I first heard country music growing up in New England in the 1940s. A number of us geeks made use of White’s Radio Log to find far away radio stations at 2:00 AM, so we could see who would win the long distance record at school the next day. Some of these stations were broadcasting country and western music: WBT Charlotte; WWVA, Wheeling; WSN Chicago, and a million-watt station in Mexico across the border from Del Rio, Texas. I also listened to the Grand Ole Opry from Nashville.

I heard Ernest Tubb, Roy Acuff, Tex Ritter, Gene Autry, and the Hoosier Hot Shots. I remember the songswere little stories, with a beginning, middle, and end. The current crop of songs still tell stones. They are concentrated nuggets of truth. Where else can you hear a man sing, “Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares.” Enough said. • ^'ema^e 8in6ers do the same thing. “Did I Shave My Legs For This?” With voices quivering with energy, some can use a flat, emotionless voice, an economy of words, and dispatch men with samurai swiftness. No political correctness, no sensitivity, ho esteem building, no touchy-feeley words, just the truth.

r^lese sonS3 are about everyday life in the trenches. Emotions are raw and spill out all over the place; men and women sing with all the emotion and psychological hang ups of adolescents hi high school, about love,- revenge, heartache, betrayal, hard luck, confessions, bliss. They sing ab°T,v.CarS’ *Tuck8’ religion, small towns, dogs, patriotism, Mexico, and Margaritas. You name it.

They cover every conceivable situation in simple declarative sentences; no complex ideas; no theories. You understand all the words and marvel at their amazing exactness. Except now there is a trend toward yelling instead of singing, and accompanists overwhelm the performers so you can’t hear the words, clouding the story and the truth. i

How do these songwriters come up with these stories? Do they go to a local bar, sit in a booth, and shuffle a set of “word” cards? “...let’s see here... one-eyed dog, pony-tailed girl, rusty pickup truck, frilly curtains, hunting, state trooper...” Do they spread the cards around, change a few, sip on a beer from a Mason jar, and then say, “I can do that, I can write a song about that...?” Or maybe they just observe everyday life, “...girl from Bryn Mawr College, master’s degree in French, marries a country boy who sits on the porch in his skivvies, drinking beer with his threelegged dog, Lloyd, at his side.”

The names of songs show their creativeness. I remember, “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?” because that is where as a kid I stored mine. How about, “If My Nose Were Full of Nickels, I’d Blow It All On You.” Or, “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home. This song, about a husband coming home soused, tells the tale of the wife’s response in words that drip with sarcasm. And they are so true.

“She said: ‘I’m gonna’ hire a wino to decorate our home,

‘So you’ll feel more at ease here, and you won’t have to roam.

‘We’ll take out the dining room table, and put a bar along that wall.

‘And a neon sign, to point the way, to our bathroom down the hall.’

She said: ‘Just bring your Friday paycheck, and I’ll cash them all right here.

‘And I’ll keep on tap - for all your friends, their favorite kinds of beer.

‘And for you, I’ll always keep in stock, those soft aluminum cans.

‘And when you’re feeling macho, you can crush them like a man.’

She said: We’ll rip out all the carpet, and put sawdust on the floor.

‘Serve hard boiled eggs and pretzels, and I won’t cook no more.

There’ll be Monday night football, on T.V. above the bar.

‘And a pay phone in the hallway, when your friends can’t find their car.’ “

This is not a Gregorian Chant. This is not Pachelbel’s Canon. This is not baroque music, with its sewing machine tempo, stitching this way and that, then back to the beginning. This is reality music. This is life.

Take a song like “Whiskey Lullaby,” about two lovers, a broken heart, their separate deaths, but mutual burial together under a willow tree, all so sad, so poignant. When a radio station plays this, do some motorists pull over to the side of the road and sob uncontrollably? How about, “Mr. Mom,” a man home alone with a bunch of small kids, with Pampers melting in a Maytag dryer, bubble gum in the baby’s hair, a stove smoking, children refusing burnt cake, and on and on in a frenzied rendition. And he says it’s only Monday.

Or a man who wants his woman back. In their songs the men are so totally clueless; their ideas are so pathetic, so lame, so naive, they are almost childlike. There is one song where the man says he’ll leave a light on, hoping she will return. Every light in the house is on, the backyard is lit up, and the front walk looks like it has runway lights. The concept is so bad, so pitiful, that it is good. This is truly the best he can do.

So, after listening to the car radio over nine months, my impression is that if you want to learn about reality, listen to country music. But I’m no expert. I’ve been known to call the Ruby Tuesday restaurant, Ruby Thursday. Not quite on the mark.

For a sampling of country music, try: WFLS Fredericksburg, VA (93.3 FM); WMZQ, Washington, DC (98.7 FM), WUSQ, Winchester, VA (102.5), WJMA, Culpeper, VA (103.1 FM)