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The Nashville Sound Is Hotter Than Ever
But is it really country? By: William Porter Denver Post Staff Writer Amid the martial thrash of Darryl Worley's "Have You Forgotten," the Pepsodent-perky warblings of Shania Twain and the amped-up posturing of a hundred Nashville Lite acts, a faint whirring is heard. It is the sound of Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family spinning in their graves. Could these country music icons even recognize the genre they founded? Country might be hotter than buttermilk biscuits - SoundScan, which tracks music sales for the industry, reports the genre enjoyed a 12 percent boost in 2002, while rock and R&B sales plummeted - but old-time fans argue that much of the music scarcely qualifies as country at all. Consider: This year's Academy of Country Music Awards ceremonies (airing at 7 p.m. Wednesday on KCNC-Channel 4) will be held at a Las Vegas casino. To paraphrase Waylon Jennings' cautionary hit: Are you sure Frank done it this way? The question nags at Bob Everhart, co-founder of the National Traditional Country Music Association. "I think there's been a real falling away from the roots of country music," says Everhart, who has taken his throwback style of music to Europe and China. "In fact, much of what comes out of Nashville these days isn't identifiable as country." It's not that the music is all Telecasters and no tractors, though that's part of the problem. The real dilemma: Country has gone soft in the middle. Brad Paisley's recent video for "Celebrity" is peopled with Hollywood types: William Shatner, Trista Rehn ("The Bachelorette") and Jason Alexander ("Seinfeld's" George). LeAnn Rimes covers Debby Boone's "You Light Up My Life." It was not always so. Listen to the original music, and be shocked by the lyrics: Murder and madness, adultery and betrayal, prison and partying, plus a casual assumption that scores will be settled with beatings or bullets. Vicious stuff, worthy of being slapped with parental advisory labels. Bearing titles such as "Knoxville Girl" and "Your Cheatin' Heart," these decades-old songs are the bedrock of country music, a genre wrapped in red, white and blue. In 2003, when country music is a billion-dollar industry and its stars employ Broadway slickness, it is easy to forget the music's hard-bitten origins. The Great Depression was the music's crucible, the rural poor the first audience. Those hard times were reflected in country's first icons. Jimmie Rodgers had tuberculosis. Hank Williams died of alcohol poisoning in the back of his car. Patsy Cline endured childhood sexual abuse. Country music has been described as "three chords and the truth." That truth jumps from the pointedness of country's lyrics, which veer between mordant and mirthful, but are always sung in straight-no-chaser fashion. Irony may be a cash crop in some musical fields, but it tends to wither on the vine in Nashville. When Willie Nelson sang, "Hello walls, how'd things go for you today?" he wasn't pondering new drapes and sash rods. Unlike rock 'n' roll, you don't find adolescent angst in country songs. It is music for grown-ups, made by and for folks dining off an adult-sized plate of pain, regret and frustration. When your marriage is a battlefield, it's some comfort to know George Jones and Tammy Wynette were veterans of the same wars. Not that you don't find escapism and silliness. For all the testimonies to alcohol, country songwriters have long realized that laughter can be the best medicine. How else to explain a genre where a hit song by Jennings boasts the line "Get your tongue out of my mouth, I'm kissing you goodbye." The 1990s' surge in country's popularity was driven by aging boomers, who turned from rock music in search of something more plainspoken. "I think one reason people like country music is that it's a straightforward look at complex emotions," says Joel Burke, programming director at Denver's KYGO-FM. "What you hear is what you get. People can identify with the music." Even if it's simplistic. Jingoism is rampant in Clint Black's "Iraq and Roll," a blast of anti-Dixie Chicks sound and a recent hit: Iraq, I rack 'em up and I rollWith the music's success has come a fragmenting. The country of country is Balkanized. You have the old guard, aging artists such as Merle Haggard, George Jones and Loretta Lynn who trace direct lineage from originators such as Hank Williams and the Carter family. Then there are their spiritual heirs, new traditionalists such as Dwight Yoakam, Ricky Scaggs and Emmylou Harris. Americana purists include Iris DeMent, Robert Earl Keen and Gillian Welch. But radio stations billing themselves as "country" often ignore these acts. Retro honky-tonkers Dale Watson and Wayne Hancock may channel the spirit of Williams Sr., but can't buy radio time. These latter-day acts show catholic tastes, but claim bona fides within the genre. When Yoakam sings "Sorry You Asked," a she-left-me lament, the tear in his twang evokes every old boy who ever hoisted his moroseness onto a barstool, right down to the fadeout line: "There were certain third parties/her sister for one. ..." Still, today's biggest country sellers spring from the so-called "hat acts." These artists wrap themselves in pop elements. Check out a Garth Brooks, Toby Keith, Shania Twain or Faith Hill concert; it's akin to Metallica, with Spandex swapped for Stetsons. The result: A sort of lite country, which is to traditional country what low-cal beer is to a shot of Wild Turkey. The stuff may go down easily enough, but offers zilch in the way of substance. What a change from the Carter family's 1927 recording sessions in Bristol, Va., an ur-moment in country music history. The Carters' music was worldly, yet steeped in biblical belief. This duality is the genre's template. Country music weaves together the conflicting elements of Saturday night and Sunday morning. Light is fused with dark, sin with salvation, hearth and home with the lost highway. Everyone is wedged into the church pew to sing "The Old Rugged Cross," but some nurse hangovers. This paradox is the beating heart of the music's appeal. It fuels the beauty and tension. And here's a notion sure to spin the heads of fans: When it comes to the music's recurring themes, hard-core country's kissing cousin is arguably ... gangsta rap. Think about it. Both genres swagger with defiance, their narrators sneering in the face of a game rigged against them. Songs boast a grab-it-now attitude, because son, you'll never get out of this world alive. There is intimacy with violence, prison and broken dreams. One more thing: The artists sure love their mamas. Rapper Tupac Shakur could have written "I shot a man in Reno/just to watch him die," but Johnny Cash beat him to it. Opry pioneer Uncle Dave Macon even sported baggy pants and solid gold teeth. Traditional southern Appalachian ballads, the taproot of country music, were often grim. "Knoxville Girl" and "Banks of the Ohio" are first-person narratives of savage, unblinking murder. The music could be racy, too. Before Grand Ole Opry broadcasts sanitized things, country music was no stranger to bawdiness. Townfolk in pre-World War II America might sniff at barnyard humor, but their earthier rural cousins stood grinning at the fence rails, familiar with the goings-on. In the 1930s, Jimmie Davis recorded hits whose lewdness could make Prince blush. One song celebrated a woman whose hips churned "like a mowin' machine." (Davis later became governor of Louisiana and embraced gospel music, apparently having had his fill of lawn care.) In 1999, Cash released a career overview titled "Love, God, Murder," pretty much summing his songwriting concerns. Today's mainstream country artists grew up in the rock era. That's why so much of their music is interchangeable with anything produced by the Eagles or, for that matter, Lynyrd Skynyrd. Much of it is pap, flat as a cowpie and about as appealing. Granted, music isn't suspended in amber. Times change. So do artists and audiences. Travis Tritt's new radio hit, "Country Ain't Country," speaks to that changing demographic in an America where family farms are paved over for Wal-Marts. He was raised on a tractor in overalls and boots |
Originally Published In The Denver Post On May 18, 2003
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