Who am I, really?
A week ago, I needed to go somewhere a couple hours’ drive away, and I was listening to the local country music station during the trip.
All of a sudden, it occurred to me that I had heard at least three songs during the preceding forty minutes or so that described what it meant to “be Country.” That got me to wondering:
—≡— Stereotypes. Do the Country songs describing what it means to “be Country” reinforce old stereotypes about Country musicians and their fans, or do they offer some nuanced insights?
—≡— Who is Country? Are these songs describing what “being Country” means to the Country musicians, to their listeners, or both?
—≡— Is Country a lifestyle? Is “being Country” simply a description of the themes and images appropriate to Country music, or is it a description of the lifestyle of those who love Country music?
—≡— Do all musicians do this? Do the writers of other music genres — rock, punk, metal, folk, for example — talk about themselves this way?
What Country is, and is not
Two songs seem to be receiving a lot of play on the radio right now: “That’s How Country Boys Roll,” vigorously performed by Billy Currington, and “A Little More Country Than That,” a gentle love song offered by Easton Corbin.
Currington’s song has so far reached a rank of #14 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, with Corbin’s song not far behind, at #19.
“That’s How Country Boys Roll” presents a litany of tried-and-true stereotypes of “Country boys.” Currington’s Country boys live in a world of extremes, no half-measures — a world whose fixtures include bars, fishing, back roads, fast cars, baseball, and weekend barbecues.
They’re self-destructive, irreverent, and anti-authoritarian — they chew tobacco, soup up cars “just to see how fast they’ll go,” go drinking and singing in bars, and generally “spin their wheels.” But Country boys also embody the values of generosity, faithfulness, and work ethic — they “do everything heart and soul,” “love their woman one beat shy of a heart attack,” “work, work, work, all week ’til the job gets done,” will “give you the shirt off their back,” and “if you don’t know your way around they’ll draw you a map.” Paradoxically “humble and proud,” they “love Momma and Jesus and Jones.” Their needs are few — they “run on a big ol’ heart and a pinch of Skoal”; “all they need is a little gas, a few dollars to hold.”
So Currington defines “being Country” in terms of specific character details — attitudes about working hard, playing hard, and loving hard — and specific locale details — places and things found only in rural settings.
Corbin’s “A Little More Country Than That” seems at first to work against the stereotypes that people Currington’s song. The first two stanzas present the standard Country furniture. The rural features include “a dirt road full of potholes with a creek bank and some cane poles, catching channel cat,” “a small town with an old hound laying in front of the courthouse while the old men chew the fat,” and “Hank” songs — referring either to Country music superstar Hank Williams or to his equally famous son, Hank Williams, Jr.
But the concluding line of each stanza challenges the “Country-ness” of the preceding stereotypical images. When Corbin sings that he’s “a little more Country than that,” he is saying, in effect, “Those descriptions are not real Country, or not Country enough.” Authentic Country is an intensification, somehow, of the stereotypical images.
What content does Corbin offer to define or describe what it is to be “Country enough”? In this song, the only positive statement of what it means to be “just the right amount of Country” comes in the lines about how a man relates to the woman he wants to marry: “Girl, I’m not the kind to two-time or play games behind your back; I’m a little more Country than that.” “This ring ain’t some thing that I mean to give you and then take back; I’m a little more Country than that.” From this we conclude that being “a little more Country” involves a certain quality of character, a values system that includes honesty, faithfulness, and forthrightness.
Lest you think that Corbin is denying the legitimacy of the old physical, rural content of what it means to be “Country,” he includes one stanza near the end of the song that, perplexingly, wrenches the song away from the theme of Country-as-character, returning to the theme of Country-as-setting. He has already said that rural roads, fishing in creeks, and lazy town-green life are not fully Country. But he also sets up a boundary at the other end, so to speak. As if he is afraid of straying too far from the standard Country images, he includes a description of a setting that is unacceptably non-Country: “If you want a brick home in a school zone with the doors locked and alarms on, Girl, you’re way off track.” Be forewarned: I want you, I want to marry you, I promise to be faithful to you and be honest with you, but watch out — you’d better not stray too far from my expectations. The suburban lifestyle is not Country enough to suit me.
Country is a birthright
Another song receiving some airtime now, though it doesn’t seem to have ranked on the charts yet, is a sweet number by Luke Bryan. “What Country Is” is little more than a series of vignettes, a catalogue of dreamy images followed by the refrain, “That’s what Country is.”
The list, consisting of soft-focus snapshots of food, farmhouse, and landscape fragments, evokes a timeless rural setting. Houseflies, horse stalls, cantaloupe and buttered biscuits, box fans and cane fishing poles, sunset and moonlight — images like these create a whole fabric of Country-ness, an almost-fantasy world never touched by tragedy or difficulty.
Bryan works against the notion of Country-as-fantasy, however, in three lines that seem to have slipped into his otherwise unapologetically sweet picture. Around the middle of the song, he says that Country “ain’t a rebel flag you bought at the mall”; it “ain’t a John Deere cap that’s never fell in the cotton”; and near the end, that it “ain’t a jacked-up truck that’s never seen a pasture.” Clearly, authentic “Country” has something to do with appearance matching reality. Like Corbin, Bryan defines “Country” partially by what it is not — although, unlike Corbin, he spends a great deal of time describing what it is.
The final line of “What Country Is” (before the repeated refrain) takes the entire rest of the song — the whole idyllic tapestry he has built to evoke the images of Country — and constructs an impenetrable stone wall around it. Country, he sings, “can’t be bought; it’s something you’re born with.” In this single line, Bryan defines Country as a birthright, unattainable by those on the outside, the rightful property of those lucky enough to have been born on the inside. Country, evidently, has nothing to do with choice, with intention, with will, but everything to do with variables utterly outside one’s own control. You either have it or you don’t. Lucky you.
Hank Williams and Hank Williams, Jr.
In the songs under discussion here, “Hank” appears as an icon of what it means to “be Country.” I’d love to hear from students of Country music whether a simple reference to “Hank” authoritatively signifies either Hank Williams or his son, Hank Williams, Jr., but in the absence of better information, I have drawn the conclusion that “Hank” may refer both to Bocephus (Hank, Jr.’s nickname) and to his father.
The personal lives of both men mirror the rough lives depicted in their music — hard-driving, self-destructive, extreme, plagued by alcohol abuse and broken relationships. Other clues may yield insight into which artist is being alluded to in the songs currently playing on the radio.
Corbin’s song, “A Little More Country Than That,” refers to the “steel ride” in a Hank song sending “chills up your back.” The Drifting Cowboys, the band formed by the older Hank Williams, was known for its steel guitar sound.
On the other hand, the older Hank Williams, although extremely influential, died in 1953 at the age of 29. Bocephus, on the other hand, is still performing, and is more likely to be referred to when talking about playing Country music on the radio as you drive around town, as in the songs cited in this post.
Also — though this is a more vague form of evidence — the older Hank Williams is better known for his blues themes, songs about loss in love, heartache, and the struggles of relationships. Bocephus’s discography includes these kinds of songs, too, but — increasingly in the last couple of decades — contains more of the hell-bent-for-leather themes and images found in the songs I’m discussing in this blog.
In the end, I’ve concluded that it doesn’t really matter which Williams is being alluded to in these songs; and perhaps the songwriters are intending to evoke both of them in the single reference “Hank.” Together, their lives form a continuous thread of “the Life” of Country; together, they pretty much cover the themes under discussion — the internal and the external, the personal relationships and the physical settings. The fact that there is a third Hank Williams (aka Hank 3) rising in the Country music scene can’t hurt.
Nearly thirty years ago, Hank Williams, Jr. wrote a song that anticipates the songs I’m discussing today. “Country Boy Can Survive,” released in 1981, rose to #2 on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart. This song is more specific than the offerings of Currington, Corbin, and Bryan; and it offers even more stark contrasts between Country and not-Country.
Foremost, Bocephus defines “Country folks” as survivors — and what do they survive? Hank’s song covers everything from obtaining food to the apocalypse — unimaginable trials like “the end of time” and the Mississippi River running dry — national-scale trials like Stock Market declines and rising interest rates — and personal trials like being mugged, robbed, and facing starvation.
Survival, according to this song, comes from possessing the skills of the self-reliant — knowing how to use a shotgun, a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a plow, a fishing pole, and a trotline. It comes from a refusal to give up — “you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run.”
And, although authentic Country folks come from far-flung places like West Virginia, the Rocky Mountains, North Carolina, “south Alabam,” and “the western skies,” they most certainly do not come from New York City, where people don’t know “how to live off the land” and ultimately are defenseless against those who use switchblade knives to kill them in order to get forty-three dollars. A “Country boy” would, in that situation, use the skills he had brought with him into that foreign place, “spit some Beechnut in that dude’s eyes and shoot him with my old 45.”
Finally, Bocephus draws a line around what is Country in order to establish who is “inside” and who is “outside” — “We say grace and we say Ma’am, and if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn.” The world is divided into “we” and “you” — and you can just stay outside our camp.
Why now?
Clearly, Country musicians have been thinking about what it is to “be Country” for at least thirty years. But why the noticeable revival of that theme, that introspection, now? The three songs receiving a lot of airplay right now do not represent a wholly new trend in Country music, but they certainly echo Hank Williams, Jr.’s song in more overt ways than they have for a long, long time.
Other songs in the last couple of years have laid the groundwork for the songs plying the airwaves today.
In 2008, “Country Man,” also by Luke Bryan, reached #10 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. Less specific and detailed than “What Country Is,” this song talks about the essential manliness of Country men — their muscles are developed as only those of farmworkers can be; they cure ham; they grow their food; they are handy, hotwiring vehicles with ease; they “wrestle hogs and gators.” They think a good pick-up line is “Why don’t you come and join me in my new deer stand,” and seek a “good ole’ country girlfriend” who will be attracted by this kind of line. This song, too, uses negative images to define what Country is not — iPods, Humvees, and the rock band Hoobastank are contrasted with tape players, Jeeps with camouflage seats, and Hank (again, either Hank Williams or Hank Williams, Jr.).
And in 2007, Canadian Country artist Paul Brandt offered “Country Girl,” a song seeking to define Country in its female form as a package of particular character traits — gold-hearted, tender, parent-loving, Jesus-loving, unafraid, independent, wild — and physical attributes — clad in overalls, hair braided, barefoot, and (repeatedly) attractive: “pretty as a picture”; “man does she look good”; “ain’t she beautiful” (twice); “she can’t help but turn the head of every guy.” Physical beauty is evidently one hallmark of a Country girl.
It’s possible to find other songs in recent years that comment on what it means to “be Country,” though they don’t seem quite as self-conscious about drawing boundaries and defining what is “inside” and “outside” the realm of Country.
My theory is that most of the last decade has been influenced markedly by the events of 09/11/2001. Popular music — not only Country, but Pop, Rock, Folk, and other genres — has offered a variety of songs containing patriotic themes, drawing the sorts of boundaries I’ve been discussing around what it is to be “American,” and talking about the character of Americans.
I think that Country artists are doing a similar thing, only on a smaller scale: there is a sense, in all the songs discussed here, that people who love and who listen to Country music are an embattled minority with turf to define and defend. They don’t speak with one voice, really — the values and character attributes they specify aren’t the same across all of the songs — but they seem agreed on the fact that there is a values structure which ought to be respected as a legitimate test of what is authentically Country.
As one might expect, “being Country” sometimes resembles a lifestyle, sometimes an intentional set of choices about how to approach life, and sometimes an inherent quality that can’t be earned, learned, or achieved. It reminds me of talk about immigrant versus native-born: some want to allow people within our borders if they promise to assimilate and become good citizens, while others are more isolationist and unwilling to recognize any legitimacy in the desire to come inside the circle. One wonders how far back in Country music history you’d have to go to find “native-born” Country folk. Because at one time, there was no Country music at all, and we were all immigrants to it.
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What do you think? Feel free to post your comments below.
