Growing up, I learned only two jokes I can still tell. One of them is about cows, angels, and fornication and may really only be funny if the listener is 14 and perverse, or any age and drunk, and the other is about country music. You know it: "What do you get when you play country music backwards?" Wait for it...wait... "Your house back, your car back, your wife back, your dog back..."
I loved that joke (okay, still do!) because I despised the predictability of country music. But there was something else, too. Though the excessive twang and seemingly superfluous mention of trucks and Jesus made me want to snap guitar strings, stab muddy tires, and throw a bible at someone's head, what bothered me most was the fact that these songs whittled life down to a sad cliche--and people bought it! Who, I wondered, wrote this crap? Who allowed it to air? And more importantly and most confounding, who listened to it? And why? I was sure the middle part of the country was too ignorant to know that its favorite genre could be distilled down to a one-line joke. At least, I figured them all for fools until I began wondering, as I later would with sports, if it wasn't me who was missing something.
Of course, even as I wondered about myself, I was certain I was still right about country music: it was stupid. But I needed to be 100% sure I was right because I didn't want to sound as victimized as a woman in one of Reba McEntire's broken love songs while trying to defend my views in the presence of a rabid (avid! avid, I mean!) country fan. So I started investigating. I would begin my musical interviews--with family, friends, acquaintances, students, and complete strangers--with a sense of faint curiosity and innocence, like I was just making small talk and not on a serious mission: "What kind of music do you listen to?" I'd ask. Pretty basic. They'd never see me coming. I'd "mm hmm" and nod as they rattled off genres, artists, and songs, but of course I was only listening for one word, a cow-smelling, field-furrowing, truck-dusting c word, THE word that could change everything. I had high hopes. Hell, I thought, if I could figure out country music, I might one day figure out jazz, and then it wouldn't be long before I started understanding sports and fans and team loyalty. My whole world could change.
Occasionally, my interviews would yield results. Many of the people who used the c-word, upon hearing my disgusted gasp, tried to convince me that I wasn't being fair. So many of them said, "You're just not listening to the right country," that I began to think they were all in it together, that country music fans were part of a cult or like those people who believe I just haven't been to the right Christian church, that if I could only find the right ministry, I'd convert, or that if I found the right man, I'd suddenly have reason to be a heterosexual and my biochemistry would change to allow it.
When I complained about country's twang, they'd volley, "But haven't you listened to the lyrics?" at which point I'd quietly gag into my hand or sleeve or whatever was available.
In the course of these interviews, I discovered that many country music fans grew up with the genre. In fact, this condition was almost universally cited. Well, I thought, that explains it. Country music had been as much a part of these people's lives as the breast or bottle. But it hadn't been a part of mine. I was born in the 80's and raised on Cat Stevens, The Beatles, Harry Nilsson, and music from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I remember dancing around the living room to The Go-Go's and songs from the movie Flashdance. I'm not sure I heard a country song until I was in high school and was exposed to people whose parents must have weaned them on the stuff.
Frankly, I didn't think intelligent people seriously gave country music the time of day. Perhaps that's why I didn't warm up to it until I moved to Portland, a city of highly intelligent, not to mention liberal, people, many of whom enjoy country music (right along with pop, classical, rap, opera, folk, jazz, blues, etc.)...even though they drive hybrid vehicles and bicycles, recycle, and have the wisdom to question religious authorities!
I moved to Portland in the fall of 2009 and quickly began casting my friendship nets. With time, I learned that many of the smart, funny, and talented people I was meeting were...*gasp*...country fans. Of course, just about everyone in Portland is a transplant, born and raised elsewhere--often in the Midwest. So they've taken their roots with them to the rainy northwest where chicks wear knee-high boots until July (when the sun finally emerges) and the guys wear tight pants year-round. And I'm glad, because had country music not come to me wrapped in the aura of compassion and intelligence, I would have continued to see it from the wrong angle--that is, I would have continued failing to see it for what it is, and I may never have had the opportunity to appreciate it.
What helped most, perhaps, was that a woman I fell in love with and who became my girlfriend (now ex-girlfriend, but by no fault of country music!), loved country music. And this was, at first, an intriguing puzzle. How could this woman, who was so funny I stopped doing crunches to tighten my abs, who was so quick with her wit and up-to-date with politics that I often felt humbled in her presence, enjoy music that was so trite? It was because of how highly I esteemed her that I was able to set aside my hollering ego and, one day, alone on my way to work, windows rolled up, discreetly scan through the radio stations until I found one with twang.
I listened every day, and it was not unlike doing crunches or eating salad or doing any of the other number of things we do (flossing, for some of us) to better ourselves. I found that the less I judged the lyrics, the easier the songs were to hear. The less I cared about the simplicity of a rhyme scheme, the more I was able to appreciate a corny pun or the soft edge of a male singer's voice. The more I came to realize the songs were no better and no worse than any of the other songs on the radio, the more I was able to relax and enjoy them. I was learning, like my reading and writing students, that you have to take something on its own terms. You shouldn't read a poem expecting a short story, and you shouldn't listen to a country song expecting your favorite brand of feminist folk music.
I grew to love watching my then-girlfriend dig holes in the yard for newly purchased plants while the radio shared Kenny Chesney's earnest "Please Come to Boston" or Toby Keith's catchy "Red Solo Cup." I couldn't help but love Craig Campbell's "Fish," despite (because of?) its juvenile double entendres and 14-year-old-boy-infused lyrics. "Man, I can't believe my luck," Campbell would sing, "I found a girl who likes to..." "FISH!" I'd yell-sing along while grading at the table on the deck, the sun warming my neck, the woman I loved smiling and sweating over a shovel.
I used to be proud to say I couldn't stand country. But in a way, I was like the bigots I imagined listened to the genre--close-minded. Prejudiced. Ignorant. I kept myself away from country music so I wouldn't have to see it differently. It took love to change my mind. It took a willingness--a real want--to change my heart and my mind, for me to not only tolerate, and not only accept, but grow to love country music.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if more people opened themselves up in this way? Not just to different genres of music, but to different people? If we all stopped presuming WE KNOW? Would homophobic people stop presuming they know God's will? Would racists stop making harmful assumptions? Would men stop doubting women? Would we all start to listen?
These days, I keep a couple of radio channels programmed to country music stations so I can gear up for work with Luke Bryan ("Girl, you make my speakers go boom boom...") or head to the grocery store with Brantley Gilbert ("You don't know her like I do, yeah, that girl's my best friend") and Easton Corbin ("Lovin' You is Fun"). Because I love the way these guys sing about love. Even if they're only singing what they think women want to hear, even if women are the ones writing these songs (as I'm sure is often the case), even if they are only singing certain lyrics because they fit a rhyme scheme. Because at least they have the balls to sing about love. And because there's something sexy about a guitar and sunshine and wide open spaces. And because there's something a little country in me.
