Scanning the Countryside: Speaking Country’s Language
As Chris Neal pointed out in his thoughtful “C Word” post on this site earlier this month, arguments over what’s country and what isn’t, how modern and pop or traditional-sounding the music ought to be, how ass-kicking or dignified, are all never-ending. Anybody who’s been following some of the recent spirited discussions (and occasional over-the-top arguments) here on The 9513 over these matters, or who checks out year end “Best of Country 2010” lists, wherever they appear, will see the “What do you mean by ‘country,’ let alone by ‘good country’?” questions raised yet again—whether as an inquiry or as some sort of accusation.
It’s supposed to be that way. Show me a genre of music so tightly defined that it can’t evolve with changing tastes or digest originality without losing its identity, and I’ll show you a very short-lived genre. Show me one that doesn’t have enough of an identity for its makers and audience to feel possessive about it and get worked up about it, and I can probably show you another short-timer.
Commercial country as a genre, you’ve no doubt noticed, has stuck around. It wasn’t designed, back in the 1920s, to be a hide-bound, purely traditional, preserved-in-amber sort of rural folk music. It was meant to be a broadly-appealing market format with flavor, attitudes and stories that, yes, spoke to its audience in forceful, compelling ways; music that they identified with, yet with enough breathing room to stay exciting over time by incorporating new sounds and ideas, very often ones corralled from the pop of the day—or the day before.
What was once called “hillbilly” was built well enough, it’s turned out, to keep on refreshing itself over time, come what may, as long as it can keep on finding ways to appeal to the core audience the genre was meant to exist for—basically, for modernizing people come to town, people who’s families had formerly been rural. This set-up meant the challenges were always going to be maintaining the passionate audience connection while digesting the musical and lifestyle changes to follow—and to stick sufficiently with core elements of the genre that were found to work and hold it all together without becoming stale. Nobody said that was going to be easy.
There’s where, it strikes me, something Jamey Johnson said to me about country in an interview earlier this year is very pertinent. It’s been built, he said, on “a language that country music writers, singers, and listeners can understand. There’s a fine art to that language that’s not being passed down these days, but that is the art of country music… [and] “you can learn it if you’re going to come to it.”
Languages by their very nature are flexible, yet have enough of their own flavor, rules and vocabulary to be identified, so the comparison works very well. The language of country employs stuff of the everyday lives of its audience—must do that, really— in its sometimes deceptively simple-seeming lyric images and story points. In the hands of a careful observer and talent, they can nevertheless be astonishingly fresh. Think about Johnson’s own pissed off, abandoned, gleeful husband “mowing down the roses,” or that “house that built me” in Douglas and Shamblin’s rightfully acclaimed song of the year for Miranda Lambert. Odds are you’d never thought about the house (or mowing in the garden) those ways before, but they’re going to stick with you now. The country language has the capability to express many points of view—of the devoted married spouse or parent, the cheater or the cheated, the angry and the delighted, the more or less traditional, and yes, more than one narrow take on issues of the day, too. The music’s vast catalog of songs shows that much.
Let’s not allow the language metaphor to get us too stuck on the words in the songs, at the expense of the music. The country language also provides room for a range of evolving sounds. At the very least, the country musician, producer or composer needs to be aware of the flavors that have come before so they can choose from the available instruments and sonic choices and even production styles accordingly—and more so or less so. My own observation is that the songs that well marry the tunes and sounds to the needs of their own lyric are likely to be the longest lasting; a song can easily be less than a “keeper” when it too slavishly copies a current or traditional sound trend at the expense of its immediate job.
If there’s a country language issue with Jason Aldean’s current “Fly Over States” for example, it’s not that the lyric doesn’t speak to its audiences likely feelings about urban, coastal executives mocking most of the country and people they fly over; Thrasher and Dulaney’s lyric does that, and pretty well. It’s not that the production is pop per se either. That can work. But for these ears, that song and recording have been structured so the trendy rock thump pushes the vocal towards less effective phrasing, with hesitation, for no useful reason, on a passing phrase like “flight attendant” and a big, big deal over “they never drove,” which cuts against the story getting told.
By contrast, a magnificent “flying over” song that’s lasted and been recorded and performed for nearly 40 years now, written by that master of the country language, Hall of Famer Tom T. Hall’s “I Flew Over Our House Last Night,” takes the singer, whether that be Tom T. himself, Keith Whitely, indie rocker Joe Henry or the band Last Train Home, right to a clear reading of the tale. And the tale, it’s interesting to note, is especially forceful because—as with Johnson’s “Mowing” and Miranda’s “House,” we’re handed the emotional set up of the singer’s point in specifics. We’re taken with the idea as it unrolls, that shock of being so remote yet right there, alienated from what’s going on down there at home, right along with the singer. The identification becomes strong-and it keeps working again and again. It wasn’t “Somebody heard two executives talking over about their social attitudes over some house last night.” In the Aldean record, there’s no narrator “I” there to fully identify with, really —just the generalized telling. I venture that the song, while not bad, won’t be recorded again 40 years from now.
People do sometimes talk these days as if there’s a sort of crisis in country music. If there is one at all, it’s not about whether country borrows from pop or ’80s rock, but whether it can keep on maintaining a strong enough identity—in sense and sounds and audience—that other genres, pop and rock included, might want to still borrow something from it. Maybe we’ll know we’re there when somebody says of a rock song, “That country!” (We know at least that rockers learned something from Tom T.) Learning and using the language of country, as Jamey Johnson suggests music makers still can, headed into 2011, looks like the route to assuring that’s so. No kidding.
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21 Comments
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December 21, 2010 at 12:32 pm
A music genre like country can only maintain its identity if the peoples who make it, and listen to it, are capable of maintaining theirs.
What makes the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, and Hank Williams, and Tom T. Hall more real and enduring than the lyrics of Jason Aldean?
The cultures they were raised in, were more organic, and rooted, than the plastic world of today.
The MTV generation of artists are victims, in that they suffer from a lack of the language and identity.
Fortunately there are dozens artists salvaging and crafting a new and unique identity for country music.
they just can’t be heard on the radio, at the moment.
as a wise man noted:
“Art is not the private property of artists. It belongs to the living tradition of society as a whole. And it can’t exist without its public. Conversely, I think it can be said that no society can live for long in a state of civilization without a fairly widespread appreciation of the arts, that is to say, without well-organized aesthetic sensibility.”
December 21, 2010 at 1:11 pm
Fun fact: Johnson borrowed the titular image of “Mowin’ Down the Roses” from a scene in ‘Black Snake Moan.’
December 21, 2010 at 1:16 pm
“What makes the songs of Jimmie Rodgers, and Hank Williams, and Tom T. Hall more real and enduring than the lyrics of Jason Aldean?
The cultures they were raised in, were more organic, and rooted, than the plastic world of today.”
Talk about missing the point.
December 21, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Yeah, Chris, it’s fun–but then, it’s now an established fact that Hank Williams copped some of his images and lines directly from romance comics dialogue.. Whatever works.
(And more proof that Hank “was raised in a culture that was more organic,” I imagine! )
December 21, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Mediocre artists imitate, great artists steal.
December 21, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Jimmie Skinner’s immortal “Doin’ My Time” was inspired by the same True Detective magazine serialized story that was made into “I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang.”
December 21, 2010 at 5:28 pm
movies and comics cannot be organic?
At the time, for example, chain gangs were very real. the images portraying them were quite stark. And somewhere in the country, life was imitating art.
Folsom Prison Blues, was based on a movie, as everyone knows, too. But Johnny Cash wasn’t comfortable, singing it, until he’d gotten himself arrested four or five times.
before a great artist can steal, he has to find something worth stealing.
December 21, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Folsom Prison Blues was largely stolen from an earlier song he heard on a record, “Crescent City Blues,” written by Gordon Jenkins. Cash’s total jail time in his whole life was minimal at best.
I agree that exposure to pop culture is part of an actual life–and I try to show how that was very much true of Jimmie Rodgers, back in that day, in my book.
But then, Cash or Rodgers’ relationship to cowboy movies (or Williams’ to romance comics) was not different, purer, more experiential or “organic” than experiences of writers in our own. It’s an experience that’s not necessarily lost at all. The point is that they were like contemporary music makers–not so different from them!
There were people worrying from the 30s on to this day that country music would “never be the same” because less people lived in the country–when the largest drop in people living on farms and moving into towns had happened in the 1890s, before commercial country music even existed.
None of which, of course, is a critical judgment on anybody’s material or whether to like “older stuff or newer”..!
December 21, 2010 at 6:21 pm
Barry,
I’m a Cash fan, but you’re right and it bothered me that he never came clean with the public about “Folsom Prison Blues.” I know he settled a lawsuit by Gordon Jenkins, but they never put Jenkins name down as an official writer of the song. And Cash doesn’t discuss it in his autobiography.
When I finally heard the Jenkins song on a CD of the “Roots of Johnny Cash” that I bought, I was shocked. I’d been expecting that Cash borrowed a bit from the Jenkins song, but when I heard it, it sounded like Cash did little more than change “Crescent City” to “Folsom Prison.”
December 21, 2010 at 6:31 pm
There will always be a mass market genre of “mainstream Country” but if its dominant sound and style becomes so much like pop and rock music (whether current or historical) that it loses its unique identity, what’s the point of its continued existence?
My beef with so much of today’s Top 40 country music is twofold: 1.) Most of it is far more pop and rock oriented than it is towards traditional country identifying elements, and 2.) The music is mediocre even by pop and rock music standards, and the sound-alike nature of so much of it is stupefying! Listening to a lot of this music, just like local TV news shows, will literally turn your brains into mush! (Is this what Barry meant by “over the top”? Hmmm…)
My love of “real” country music (by my own personal standards of course) grows every time I discover a great new song or artist. Sadly 98% of such discoveries I make these days are songs/artists from the 1940′s through the 1960′s, with very few songs from the last couple of years making even the slightest impression. For me to search Top 40 Courty Radio for great new country songs has become about as fruitful as digging for diamonds or gold nuggets in a trash dump.
Yes, the mainstream country music genre will live on, but considering its current state of musical affairs I don’t really care if it does or not.
December 21, 2010 at 10:09 pm
I think its strange how Jamey Johnson is always mentioned when people talk about real country versus the 70s rock sounding pop country of today. I like Jamey Johnson but honestly he can be very, very derivative of outlaw country like ALL the time. If he isn’t sounding just like Waylon on a song like “Women”, he’s mentioning his Billy Joe Shaver ripoff band name the kent hardly playboys or he’s speaking in an interview about haggard this, johnny paycheck that. But I don’t think he’s bad necessarily, just a bit unoriginal.
December 21, 2010 at 10:32 pm
I’ve heard Johnson sounding like 70s rock, when he wants to, for that matter–part of a picture.
In any case, I didn’t make any of THAT sort of “real outlaw” versus “unreal pop” country distinctions here. I’ve said, in effect, that there are shared tools for making any of those flavors work better.
My own opinion is that in his best songs, Johnson uses those tools as well as anybody around right now. And, his his comments suggests–he agrees that they’re there to be used..
December 22, 2010 at 11:28 am
Lucky OS–Cash frequently and readily admitted he took “Folsom Prison Blues” from “Crescent City Blues.” He never tried to hide it, and he addressed it interviews over the years, often voluntarily, when asked about writing the song or about his songwriting in general. He was young, living in Germany, and saw a 1951 documentary on Folsom Prison. So he took a song he liked, changed the lyrics in places to make it about a lonely prisoner instead of a lonely woman, and it became a song of his others liked, including Sam Phillips. By time he recorded it, he and the Tennessee Two toughened up the rhythm, mostly through their own limitations. And thank heaven for that.
There’s a reason, of course, why “Folsom Prison” became an American classic and “Crescent City Blues” is not. Jenkins’ song is a pleasant, lightly swinging big band-pop song that didn’t distinguish itself much–although, thanks to the Cash connection, you can hear it now on Youtube and on most online music services. Cash’s reworking of it is an ominously dark song that instantly made its mark, and still ranks as one of the great works of American music.
Every few years, it seems, the ties between the songs come up and someone will feel inclined to use it to paint Cash as an artistic phoney of some sorts. And that idea soon fades while his music stays to be discovered anew by another generation.
Johnson is a similar case. A lot of younger artists emulate Waylon, Hank Jr., Kristofferson, and Johnson’s other obvious influences (including classic southern rock, as Barry points out). Is there anyone else making as much out of those influences, or twisting them into a sound of his own, as Johnson is? Not that I’ve heard.
In Dylan’s autobiography, he says all songwriters borrow from elders and influences. What sets artists apart is who they choose to take from, and what they do with it.
December 28, 2010 at 3:58 pm
My 8 year old son was listening to a country song on mainstream radio (I apologize that I can’t remember the name of the artist) and told me it was Nickelback.
My prediction is that we will talk less of genres in the future and more of artists. My hope is that the spirit of Country endures – that spirit of the language, passions and emotions of the common man framed in the distinctly country and melodic sounds of fiddle and steel guitar. And that hope just rests on artists doing it – writing it, recording it, performing it. I have little hope for whether it exists as a genre, and I don’t know whether it’s even important to worry about from that large of a perspective.
I believe that country “elements” continue to reside in “country music” – artists and songwriters will always echo the sounds that have influenced them. Whether it means country songs are still being written and recorded is in the ear of the beholder.
Which I don’t behold too much.
But again, I don’t know that it matters. My musical friends and I have conversations about “good music”. You mention examples of good music in your blog. It seems a moot point nowadays to even broach the subject of country. As a fellow musician recently posted on another musician’s rant about the current state of country: “It’s been beaten and has been dead for a long time. Move on. Next.”
December 28, 2010 at 4:21 pm
My prediction is that we will talk less of genres in the future and more of artists.
I think that’s been true for many “regular” people all along. They like and follow artists more than they do genres – the latter’s not much than a fuzzy but sometimes convenient identifying factor – and the notion of “loyalty” to a style of music goes right past them.
December 28, 2010 at 11:39 pm
It’s interesting to me, Jon, how much the topic comes up. Whenever there’s an award show, or a new artist, CD or single – it seems like whether the song or artist is “country” comes up more frequently than I would think it would given today’s musical climate.
I don’t get it. I certainly have my opinion about the definition of country music, but it doesn’t seem relevant so I try to bite my tongue as much as possible. It doesn’t affect whether I like music or not, but I have to say that if a roots country music movement were started, I’d be more inclined to bend my ear to that music.
With the topic coming up as much as it does, it makes me wonder if there’s more people out there like me.
December 29, 2010 at 8:51 am
Then maybe country music blogs like this one should change their name to simply “music blogs” as we are all one big happy musical melting-pot family now.
Amen to Rick’s first paragraph comment.
December 29, 2010 at 9:51 am
I think it’s pretty funny to see a guy huff and puff about the importance of names when he’s too chicken**** to use his own.
Miss Leslie, there are hundreds of millions of music buyers in this country alone. Even on this blog, there are many more folks commenting then there are folks whose comments are focused on what should or shouldn’t be called “country.” “Comes up as often as it does” is a pretty contextual thing. There is little or no evidence to suggest that most people – again, even on this blog – care very much about genre definitions at all; I really do think that “fuzzy but sometimes convenient identifying factor” gets at the essence of the matter.
December 29, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Waynoe – Um I think music has caused the melting pot. Country is still a genre. Billboard still has charts. Keep that classification all you want. But this blog speaks to the heart of country and whether that has some sort of defining characteristics and whether songwriters or artists can keep those in modern music. My response is that it doesn’t matter.
Jon – regardless of context, I read more than this blog. And it comes up in a lot of places – “newspaper” reviews and articles, blogs, comments on Facebook, buyer reviews to CDs on Amazon, etc. Unfortunately, I can’t quantify that with numbers or statistics – it’s just a casual observation. It probably doesn’t mean anything – there are certainly not hoardes of people begging for roots country. But as much of a “melting pot” as music is today, I wouldn’t expect to hear “this isn’t country” except from crotchety old guys. And I read it more than just from them. It makes me wonder – that’s all.
December 29, 2010 at 2:53 pm
there are certainly not hoardes of people begging for roots country.
Whenever I post about music on other message boards there does seem to be a significant number of people craving roots country. In fact, while I was at home a friend of my mother’s who I have discussed music with in the past actually tracked me down to get by phone number so she can get music reccommendations. People WANT rootsier country, its just difficult for them to find it.
December 29, 2010 at 6:56 pm
And off we go, on course for Planet Stormy.
Miss Leslie, my less than casual observation tells me that crotchety people who go on about how this ain’t bluegrass and that ain’t bluegrass aren’t so much numerous as they are, ah, persistent (to the point of monomania) and uninhibited (to the point of rudeness), and by being so give rise to an impression that their views are normative, when they’re actually not. Isn’t that true? And isn’t there considerable reason to think the same is generally true with respect to country?
To say that is not to say that there’s no audience for rootsier country music, or that everyone who might be part of such an audience has already been exposed to it. I think there’s considerable room for growth – but there is absolutely no percentage for anyone with a genuine interest in building that audience to do so only, or even mainly, by arguing that a taste for rootsier country music and a taste for mainstream country music are or should be mutually exclusive.