Your Take: Seasons Come, Seasons Go

I love country music in the fall. I don’t even think it has anything to do with a particular sound, although if I had to pick, I’d say maybe a more natural, rustic, and traditional yet soothing sound is what comes to mind for fall music to me.. like Joe Nichols “Real Things”.

But more than anything its just me getting outside more, going out on the trails and taking in the changing of the colors. An early fall morning hiking with my coffee and my dog… there isn’t much better to me.

I love listening to sad songs in the winter. Strangely enough, in pop culture, it’s prime time to release a ballad in November where it has a chance of being more successful. I’m not sure if it’s like that in country, but I love slow deep songs during Fall/Winter. I feel more sensitive to the music. If I listen to Randy Roger’s Band “In My Arms Instead” on a nice cold day, it makes me feel content.

We typically have miserable rainy winters down here (no snow, just shorter grey days and plenty of rain). On the first morning in October/November when I wake up and notice a change in the weather (a clear sky, sun etc), I instinctively rush to my car, slide open the sun roof, find the Dixie Chicks Home album, select “Long Time Gone” and start driving with a huge grin. It is and odd ritual but it has become a force of habit since I started driving seven years ago. It is almost like a marking of the beginning of summer for me.

This is a topic I’ve always been fascinated by: the way music affects moods, the way it can be tied to a certain time of year, the way it can provoke such strong sense-memories in people.

My tastes in country music stay pretty much the same year-round, as I’ve never cared for the gimmicky, forced summer songs that so many artists barf up. I think I do tend to listen to more classic country in the wintertime, since that was the time of year I first really began to explore it. I’m talking the real old stuff here. And I tend to like bluegrass to unwind on cold winter nights. In the summer, I probably tend to listen to more rowdy, hard-edged country.

For hard rock adn heavy metal, my first adn best musical love, though, I find a bit more seasonal variety: more fun, carefree, and yes, lyrically vacant hair-band fare in the summertime, and more of the seriously heavy death- and black-metal stuff in the winter. A lot of those Scandinavian bands tend to make frequent references to and strive for a musical feeling of cold, and it’s not exactly pool-party music anyway, but it can be refreshing to put on something fun and frivolous in the middle of January, really picks you up.

Living in the Pacific Northwest during the fall and winter months is downright depressing. Country music’s got me covered there! Otherwise I listed to hard & classic rock!!