Gone Country

Warning: any punk rock cred I ever possessed is about to be obliterated with the following confessions.

I’ve got a weird relationship with country music. Just like with pop music, I can’t stand what’s played on the radio, for the most part. Kara’s dad’s got a great term for it: Wal-Mart country.

Of course, being the good little punk rock girl that I am, I love Johnny Cash. I also adore Hank Williams (and his grandson’s not too shabby, either), Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton. There’s even room for some George Jones and George Strait. And the outlaws – Waylon, Willie, Merle – I’ll always have a place for them, and you can bet it’ll be stocked with lots of good whiskey.

Don’t get me started on bluegrass. I love bluegrass. And not that new Alison Krauss and Nicklecreek-type stuff. I like the really old stuff. Give me some Bill Monroe or Earl Scruggs.

You see, I grew up in a rural Missouri small town, one of those places where there are two kinds of music: country and western. It’s not a bad way to grow up, really. And as luck would have it, my teen years coincided with a really terrible period in country music, when it was a dismal abyss of country-lite rock crossover crap. It was the perfect time to rebel.

“You used to listen to country all the time,” my mom would say when I would clutch my throat with one hand and mock sticking my finger down my throat with the other when they’d subject me to “their” music.

That is, until August, 1991. One week before I was to leave for my freshman year of college, as a matter of fact, where I would find myself entrenched in the explosion of punk/alternative/grunge that would shape my musical tastes for the rest of my life. Nirvana’s “Nevermind”. U2’s “Achtung Baby”. Pearl Jam’s “10”. The Pixies “Trompe le Monde”. Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Blook Sugar Sex Magik”. All of them were released during my first semester of college. Almost fourteen years later, I can still listen to any of those albums and find a great deal of musical fulfillment.

Which makes the happenings of my final week in my hometown even more bizarre.

You see, my hometown is also home to the Missouri State Fair. Along with all the livestock, carnies and corndogs, the fair meant ten nights of country concerts on the old dirt track.

That was the year Garth Brooks took over the world. But before he began his successful quest for world domination, he was a pudgy cowboy singer from Oklahoma, taking any gig he could get, even if it meant signing a commitment to play a po-dunk state fair a year in advance.

I’d heard the name Garth Brooks, and I’d made an effort to avoid anything associated with it at all costs. Not an easy task, when you’re graduating from a cowtown high school at the same time as the release of “Friends in Low Places”. Somehow, I managed.

The night before the Garth show, I got a call from an out-of-town friend. Seems she and 14 of her friends were making a trip to the fair for the concert. They had an extra ticket, did I want to join them? Now, I had no desire to go to the show, but I hadn’t seen Amy in a year. So I went. You know, just to see my friend.

The next day I came home from the local record store, walked up to my mom, slammed my new Garth Brooks cassette down and said, “You have exactly five minutes to tease me. I suggest you get it out of your system now, because we’re never going to speak of this purchase again.”

It was a relief, really, to end the Great Country Stand-Off of the 1980s. Adamantly hating an entire genre of music is hard work.

I started listening to Alan Jackson about a year later. He goes beyond the usual Nashville polish in that he’s a real songwriter with a penchant for traditional instruments. And he can nail human emotion like few other artists, genre disregarded.

Yeah, he did that post-9/11 song. And you know what? It’s one of the most honest, heartfelt depictions of the depth of human emotion you’ll ever hear, if you take the time to really listen. It’s a song about peace and love, not about shoving boots up asses.

Alan Jackson can make me bawl like a baby. Good country music has that power over me, anyway. The weekend before I found out I was knocked up with Clara “Orange Blossom Special” Jane, I spent an entire day parked on the couch (since I was too bloated and nauseous to do anything else) watching the entirety of CMT's 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time. Under normal conditions, this would be a rather emotional afternoon.

Brian hid in the basement that day, and when he came upstairs he found me, blubbering on the couch next to a mountain of used Kleenex.

"What's wrong?" Brian asked.

Country music + pregnancy hormones = enough sobbing to merit running the couch slipcover through the dryer.

I warned Holley about my slight emotional issues regarding Mr. Jackson's music before we decided to see him live. That's fine. She has some of the same issues, too. We would be ok. Really.

And yet, I still managed to forget to pack Kleenex for Sunday night's show.

We were a bit disappointed when we arrived at the ampitheater. I'm pretty sure Ticketbastard stuck a Mullet Viewing Convenience Fee onto our ticket price, but we didn't see one single solitary mullet. Lots of cowboy hats, but no mullets. Even Alan seems to have shortened the party in the back recently.

Otherwise, Alan didn't disappoint. The blubbering started early in the show with "Little Bitty" when they showed kids in the audiance on the big screens.

Holly: Oh! They're showing kids!

Me: sob I almost brought my kid. She cried when she said 'bye bye Mama' tonight!
(commence moaning and wailing and writhing on the ground)

But it didn't stop there. Then he tried to kill us with "Livin' on Love":

Holley: sob He wrote this about his parents.

Me: sob And there are pictures of them on the big screen. Just look
how cute and in love they were!

Holley: wail And the pictures are in black and white! Black and
white tears me up!

Me: blubbering And his daddy's dead!
(commence moaning and wailing and writhing on the ground)

But that was nothing. Oh no. While we were down, that hillbilly motherfucker had to really kick the shit out of us with his pointy-toed boots by first doing "Drive (for Daddy Gene)". Oh, and did I mention that Daddy Gene is dead? Well, he is, which just makes it that much more gut-wrenching. At this point, so intense was the moaning and wailing and writhing that Holley and I couldn't even converse, but if we had been able to do so, I'm sure it would have sounded like this:

Me: wailingMy grandpa used to hold me on his lap and let me drive!

Holley: moaningJust like Alan's daddy, who's dead!
(moaning and wailing and writhing)

Me: wailingMy daddy and I used to sneak out to the country when I was a kid and he'd let me drive.

Holley: moaning So did Alan's daddy. Did I mention that he's dead?
(moaning and wailing and writhing)

Me:really wailingOh my God! I've got a daughter of my own. Someday I'll let her drive and someday she'll pull out that old memory, think of me and smile!

Holley:moaningProbably because you'll be dead!
(EMTs come to take us away.)

And then the motherfucker did "Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)", and we would have really moaned and wailed and writhed but we could because we were dead because Alan Jackson fucking killed us!

However, during all of the moaning and wailing and writhing, I still was able to be super-obnoxious. My mom's a huge AJ fan, but has never seen him live. So, anytime he did one of the songs she likes, I'd whip out my cell phone and call her. Not that she could really hear what was going on. And not that I said anything while I was doing it, although she probably recognizes my moaning and wailing and writhing in the background.

Now, if someone calls you upwards of ten times in one night and forces you to listen to a concert through a cell phone, wouldn't you get a annoyed? Not my mom. At one point I hung up during what she deemed a crucial concert moment, so she called me right back.

"Who keeps calling?" my dad asked her.

"Alan Jackson," Mom said. And then she moaned and wailed and writhed.

The madness ended with "Where I Come From", where I cried, "Oh my God! It really is cornbread and chicken where I come from! And the chickens are dead!"

From now on I only go to shows where I'll cry only because I've been trampled in the mosh pit.