To celebrate our ten year anniversary, we are inviting back former writers back to tpc in order to hear what they’ve been thinking about since leaving the post calvin. Today, to finish our series off, please welcome back Abby Zwart. Abby teaches high school English in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She is the editor of Christian Educators Journal and enjoys reading, cooking, and rock climbing. She is one of the founding members of the post calvin and would like to offer a toast to the fabulous writers and editors of the blog who have kept things running for so many years. Cheers!
The comedian and actor Bob Newhart died this month. I can’t say I knew much about him, but I enjoyed listening to the tribute to him on my favorite radio show/podcast Fresh Air with Terry Gross.
As a comic, Newhart’s job was to make us laugh, certainly, but also to poke fun at various groups of people and cultural traditions or oddities. To wit, he once quipped, “I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down.’” Haha. Very funny, Bob. Of course anyone who likes country music is unintelligent! It’s just like Southern accents or sweet tea.
Newhart was of a different era, and the idea that rural Southern Americans are stupid and uneducated is a bit of a tired joke these days, if it’s a joke at all—I think most would consider it a harmful stereotype. But if you’re anything like I was a couple of years ago, you felt a little twinge of confirmation at Bob’s words: country music has been maligned throughout its history as racist, sexist, simplistic, backwards, and altogether stupid by many of our country’s cultural elite. Though I’m several years removed from the post calvin community, I’d wager that some of you have said things like “I love all genres of music! Well… except country.” You’re generally young, educated, progressive-leaning, artistic, humanities majors who just can’t get on board with the whiskey-drinking, rain-singing, dog-loving, prison-dwelling, partner-cheating, truck-driving, heartbroken Texan rednecks that inhabit country music.
I don’t blame you. I was one of you.
But I’m here today with apologies to country music: I did you wrong.
In thinking about the ways I have changed most since I last wrote for the post calvin (four years ago), I couldn’t ignore my music taste. Don’t get me wrong—you can still catch me listening to mid-2000s alternative/folk/indie and sad girl singer-songwriters, but about seventy-five percent of my listening diet these days falls in the country wagon.
It all started with a radio station. 94.9 Jethro FM in Grand Rapids plays classic country music from the 1930s all the way into the early 2000s. (A side note: what I won’t discuss here is Top 40 modern country—your Morgan Wallens, Lainey Wilsons, and Dans + Shays. I’m still decidedly biased against that subgenre because it lacks almost everything great I’m about to use to try to sell you classic country.) Jethro plays Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, George Strait, Randy Travis, Dolly Parton, Faith Hill, Emmylou Harris… you know, artists your grandparents would recognize or ones who show up in rom-coms of the 1990s. Jethro never fails to get me to turn up the volume in the car, whether it’s to sing along or to listen more closely to a lyric—he said WHAT?
The obsession continued when my boyfriend and I watched Ken Burn’s eight-episode miniseries Country Music, which tracks the genre from its roots in the hills of Appalachia and Southern gospel through singing cowboys to bluegrass to Elvis to the outlaws to early 90s arena shows. Burns interviews pretty much everyone important (and still alive) in the genre, and he paints an incredibly academic and poignant picture of this deeply American genre. We followed the series up with a visit to Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, where we felt incredibly smart and superior to the paltry tourists just looking for the Taylor Swift exhibit.
So after about three years of total country music immersion, I’m here to ask you to give it another shot. It’s not just horses and honky tonk.
What I love about country music:
It’s creative, hilarious, and self-aware. Country music is chock full of wordplay that makes me smile, ridiculous premises that make me laugh out loud, and singers who don’t take themselves too seriously. Most of them are playing a part and writing lyrics just for the fun of it. Old country is corny as all get out, and you’ll be endlessly entertained if you can get over yourself and give in to the silly plotlines.
- Mark Chesnutt sings, “I’m goin’ through the Big D and don’t mean Dallas / I can’t believe what the judge had to tell us” (hint: he means divorce).
- Sawyer Brown writes a whole song comparing a breakup to a horserace where each emotion he feels is a different horse (“Now the race is on / And here comes Pride in the backstretch / Heartache’s goin’ to the inside / My Tears are holdin’ back / They’re tryin’ not to fall”).
- Alan Jackson asks his fellow bar patrons not to “rock the jukebox” because he’s sad and wants to hear country music. Randy Travis lists a bunch of reasons he might stay the night with someone “on one hand,” but “on the other hand / there’s a golden band.”
- Faith Hill uses the words centrifugal, perpetual, pivotal, unthinkable, subliminal, and criminal in “This Kiss,” switching them in and out for each new verse.
- John Prine and Steve Goodman attempted to write “the world’s greatest country song” and came up with “You Never Even Call Me By Your Name” as a joke. Prine was so embarrassed he asked not to be credited, but David Allen Coe made it a huge hit, getting live audiences to laugh along with him.
It’s earnest and specific. Country loves songs are cheesy, sure, but I’ve grown to love the hyperbolic
- In “Friday Night Fever,” George Strait enjoys his time at the bar, but he most looks forward to coming home to his wife who doesn’t drink or like to go out and is watching TV at home. They’re “birds of a different feather” but “she knows I love her and I need her.”
- John Prine and Iris DeMent have way too much fun playing a couple that just rag on each other in “In Spite of Ourselves.” It’s goofy on the surface but deep if you think about it. (Even funnier: Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty with “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly.”)
- Tom T. Hall loves many things. Prepare to be charmed.
It’s surprising. So many country songs are stories, and the plots are as twisty as your favorite crime novel. You can tell when you’re listening to a song that will have a twist because the verses will tell a story and then the chorus will take on a different meaning with each repetition. Plus, I’d estimate that half of country songs have a key change before the last verse or chorus, so you get the suspense of the leadup and the satisfaction of the new key. No spoilers on these story songs!
- “Saginaw, Michigan” by Lefty Frizzel
- “Three Wooden Crosses” by Randy Travis
- “The Greatest” by Kenny Rogers
- “He Stopped Loving Her Today” by George Jones
- “Green Green Grass of Home” by Tom Jones
- “The Three Bells” by The Browns
- “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” by Reba McIntyre
- So many songs have key changes, but “The Way You Love Me” by Faith Hill gets a mention because it has three key changes in every verse/bridge/chorus pattern
Does country music have its issues? Sure, and those are particularly apparent in the older eras of the genre. Nearly all the artists above are white men and the songs aren’t always politically correct and yeah, there are some truly offensive songs out there (looking at you, Hank Jr.). But I’m here to say I was wrong. It’s not all fluffy, cliché, boring, or backwards. It’s not just for hillbillies and pickup truck bros. There’s more than meets the eye if you’re willing to give it a shot.
As the post calvin closes our tenth (now nearly eleventh!) year of cataloging the musings of recent graduates, I have enjoyed reading from so many of our alumni about the things that have changed in their lives. If I can give the smallest piece of advice to current writers (with my many years of wisdom [wink]), it would be to go back and read what they’ve written in the past. I think you’ll find that many things are more nuanced and less certain than you ever imagined. The more readily we’re willing to change our minds or see a new perspective—whether it’s in politics, faith, work, family, geography, or genre—the stronger we’ll be together.
Oh, and please just try out some country music. I won’t be offended if you hate it, but you might not.
Abby Zwart (’13) teaches high school English in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She spends her free time making lists of books she should read, cooking, and managing the post calvin.
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So wonderful to have you back on tpc Abby! As someone who grew up in rural PA, listened to country music in my 1st Van Reken dorm room, and often felt out of place in erudite West Michigan, this post makes me so happy. I always loved the stories, humor, and nostalgia of old-school country. I’m so glad you’ve discovered and enjoyed those things too. Cheers!