So Many Go Unnamed: Country Is The New Cool

Country music is the one genre of music that's bludgeoned by preconceptions at every turn. Those confederate flag-waving, right-wing, sweet-tea drinking, Bush supporting rednecks who sing about the righteous throne of man and the deteriorating wealth of the South. You know the type...

In the U.K, more than anywhere it seems, the fiddle-wielding yelps of the Nudie shirt clan is so detached from what is considered to be cool that it almost crosses the line of embarrassment. Maybe your parents have stacks of Alan Jackson records that used to haunt your childhood, maybe Gretchen Wilson's screeching howl gave you nightmares or maybe your disgusted at the right-wing ideals of these swamp dwelling individuals...

Look deeper though. What do you really know about this broken music? probably nothing. You've cast assumptions from hearsay and perhaps a few dulcet tones that are more pop than country. I understand that the high-pitched hick bark of Elizabeth Cook or even the Dixie Chicks can be unappealing, but pick up some David Allan Coe, some Charlie Daniels, hell, some Willie Nelson and Steve Earle, because country music, as it stands, is about outlaws, it's about societies misfits, it's about a fight for your identity and it's about crushed souls by small town girls.

Charlie Daniels 'Simple Man' (No connection with the Skynyrd song) might be a bad song to plead my case with as he sings about uprising and shooting people, but there's more to it than simple lawless redemption and vigilance. While working at a website some months back we used to listen to Spotify and I put this song on. The raging guitars and the Marlboro slur are all elemental to the songs success as a country-rock growl, but someone commented on the songs lyrics, then stating that they were 'racist' and 'right wing'. While they fail to comment lightly on the state of America, there is no racism in this song, nor is there anything to suggest so. Following this, that person then put on Odd Future. The homophobic, woman-baiting, misogynistic, faggot-calling, middle-class rap troupe posing as hard-grafting, street-dwelling die-hard rappers. Now call Daniels a right-wing lyrist.

Country music is basically folk with balls and soul. The barren grace of an acoustic guitar and some lost words, hummed through a broken heart, illustrate the authority of this music's virtue, paired with the rapport these singers embody through their woeful tales of loss. When Townes Van Zandt sung...

The poets tell how Pancho fell
Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold
So the story ends we're told

he was singing about losing something so close to him but gaining something legendary in status. And that's how the great Outlaws are remembered. The lives they chose to live were fraught with violence and heavy drinking, quick-fire love affairs and an inevitable descent to the pits of despair, but this existence is one they chose because it was their only way.

Now, while the Country music Billboard charts thrive with the likes of Toby Keith and the foolish mummers of Alan Jackson's pro-Yank bile, you must realise that this is a pastiche of the country legacy, much like the way that British pop is now a shell of its former self. Times transcend generic tendencies and although the roots may remain they can be deformed and distorted, thus the product is not a product of its legacy, it is a product of the times.

But there are saviours of the scene. People who have lived and grown up on the road. No formulated faux-image, no stage school, nothing is contrived, it's all drawn from experience and the highs and lows of the concrete they march on a daily basis. And, fortunately for us, these figures of importance are the new generation of dust-road troubadours who will pen the next chapter in this vibrant and twisting tale. As Robbie RObertson once said, 'It's a God damn impossible way of life', but it's one that's necessary to keep the stories alive.

Justin Townes Earle