I’M A LITTLE BIT COUNTRY…

Regular readers of this column often ask me if I have a problem with the sometimes nasty letters people write about what they read here. On the on the contrary, I tell them. I love stirring up controversy. That’s why I’ve decided to branch out to a field in which I can whip up some real controversy.

I’m going to start singing country music.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about (and who really is sure most of the time), take a look at a couple of stories from the new face of country.

First, there’s the flap over "alternative country" singer Steve Earle’s song entitled "The Ballad of Johnny Walker". The Johnny of the title is not the red liquor so beloved of more traditional country artists like George Jones, but refers to so-called "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. "I'm just an American boy, raised on MTV," the song begins, "I’ve seen all the kids in the soda-pop bands, but none of them look like me." But it’s the end of the tune that has a lot of people’s backs up: "We came to fight the Jihad and our hearts were pure and strong/As death filled the air we all offered up prayers and prepared for our martyrdom/ But Allah had some other plan, some secret not revealed; Now they're draggin' me back with my head in a sack to the land of the infidel".

The song makes Lindh out to be what he actually is: a pathetic, deluded figure with his head filled with romantic notions of martyrdom and his butt in a U.S. jail. But the way the powers that be in country music reacted, you’d have thought Earle had filled his tour bus with explosives and crashed it into the Pentagon. "This puts Earle in the same category as Jane Fonda and Lindh and all of those people who hate America," thundered Nashville talk show host Steve Gill. One Nashville music writer prophesied that "this has probably finished Earle off in mainstream country."

Okay, I confess, I’ve been a Steve Earle fan for years, way before this song came out. He’s a great songwriter. His songs tell stories. And, like all good stories, his songs are told through the eyes of characters. In Earle’s tunes, those characters include a farmer fighting against the loss of his land ("And the Rain Came Down"), a naïve rural black kid ending up on the white side of town for the first time with disastrous results ("Taneytown"), or the descendant of three generations of moonshiners who turns to marijuana cultivation as much out of family tradition and pure orneriness as anything else ("Copperhead Road"). Sometimes those main characters are not exactly savory. That doesn’t mean that the singer/narrator actually did the things described or even agrees with the character. It’s a tradition of musical storytelling that cuts through all genres of music. After all does anyone really believe that Neil Young shot his baby down by the river or that Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die?

A more mainstream country artist causing controversy is Tim McGraw. His single "Red Rag Top" has angered some radio listeners and radio program directors because of its reference to an abortion. "We were young and wild," McGraw sings, "We decided not to have a child/ So we did what we did and we tried to forget/ And we swore up and down there would be no regrets." Of course, this being country music, you know that "no regrets" ain’t gonna be that easy. "We took one more trip around the sun, But it was all make believe in the end…Well, you do what you do and you pay for your sins."

Good, solid reap-what-you-sow type lyrics, right? As a VP of McGraw’s record label put it, "It's about three things: pain, loss and regret. It's country personified." Certainly, there’s nothing in "Red Rag Top" as offensive as the lyrics of McGraw’s truly egregious hit "Indian Outlaw" ("You can find me in my wigwam/I'll be beatin' on my tom-tom/Pull out the pipe and smoke you some…")

It seems however, that you can dis Native Americans all you want in country music, but don’t you dare mention abortion. Stations began banning the song right and left. One station in Charleston, South Carolina pulled "Red Rag Top" from its playlist after its first airing after receiving, so they claimed, forty-five minutes worth of phone calls. Some disliked the song because the characters chose abortion at all. Others were upset because, despite the bittersweet tone of the song, they felt that it didn’t reflect nearly enough remorse over the decision. Maybe they’d have been happier if McGraw had had the character do the honorable thing and drive his red ragtop off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

So, my course is clear. I haven’t stirred up nearly enough people recently. Therefore, I’m going to get the boots out of the back of the closet, dust off my old cowboy hat, and tune up my guitar. All I need now is a tour bus.

See y’all on the road.

COPYRIGHT 2002 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.