Guest post: Far from its roots
Originally a comment by Mike Haubrich on From Joe Hill to Rich Men North of Richmond.
The Republicans of today are benefiting from the abortion and gay rights strategy of the Moral Majority. Before they embarked on that, most Catholics were Democrats due to the social justice aspect of being Catholic. It also picked up on many of the blue collar workers who didn’t want rampant gay sex and loose women getting welfare checks during the Reagan era. These are now Trump Republicans who sincerely believe that he is going to drain the swamp and end child trafficking.
Our Billy Bragg has written a responsorial to this song (I know, I know!) Rich Men North of Earning North of a Million. Tonatically it’s a bit dreary, but perhaps it’s so intended. I used to like Billy until I found out about his ears of stone.
I’d like someone to write a responsorial to Jason Aldean’s “Try That in A Small Town,” too. I have some thematic ideas of what it’s like to grow up in a small town and not fit in. Country music is no longer listenable for the most part, and is far from its roots in Scots-Irish backwoods and early African-American expression of angst in poverty and survival in coal mines. Now it’s a bunch of “All Hat – No Cattle” guys waving the flag around.
Hate to see folk music going the same way.
At least there are still people doing interesting things with bluegrass. Panopticon, for example, mixes bluegrass with black metal. Of course, whether that appeals will depend on your taste in metal.
And sometimes it’s a Confederate flag at that.
A lot of those songs have already been written. There’s this for one. And of course “Harper Valley PTA” and “Ode to Billy Joe”.
But to your point, I agree that these types of songs wouldn’t be written today.
Thanks for that, WAM. I had heard the John Prine cover but never the original. I need to remember that name “Kieran Kane.”
I see a lot of people romanticizing small town life, but those are the ones who got along when they were there. If you don’t, they’re very lonely places indeed. And there’s a lot of hidden violence. They aren’t the “safe havens” that everyone talks about.
Mike, I got so tired of people telling me they brought their kids out here to the midwest because they wanted to bring them up in a wholesome atmosphere that I actually wrote a play about what is awaiting your kids if you fall for that.
No ghetto gangs, no not that. But bands of thugs with swastikas, sheets, guns, and other nasty things.