Fair warning: There's some pretty vulgar language in the quotes below.
Two years into the Trump presidency — a time of historic and ever-increasing polarization — OCC4 featured among its 40 artists unabashedly outspoken anti-Trump headliners Steve Earle & the Dukes, Drive-By Truckers, and Lucinda Williams. Margo Price co-headlined, as well, and she’s no shrinking violet with the political commentary, either.The potential for drama definitely felt higher than in the past. Because while Outlaw Country fans are generally more politically progressive than contemporary country fans, the genre is not without its Confederate flag wavers, ardent Second Amendment-strong Constitutionalists, fuck-’em-all Libertarians, retired members of the military, and contrarian bikers.
That sets the tone.
Steve Earle, an OCC mainstay, recently told Rolling Stone he refused to sign [a Confederate flag] at an autograph session on an early OCC, suggesting his “being a dick” had helped run off any other fans of white supremacist imagery. And while the Mavericks’ Raul Malo was similarly vocal in his anti-Trump stance, and Mojo Nixon has sung “Donald Trump Can Suck My Dick” with abandon on every OCC, the 4th annual iteration threw down the gauntlet by booking Drive-By Truckers.
"If you say it wasn’t racial
When they shot him in his tracks
Well, I guess that means that you ain’t black …
I mean Barack Obama won and you can choose where to eat
But you don’t see too many white kids
Lying bleeding on the street."
—
“What It Means,” Drive-By Truckers
DBT’s angry, intensely political 2016 album, American Band, is, essentially, an anti-Trumpism protest record. ...
[The Old 97's Rhett Miller commented that] “The Outlaw Country Cruise is a living metaphor for Americana music,” he says. “It’s transitioning from being rooted in redneck, South-shall-rise-again stuff, to a more liberal, stand-up-for-the-little-guy mindset, for which Steve Earle is really the standard-bearer. Before, there was some push-pull between holdovers from the Skynyrd cruise, but this year, it felt like we took over the boat.”
"There’s a time for cryin’ and mournin’
Talkin’ and scornin’
Son, this ain’t the time
Well, my granddaddy
He fought them sons-of-bitches
Them Nazis and them snitches
And talkin’ ain’t what got it done
We better rise up to the power
This ain’t no time for cowards…"
—
“Charlottesville,” Jesse Dayton [About the "Unite the Right" protest march, of course]
Among the enthusiastically hollering crowd, nowhere to be seen were the man with the “Legends of the Confederacy” T-shirt or the guy with the Hank Jr. “Original Badass” tee with the rebel flag (who turned out to be Canadian). ...
Borderless love, the land of the free
Borderless love, how far can you see?
Borderless love, there's no border at all
In a borderless love there's no need for a wall.
—
“Borderless Love,” The Flatlanders
Well, you get the idea. "Outlaw" Country has been assimilated like every other borg-mentality part of the left-wing American entertainment industry.
I'm sorry, but Outlaw Country on a cruise ship doesn't sound like the same genre at all to me.
ReplyDelete"The potential for drama definitely felt higher than in the past. Because while Outlaw Country fans are generally more politically progressive than contemporary country fans, the genre is not without its Confederate flag wavers, ardent Second Amendment-strong Constitutionalists, fuck-’em-all Libertarians, retired members of the military, and contrarian bikers."
So basically every Outlaw fan I've ever met falls into the 'not without its' part of this proposed Venn Diagram. Also, apart from the fans, all of the movement's founding musicians.
Yeah, a cruise ship does seem a bit off, but what decides genre? The sound and content more than the venue, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure about the musicians, myself. The drugs and promiscuity fit quite well into the progressive movement, and the focus on criminals on the run fits well with illegal immigration and the idea of "the Resistance."
Steve Earle was the second generation, I guess, though Willie, Waylon, and Cash have all recorded some of the songs he wrote. And all three of them dig illegal drugs.
As much as I like their sound, I haven't found many of the Outlaw musicians I'm familiar with to be admirable human beings. I guess the bands on the cruise don't surprise me all that much.
I'm just saying that, while I might eventually have gotten around to Steve Earle on a list of Outlaw Country musicians, I'd have never come up with Mojo Nixon (not on this list nor, frankly, any other list I would ever make).
ReplyDeleteThe greatest Outlaw still alive and performing is David Allan Coe. If the author wants to read "Confederate flag wavers, ardent Second Amendment-strong Constitutionalists... and contrarian bikers" out of the movement, he's cutting himself off from the that. Cut out veterans (Copperhead Row's protagonist) and libertarians ('Convoy') too, you're doing something, but it's sure not the same thing.
I don't need people to be Southerners or have positive opinions of the Confederate flag to qualify. You don't have to be a biker or a trucker, or a lover of fast muscle cars who wants to be left alone by the agents of the state. If you explicitly reject association with everyone who is any of those things, though, in what sense could you meaningfully say that you were in the 'same genre?' You're no more an Outlaw Country singer than I'm a ballet dancer. I may be able to move my legs around and hop from place to place, but it's just not the same thing no matter how much I insist that it is -- not even if I can put together a cruise full of people willing to watch me do it.
Defining genre by audience is interesting. Hadn't thought about it like that, really. I usually think of the artist's sound and content, the instruments and lyrics and so forth rather than the types of people who like the sound and content.
ReplyDeleteThe authors focused on the left-wing musicians, but I wonder who else was there. They said there was always somewhere else to be, implying that maybe they just missed the non-left, non-woke side of the cruise.
It’s not audience, but philosophy. That’s why a parody is not a legitimate member of a genre, though it may sound exactly right (and use the same instruments, etc).
ReplyDeletePart of the Outlaw philosophy was loyalty to a certain American ideal and the ordinary Americans who lived it. If you walk away from fellowship with them — especially to the degree of progressives rejecting them as immoral and repulsive — you’ve lost the philosophy. It’s not about making room for their way of life against hostile systems of authority. It’s about preferring other kinds of people instead.
That makes sense, though I've never thought of it that way, either.
ReplyDeleteOutlaw is too new for me. Give me Bob Wills.
ReplyDeleteMerl Haggard does a tribute to Bob Wills.
Even Mick Jagger acknowledges that Bob Wills is Still the King.
Politics, schmolitics.