Now this is obviously a tribute to an earlier (and better, no disrespect to the dead) song by David Allan Coe.
You have the same basic setup: a bar with bikers, cowboys, and hippies/yuppies coming into clash. The Keith version has this as a suitable resting place, a thing one could love and accept as home; the Coe version is stridently resisting it, striving to escape it and to move beyond to something better. But he can't, because "Country DJs know that I'm an outlaw; they'd never come to see me in this dive." The dive where nobody recognizes him: they tell him he 'sounds like' David Allan Coe.
This is what I think Rollins was getting at in his letter. Keith often seemed to offer acceptance of the status quo; Coe was clearly fighting against it, and trying to transcend it through bare effort. He still played the gigs in the dives, but he wasn't accepting them as his ultimate fate; and in time, he rose above them, and became something more.
Ironically Coe is still alive, one of the last of the old Outlaws, though he had to have drunk as much beer as Keith ever did. As younger star Sturgill Simpson says, life ain't fair and the world is mean.
12 comments:
Keith's not a great country musician compared to Cash, or Coe, or Haggard, or a number of others. I'd generally rather listen to them than him.
At the same time, I don't need art to push its misery and discontent on me. I have enough of my own without piling someone else's on. And I do not think that tragic art is necessarily any better than comedic art (or non-tragic art, if you will). There's a place for songs that take you home, just like there's a place for songs that send you to sea or to war or to work.
But if you're happier with harder songs, try "Tired" or "Don't Let the Old Man in" in my post below this one. They weren't as popular as his fun drinking songs, but that's not his fault.
The incident is probably too good to be entirely true, but it comes to us as the great jazz saxophonist and composer Charlie Parker explaining to friends why he was listening to country records on a NYC jukebox "It's the stories, man, the stories."
https://www.wsj.com/articles/country-music-review-a-documentary-makes-a-complex-genre-sing-11568233280
My cousin always said that the only music he liked was country music because it told a story.
Based on the comments to the earlier post, I listened to Red Solo Cup for the first time and I liked it. I doesn't seem to me to be country - it's bouncy and makes me think of bubblegum music and Jimmy Buffett. I suppose I can find a dark side to it but to me it's just fun. And the tune's been stuck in my head all day.
Well, neither of these men is singing for/to me, and de gustibus, etc. But for me, I can't say either of these are particularly awesome, but I'd take the Toby Keith if I had to take just one.
Contrary to what you're saying, I think that "the bar" that Toby Keith is singing about is, very obviously, an allegory of America, and what he loves about her. The bar's right here, and there's no cover charge. It's a place for everybody-- winners and losers, bikers and yuppies, rednecks and techies, early birds and night owls. You can be messed up, even a lot, and you're still welcome there. The video makes it even more explicit: there's a big American flag on the wall. The yuppie comes in, wrecking somebody's job, being very rude, demanding service and then showing himself totally incompetent even to catch the beer he's demanded-- which wrecks something somebody else paid for, makes a big mess, and starts trouble with dangerous people... yet even the yuppie isn't thrown out of the bar. He's disciplined by the other people at the bar (not the cops), by being given a "carrier landing" on the bar. No worse than anybody else who misbehaves there, as shown in the video. Everybody's having a good time, in their own way... which is often pretty down-market, but that's OK, you be you. That message of big-hearted hospitality is very appealing.
David Allen Coe... well, if you take out the name-dropping, the song is half as long. The rest is resentment about, well, everybody. He's the "original" rhinestone cowboy. Which I can see, because he has a suit with "RHINESTONE COWBOY" written on it, in rhinestones, to go with the rhinestone hat and rhinestone boots. He didn't write the song "Rhinestone Cowboy", didn't record it, and it's not remotely about him (can anybody imagine him "riding out on a horse in a star-spangled rodeo"? Trying to make it on Broadway?)... but whatever. (Maybe he's also the original "Wichita Lineman", with set of coveralls with "WICHITA LINEMAN" spelled out in blinking lights, to go with his light-covered hardhat and work boots?) And he resents the guy in the corner who makes a comment about his get-up. Dude, get over it. You spent a lot of money to get a comment, don't complain if you then don't like the comment.
Because yeah, if you want people to reach in their pocket and hand over their money, then yeah, they DO get a say in what you do. Even to singing songs about Texas, and sad songs. You want to play just what you want? Play on your porch, in your living room, around the campfire. You want money for it, you have to please your audience. (I tell the same thing to my cousin, who loves to play experimental/modernist trombone: you don't get an audience or a paying gig without making them happy, on their own terms.)
--Janet
I've always loved that song, although this live version isn't the best version of it. Probably it's because I first heard it in a bar very similar to the one he was describing, without cowboys but with bikers and beachgoers and hippies, motorcycles inside the bar as well as outside, wandering pitbulls and cats, and some of the best live music I've ever heard.
That said, you're right that he has a lot of anger and resentment. I take you don't know his story. He had a terrible childhood and youth, found himself in prison as a near-adult and then was attacked by an older prisoner intending to rape him. He killed that guy in self-defense, but since he was already in prison he was put on death row. He was set to be executed for it when the state had second thoughts about executions, and so he got a second chance. He decided he wanted to be a musician, and set out to become one, without training or advantage, family connection or wealth, nothing but will.
So yeah, he's full of a lot of anger in his younger days. He turned it into some very creative music, though you're right about the name-dropping -- it was one of his strategies to get bigger names to recognize him and play his songs. Actually it's pretty insightful: people love hearing their names, so if you put their names in a song in a flattering way, there's a chance they'll play your music -- and now people know who you are. He didn't have anyone with money to push his name, so he figured out ways to do it himself.
He decided he wanted to become known as a country music singer, so he went to the Grand Ol Opry and lived outside of it in a herse he bought and converted for the purpose. He joined the Outlaws Motorcycle Club and used their networks to get audiences, fans, and shows. He did it the hard way, all the way, and I have tremendous respect for that.
And along the way he did that rarest of things: he realized the American dream. He came from nothing, suffered injustice, and turned it into success and wealth and a great story through sheer stubborness and hard work. Now he's so rich he doesn't have to work, which at his age he shouldn't, but he still tours because he loves playing the music he made. So does Willie Nelson, the two of them being the last of the old crew.
That said, I'm not trying to say anything against Keith -- now of all days, but not at all. I'm just trying to work out what it was about his music that never made it resonate with me. It is something like the complaint: it's too easy, too accepting of things as they are, too silly (especially in the visuals). But there's nothing wrong with being easy, or accepting, or silly. I'm not against any of those things.
And other people who have actually hated him, instead of kind-of-liking-but-not-quite, raise exactly opposite complaints against him. The Dixie Chicks had a big feud with him because he was too hard, too intolerant (of terrorists!), and not fired with their fury against... well, a lot of things they were mad about. It's probably unfair to simplify their complaint as being opposed to "America" or "men" (or, eventually, "Dixie," which they dropped from their name once they decided their home was too poisonous to be associated with).
If only for what he did for Merle Haggard, I will always hold him in honor. And a whole lot of people, including you (and Elise) liked his songs. Nothing wrong with giving joy to folks.
I knew generally of his story, but not a lot of details. Again, not my music and not my scene. Always glad to hear somebody made it good, justice was done, etc.
So I'd say two reasons for Toby Keith not "clicking" with you. One is that it's the typical "Nashville sound"-- meaning, extremely smooth. While your surface mind may not find any problems, your subconscious knows intuitively that this spent a lot of time in somebody's laptop. It's a "music product" rather than a "song"; this isn't a group of talented musicians feeling the groove and letting something loose into the air. (Modern pop is 1000x worse.)
The other is that his world-view and yours diverge. A good musician, and especially songwriter, must be able to express the full reality of a group of people. (The bigger the group, the better the songwriter.) He/she should be able write silly drinking songs, tributes to his/her father, grief and loss, love songs, religious hymns, etc. The whole human spectrum. Toby Keith was better than most, but well short of the best; but fundamentally, your problem with him is that his world view and yours diverge. He's happy about America, for all its flaws, and wants "the bar" to be a crazy mix of all types that can hang out and enjoy themselves together. You don't believe that. Your favorite bar is one where outsiders are unwelcome and face an implied threat-- "the hippies are just praying to get out of there alive". And that was exactly what you wanted to hear, and put into words what you have in your heart. You might want to wonder, for a minute, if the hippies actually thought that-- because, surely, if they thought they were in danger, they wouldn't stick around and order another drink?
For me... I appreciate the intent for Toby Keith, but don't have too much to say about the music itself. It's professional, and sterile, and not written or performed for me. David Allen Coe, I'm 0% interested. He's got a great story, I guess, but I'd read that in a biography. For music, if you listen to bitter/angry/envious stuff, it will make you become more bitter/angry/envious, and there's plenty of that already in the world. Hard pass.
I'm not in bars (ever), so that scene is irrelevant to me. Music, for me, is something I *do*, not something I *consume*, so I'm coming at the whole music question from an entirely different direction than you anyway. I truly couldn't give one wet fart who's up or down in Nashville (or LA, or NYC), and somebody who's consumed with name-dropping people who are already being forgotten by the wider culture-- less than zero interest.
My music teacher delicately calls the old-time/roots/Americana/old country/early blues/early jazz music I like "non-commercial". My talents are modest, my practice time is pathetic-- but, I think of music and let it loose in the air, and it's all mine, and that's what I love. I'll never get a penny from anybody for my music, and I'll never ask for one either. I have no envy of anyone, I love hearing and learning from people who are better than me, I love bringing along people who are worse/newer than me-- it's a living tradition that I'm a part of, and we are all on a journey. Some of these songs are over 400 years old, and some were written yesterday. Some of the contradance parties have been going on continuously since the late 1600s, others are brand new. It's all good. I don't need to be an "outlaw", nor do I need to be an "insider".
--Janet
I don't know about that analysis; the yuppie in the Toby Keith bar actually gets beaten up, rather than feeling nervous. People often go to places where they can feel a frission, which city people call 'slumming,' but there's no actual violence on display in the Coe song. In both of the songs I posted from Keith, there's violent fighting going on.
You're right, though, that the stuff sounds a little too fake. That 'smoothness' or over-production was a complaint of Willie and Waylon, too; it's why they left. That's really what "Outlaw Country" was about, a move from the Nashville sound to something a little more raw and real.
Now I do love early music, which you mention. Medieval music is often tremendously complex; I was telling a friend the other day about a Led Zepplin song I like (Bron-Yr-Aur) because it approaches the medieval in complexity. The mathematical intricacy of it sometimes leads them to go into harmonics that aren't strictly beautiful, but which are implied by the melodies and therefore faithfully worked into the piece; and then when the melody returns, it somehow ends up strenghtened.
But I expect you know all of that much better than I, who is not a musician.
Now I think about it, the unity of your two analytic forks might get at what bothers me. Coe is singing about a diverse crowd in a bar with the frisson it brings; Keith is singing about a Disneyland version of the same thing. There’s no sense of the danger being real, just all part of the fun and nobody really gets hurt. Even when he’s carried out in an ambulance after a “severe beating,” we all know everyone and everything is fine; the yuppie likewise is not in any danger. They’re just grownup kids playing.
Just as the Nashville sound comes off as fake and over-produced, here too the raw emotions are processed out. The stage show may be far more intensely violent, but the one that comes across as dangerous and violent to you as a listener is the one where no actual violence occurs: but there are real feelings that are genuinely dangerous.
I think the Keith video can be (or should be, even) ignored. It's not clear that Keith had much to do with its production, and the video itself goes against what the lyrics express. (I detest the video, personally.) Keith later re-iterated his sense of a local bar as a kind of home in "Hope on the Rocks," which has a very different video which actually works with the lyrics.
If we compare lyrics to lyrics, Keith is singing about a friendly place and Coe an unfriendly one. Both kinds of bars actually exist, so I don't think one expresses a more real or raw reality than the other. I have been in some pretty sketchy places in my 20s, but after that the bars I've chosen to go to have been much closer to Keith's vision than Coe's.
There's a bar I like that I've been frequenting on and off for decades. It's a place to go with friends, relax, have a drink or two and a bite to eat, swap stories, celebrate special events, and not have to be any more on guard than anywhere else I'd go in public, like grocery shopping. It's a great place, and I don't feel deprived of anything because it's not a dangerous, emotionally raw place.
I question the use of adjectives like fake and real here. What do you mean by those terms?
I think Keith's feelings about the bar as a kind of home are genuine. The sound is also real, it's just bland. The Nashville sound (IMO) tries to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and so the flavor of it is weak, watered down. I think that's what the outlaws were rebelling against -- the appeal to everyone meant less creativity, less freedom as artists. Though, as Janet says, if you expect people to pay to listen, you'd better make stuff they like. You are always completely free to create whatever you want for no pay. Compared to that, even the outlaws made compromises. And eventually, as Hank Jr says, all their rowdy friends settled down.
I think one of the missing pieces might be nostalgia. I still enjoy listening to songs that I now know aren't very good because I enjoyed them as a teenager riding around with my friends having a good time. They were the soundtrack to new independence and new experiences, and so, yeah, they don't actually sound that good now that I've been around some and discovered much better quality music, but they recall those times, so I listen and enjoy them.
Ok, nostalgia. And ok, lyric to lyric. But even then, there’s real fighting in Keith’s song where his friend was hustling pool, and not in the DAC piece. The DAC lyrics disturb where his don’t because, I submit, of the emotional honesty.
(OK, I'm going to break my rule against commenting on old posts, and commenting more than twice on a thread, but just this once...) And again: I don't go to bars, and don't listen to either of these gents on any kind of regular basis, so I shouldn't/don't expect them to be speaking to me.
Tom, there's zero chance that a big star like Toby Keith didn't have 100% say over the content of the video, so like it or not, it's part of the picture of how Keith wanted that song understood.
Grim, the fact that Keith repeatedly presents fights in his videos and songs, and (as you say) there's never any harm done, is part of the "worldview" that he's espousing. He's saying that a certain amount of "messiness" and indiscipline in your life is not a big deal and is just part of living a fun and happy life. The bar he loves will have various fights break out, plus a bunch of grab-assery, sexual deviants, etc. And it's OK, you shouldn't freak out about any of that, and you can/should still be friends with them in the morning. The band plays behind a chickenwire barrier, because people periodically chuck beer bottles at them, and Keith will flinch but also grin-- the audience is enjoying the show and wouldn't act like that if they didn't like him... and he took precautions against it before they started singing. (I hope Mr. Rollins enjoyed his cameo in the video.) And again, I have to say, the yuppie is treated no different than anyone else in the bar who is misbehaving.
Now, that worldview doesn't resonate with me. My husband's from an Appalachian coal town, and that is basically his side of the family-- that sort of "messy" lifestyle has caused genuine harm to people we know and love. (My own family comes, half from the Tidewater Yeomanry, and half from the Irish bogs. Very different world-view.) Yet... I can't deny that the "rednecks" from Appalachia have survived and thrived, expanded their culture and integrated others. Whereas the Tidewater Yeomanry are fading away, as surely as the Pennsylvania Quakers have vanished; and my family has little Irish-specific anything left after 100 years in America. The messy rednecks thrive and spread their culture, whereas the respectable Yeomanry do not, and the Irish ditched theirs inside a generation.
I can't deny that the messy rednecks are a big part of why America is what it is. They propound the "3Fs": "F*** it" (willingness to act and low concern about consequences), "F*** that" (unwillingness to ignore problems and issues), and "F*** you" (insistence on social equality with everyone, regardless of credentials, etc.). That means that problems get dealt with (maybe by brawling, but they're dealt with), ideas get implemented (sometimes stupid ideas, but not always), and incompetents don't get a free ride (maybe, again, by brawling). Hence, America moves forward in a way that other countries just can't attain. Is that Disneyworld? Well, America invented Disneyworld, didn't it? And wasn't it invented by a group of people who looked at mosquito-ridden orange groves in rural Florida and said, F*** it, let's do this? And then exported it to Europe and Asia?
--Janet
Post a Comment