When Country Wasn't Drivel
Shiflett, Dave
When Count Wasn't Drivel NASHVILLE GET S IN STEP WITH THE TIMES BY SELLING ITS SOUL BY DAVE SHIFLETT Nashville T ootsie's Orchid Lounge is paradise this Saturday afternoon. A trio of...
...Another type of tradition—artistic stability—is thus undercut...
...Leap was able to pay off his spacious house with the proceeds of a song that took him less time to write than the opening passage of this article...
...He was drinking and driving, and I said to myself: this man is going to jail...
...Their warm acceptance of the compliment takes one back to an earlier, DAVE SHIFLETT is a writer living in Midlothian, Virginia...
...These people, though they don't want to admit it, are more materialistic and don't share the same values as old Nashville...
...What songwriters need to do is get out of their boxes and write the best they can about real life experiences...
...40 March 1998 • The American Spectator Under this sanitized standard, classics such as "There Stands the Glass" (by Russ Hull, Mary Jean Shurtz, and Audrey Grisham and most famously recorded by Webb Pierce) and Moe Bandy's "It's a Cheating Situation" would not have been written...
...His long and distinguished musical career was, until fairly recently, accompanied by a personal drinking and cocaine-snorting regimen that left him looking, in the words of one observer, "like death eating a cracker...
...She recently penned a song with famed composer Paul Williams (upcoming on the new CD by country artist Neal McCoy) which includes this stirring invitation: The American Spectator March 1998 Bring on the girls, break out the wine Fill up the glasses, this round is mine A happy drinking song...
...I'm not happy this has happened, but I don't see any way back...
...Other songwriters sang from the Leap/Moffat hymnal...
...Some are political activists...
...Companies have a formula," one which rewards lowest common denominator banalities, often in a form closely resembling slicked up rock and roll...
...If they had cut out drinking and cheating songs when I got started, we would have been left with instrumentals...
...Chris Hagan may be just the sort of person he has in mind...
...There has been an influx of outsiders...
...You can't write about a whole list of things because Nashville has decided that people will not understand, for instance, that a drinking song or a cheating song might not be advocating drinking and cheating, but that they're just a story...
...Also reflecting current passions is her "The Eleventh Commandment": She hears his heavy breathing in the dark His footsteps coming closer down the hall She's so ashamed, she's daddy's secret love She wants to cry, she wants to die But he can't get enough Yet if Taylor is more comfortable surfing the zeitgeist, she is no fan of country radio...
...The lobotomy line, for example, would offend at least two pressure groups...
...At first glance all seems to be in order...
...He cited the Garth Brooks hit, "The Thunder Rolls," in which a cheater comes home to confront his aggravated wife...
...not to mention songs about losing a job...
...Moffat, for one, argues that women have benefited, at least to a degree, from the new arrangement because it rewards songs sung by and about autonomous and assertive women "who can get away with more honesty than men...
...In all that time, you are the first person I've ever run across who seeks to influence programming decisions via the pressure of political opinion...
...I should mention that I had gone into Gruhn's merely to buy a couple of picks...
...They don't cheat or lie...
...Leikin, who is also a songwriting consultant, advises clients to steer clear of those subjects—and several others...
...It had its time in the sun, and then its time passed...
...The downside is that a modem singer with the looks of a Patsy Cline or Maybelle Carter faces greatly diminished prospects...
...Programmers do not guess at audience preference, but determine current taste with the help of non-stop sampling...
...Crooning, to be sure, isn't the only attraction...
...What decline...
...It's like the Baroque Era...
...Somebody might not get the joke, or take it the wrong way...
...Soon after arriving, he experienced a side of life that would not lift a traditionalists' eyebrow, but which left him bewildered...
...With Bubba in the doghouse, perhaps Mamma is prospering in the big house...
...But religious complainers are the least of his worries...
...It might inspire murder, you understand...
...What's interesting about this particular song is that Garth would go on the road and sing the original version, with her shooting him, and the crowd would go crazy...
...And I wouldn't have a person in a song wearing a fur coat...
...All of which is no solace to Jackson Leap...
...If any of these special interest groups don't like a song, they can boycott the sponsor who in turn pulls their ads from the station...
...And yet...
...lang's public profession of her lesbianism is treated with consummate neutrality, as is the leftist political activism of Kris Kristofferson...
...I have a stack of printouts more than eight feet tall," she says of the compendium of supporting names and comments that have come from not only the United States but Germany, England, Brazil, and Denmark...
...Dolly Parton, the editors wag, allowed herself to "become a self-invented caricature of sorts by extravagantly accentuating her natural attributes to play for the belly laughs and off-color jokes" while Glenn Campbell is chided for finding refuge from drug addiction "in predictable places: born-again Christianity and conservative politics...
...Put another way, in order to live more prosperously in the present, the industry had declared war on its past...
...Hoping to fit in with Hollywood and New York, Music Row has put aside its 'Do-proof faith and has taken to dispensing Christianity and water, with an emphasis on the water...
...Everyone is bowing to political correctness...
...42 March 1998 • The American Spectator I wondered what female songwriters thought about the transformation of country music...
...Reeves, who lives in a double trailer in upstate New York, is herself an activist of sorts, and has a thoroughly political description of what's at work here: age discrimination...
...Only after you do what the commissars say can you have any fun," Leap rued...
...Here's a crowd that lives as if it had never heard of Anna Quindlen or C. Everett Koop —people who believe you shouldn't act and look like a cadaver until after you're dead...
...Moffat shook his head...
...George Jones, reached in the pages of his autobiography, I Lived To Tell It All, is in full agreement...
...Mona Lisa lost her smile, / The painter's hands are trembling now," he began, and soon came to closing lines that could make one cry in his beer, to use an expression that, revealingly, is none too permissible in contemporary country music: Well there used to burn a flame I gave too little, took too much Til I erased the painter's name Or maybe it comes down to this: Anyone trailing the commissars is bound to pass through Nashville, where Nanny and her collaborators have been up to their usual tricks...
...The result is a visual conformity to match lyrical conformity: Country videos are heavily populated by lanky blondes and "hat acts"—knockoff versions of Garth Brooks, who croon from beneath palm tree-sized Stetsons...
...Which would stand to reason...
...More interestingly, Sebastian denies songwriters are limited in the subject matter they can explore...
...Between 1988 and 1990, record sales rose 56 percent...
...But Sebastian 43 "There has been an influx of outsiders...
...You just don't have this small group of Southern people with Southern traditions...
...Promotion is what makes the difference...
...Moffat is afraid so...
...Walking the new line can be economically rewarding...
...And now, with album sales and radio ratings way down, the industry may be learning an old lesson: Sooner or later the man who sells his soul ends up not only without a soul, but with less money than he was counting on...
...Holly ended up asking stations not to play it...
...It's about escaping into alcohol...
...George and Tammy Wynette can't get airplay until their records go platinum," she has complained...
...But for both Moffat and Leap, the worst aspect of Smiley Face country is that it has left little room for singing about what is timeless, deep, and often unsettling...
...Let the chips fall where they may...
...There has never been a time when country radio was so disrespectful of its elders...
...Jesus and Jack Daniel's, former Nashville stalwarts, have been shown the door...
...That sort of lifestyle was tolerated in my neck of the woods...
...But they couldn't hear it that way on the radio out of a fear of offending a minority of listeners...
...Shooting a couple of coons is not that cool anymore...
...Even in Nashville...
...Radio people have no ears for such complaints...
...She knows beyond a doubt that country music has been scrubbed clean at the demand of people like Sebastian, and she is on the warpath, to employ another expression that might raise a couple of red flags...
...Only three or four of the fifty or so patrons hoot in the affirmative...
...getting old, and of course dying...
...Music Row is more and more like Hollywood...
...So in the released version she fails to engage in any violence whatsoever...
...Anybody out there like Waylon Jennings...
...Throughout its history country music has told its listeners that their lives, with all their mundane problems, somehow matter—or, at the least, that they are not alone in their troubles...
...Jackson Leap sent me off to see John Moffat, who has written hit songs for George Jones, Reba McEntire, and Lorrie Morgan, and who is known around Nashville as being very much at odds with the status quo...
...I asked Moffat, a former New York jingle writer, about another staple of country music: humor, which the better songwriters have traditionally woven into the most unlikely situations, as in the Steve Goodman classic (sung best by David Allen Coe), "You Don't Have to Call Me Darlin', Darlin' ": I was drunk the day my Mom got out of prison I went to pick her up in the rain But before I could get to the station in my pick up truck She got run over by a damned or train Or this personal favorite: "I'd rather have a bottle in front 'a me than a frontal lobotomy...
...He has two songs on megastar George Strait's current CD, plus one on Martina McBride's...
...A trio of tourist gals from Chicago has accepted the band's invitation to come on stage and imitate swaying palm trees during a countrified rendition of "Margaritaville," for which they are afterward complimented on the ample size of their "coconuts...
...Some are ordinary listeners...
...Enraged by this apparent injustice and empowered by a computer, she launched a letter to the editor campaign and also established a website (llmembers.aol.com/NReeves663/index.html) from which she has launched a war against the sanitized playlist...
...If anything, Moffat said, religion has been steadily steamed out of mainstream country music, which he attributes to "the anti-Christian sentiment that is ingrained in the political structure...
...Jay Harper felt the wrath of activists first-hand during a stint at WINK in Baton Rouge, Louisiana...
...No, I take that back...
...One can easily accept the latter point, but are listeners, and especially young listeners, upset about drinking songs...
...Country was purer, Harper added, "when country radio was a minority format...
...Mich of course ignores reality...
...Hagan, creative director for Pig Works Music and Fatback Recording, moved to Nashville from California five years ago...
...Perhaps it was the smoke to air ratio in Tootsie's, or perhaps that special power of insight provided by midafternoon beers, but it seemed Snyder provided part of the answer in his next number...
...was the typical response...
...Bandy's cheating classic is similarly flawed, at least by current conventions: It's a cheating situation A stealing invitation To take what's not really ours To make it through the mid-night hours It's a cheating situation Just a cheap imitation Doing what we have to do When there's no love at home Leap knows where the other topical landmines are buried...
...I've got more than 20,000 people raising hell about this...
...He got no argument from me...
...So the record company sent out a sanitized version...
...The trickle-down effect leads record labels to stay away from songs that even mention anything a special interest group may not like...
...Shooting songs are similarly risky...
...Who are these hypersensitive people...
...Great Acuff's ghost...
...Tim Barber, whose proudest moment was his acceptance by the Country Music Association, discovered that even a hint of unacceptable behavior can be deadly, including these seemingly innocuous lines from one of his compositions: "Call up your sweet mama/ Tell her we'll be by about four/ And whileshe's talking to the kids/ We'll slip out the back door...
...Terrible...
...And if they happened to luck their way on, they would have to be wildly popular to sustain a presence...
...We test every song we play," Sebastian explains...
...Radio brought country out of the woods and into Manhattan and Los Angeles...
...Our culture is awash with cultural violence: a movie without a couple of murders is a rare movie indeed...
...This ability to speak to the human heart, and to give solace and strength to carry on, represents artistic achievement of the highest level, and its surrender to money and respectability represents the worst kind of desertion...
...That seems highly unlikely, in that youngsters are guzzling at typically irresponsible rates...
...Leap has paid homage to his own beliefs in a book entitled Rhyme 6 Reason: Pages From the Heart of a Songwriter (available from Leap's website at members.aol.com/JLeap2.957/ Rhyme-Reason.html) which has been well received by Reba McEntire, T. Graham Brown, and Charlie Daniels, among others...
...There is some hope to be found in history, which shows that country music has proved resilient...
...Drinking songs, for instance, just aren't as relatable to these audiences...
...This came as a shock, much as a hymnist mightbe shocked to learn that he had better drop all mentions of the old rugged cross, etc...
...Songwriters like Leap, who must write recordable music in order to support their families, must write songs that can get radio play...
...As for political correctness, she sees onlytrouble ahead from its advocates...
...One of them won...
...Lead man Jimmy Snyder, resplendent in tight black pants and 18 inches or so of permed white hair, takes a slug from a strawberry wine cooler and delivers what one would think to be a sure-fire applause line, something akin to asking a roomful of Republican activists if they are fond of Ronald Reagan...
...They're upset about Mel Tillis and his stuttering...
...The striving segment of the elite recently enjoyed a tremendous boost when President Bill Clinton selected William Ivey, director of the Country Music Foundation, to head the 41 National Endowment for the Arts...
...His explanation had a familiar, patriarchal ring to it—or was it matriarchal...
...It's terrible what has happened...
...Lyric and musical quality are in the sewer, he complained...
...Moffat, echoing a point Leap made earlier, said that among the greatest fears in Nashville is to be thought of by the outside world as a "hick...
...I think people listening to and producing country music are different," he says, echoing Leap, though with much greater enthusiasm...
...Expressing deep religious passion is not politically acceptable these days, he observed, at least not in the entertainment business...
...Country music has gotten away from the old lyric content...
...In order to expand its audience, country music greatly restricted its artistic and topical reach...
...I was sitting at a major Nashville intersection on Friday afternoon," he recently recalled, "when I looked over in the car next to mine and saw a guy with a quart of beer...
...We still test Marty Robbins' `El Paso,' and it still does well...
...Loretta Lynn's classic comes to mind, and Leikin also mentions the young Reba McEntire's hit, "Whoever's In New England": When whoever's in New England is through with you And Boston finds better things to do You know it's not too late cause you'll always have a place to come back to When whoever's in New England is through with you That sort of submission won't fly any more, says Leiken...
...Today's labels are looking for pretty boys and girls...
...The elders have been herded onto ice floes and pushed out into the warming sea...
...Then the spell is broken...
...Quite the contrary...
...A station official from WCMS in Norfolk, Virginia, expressed displeasure that such a suspicion had even been raised: "I've worked in radio for over twenty years, almost all of that time in Country, and most of that time conducting research designed to elicit a public response to Country music...
...They're all perfect...
...Is Nanny running the shop in Nashville...
...You have to offer the watered-down politically correct version," he said, giving the example of friend David Lee Murphy's "Party Crowd," which begins with these words: "Take my keys and lock them up, and let the good times roll...
...A good drinking tune, he warned, would cause Mothers Against Drunk Driving to harass radio stations, which in turn would pull the song...
...Just up the block, Col...
...That is a big no-no...
...Come on...
...Jerry Cupit, a (Continued on page 87) 44 March 1998 • The American Spectator...
...But parricide it is...
...You cannot write a negative woman song...
...Doug Johnson of Giant Records expects a move back toward traditional themes...
...All of which is quite in order with recent trends...
...It is a city that wears its history proudly, where streets are named after country legends and where a visitor would not be surprised to encounter a plaque marking the spot where Porter Wagoner coughed up a hairball on September 13, 1968...
...So Nashville has been lusting after a pat on the head from the people who brought us Madonna and Marilyn Manson...
...And that, they argue, is a betrayal of traditional listeners...
...Frustration flows through Nashville like beer from a broken keg...
...makes a good case that country radio takes great pains to determine what its listeners want to hear...
...Audiences are telling radio stations that drinking and carousing are not part of their lifestyle anymore!' That message is passed back to Nashville, and the record companies, eager to get their music played on radio, respond accordingly...
...He was later startled to discover that having an open container of beer in one's car was allowable at the time...
...The protesters were successful beyond their wildest dreams, he adds...
...They'd stand by their man if they'd been out drinking and fathering children, or spending their inheritance...
...One man's depth, of course, is another man's frivolity, as the popularity of "Achy Breaky Heart" suggests...
...Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey for the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, reports that country music "has had relatively high popularity across all periods, ranking second or third in popularity for all birth cohorts...
...Bad news arrived one day from a prominent producer, who responded to a submission which began this way: I got a little money, I got a little time I got a minor habit, of drinking too much wine And I often wonder, at the end of the day Why the Good Lord made the world this way No, no, no, he counseled...
...People would shrug singers off as just a bunch of cowboys...
...A writer is well served, in fact, to cast drinking as an inappropriate intrusion, as in Garth Brooks' recent hit, "Long Neck Bottle": Long neck bottle let go of my hand Hey jukebox don't start playing that song again 'Cause there's a girl at home who loves me You know she won't understand Long neck bottle let go of my hand \o pro-drinking or cheating songs are allowed...
...Leap nodded grimly...
...which perhaps is now the case...
...I'm a Nashville-based songwriter and even I don't know who half of them are, because the industry creates them and dispenses with them with such regularity...
...I've had a couple of my songs come back with requests to take out references to cigarettes...
...By contrast, k.d...
...And now they're trying to do away with the Winston Cup...
...To no surprise, Reeves is highly critical of much of the music found on country radio...
...I bought these new heels, did my nails And had my hair done just right I thought that this new dress Was a sure bet for romance tonight But it's perfectly clear, between the TeeVee and beer I won't get so much as a kiss As I head for the door, I turn around to be sure Did I shave my legs for this...
...In the course of researching this story, a dozen station managers denied that radio has played any role in country music's artistic decline...
...But now they're going after such a wide demographic group, including people with college educations...
...If so, they have also erased the line between storytelling and advocacy...
...You just don "t ha% v this gill ')11) 0 Southern people with Southern traditions...
...I've been in the music publishing business for decades," said the Colonel, whose honorary title of "Mayor of Broadway" is engraved on a plaque in Tootsie's bar...
...No," says Taylor-Good...
...To illustrate the latter point, Moffat tells about a song he wrote that included the word "damn"—"not as a curse, but for emphasis...
...Gold records hang on the walls of Leap's home in the western suburbs, where he quickly warmed to the subject of country music's demise...
...Jim Shaddix, visiting from the Baptist seminary in New Orleans, delivered a lovely sermon attacking the shallowness of kid-TV heart throb Mr...
...This is Baptist country, home of its foreign mission and Sunday School boards, plus its huge publishing division...
...I think country music, as we have known it, is dead...
...39 Approaching Nashville from the east on Interstate 40, the first sign of this legendary city (founded: 1780) is a pair of Mormon spires—or so a visitor would think until, on coming closer, he sees that the spires are fixed atop the telephone company building that dominates the skyline of Nashville's surprisingly compact downtown...
...Which would lead one to think that violent songs would be very profitable...
...Bob Register hustled tourists into Tootsie's, though when he heard the words "country radio" he stopped and hissed like a smacked goose...
...The American Spectator • March 1998 more playful day, as does the thick tobacco smoke and torrent of beer cascading down the patrons' gullets...
...The content of lyrics has changed totally in the past generation," said Leikin, who is based in southern California...
...Shania Twain, who has blown Patsy Cline from her perch as best-selling female vocalist, has definite singing talent—and more moves than Mayflower Van Lines...
...Consider the subject of drinking songs, long a staple in country music...
...Nanny's victory is all but complete...
...I had seen evidence of the dash for respectability elsewhere, even in The Comprehensive Country Music Encyclopedia, published by the editors of Country Music magazine and allegedly a reference work...
...Molly-Ann Leikin, who was once nominated for an Emmy and has written hits for Anne Murray and Placido Domingo, has mixed feelings...
...But Reba and Garth were getting airplay before their CDs were even released...
...Then there was the time that NOW got on the war wagon over Holly Dunn's When I Say Yes, which feminists apparently believed would lead to date rape...
...Radio programmers, who determine the 35 songs or so on the typical playlist, are considered the Devil who made Nashville sell country music down the river...
...I called on Jackson Leap, who has made his living the past seventeen years writing songs for superstars such as Conway Twitty, Crystal Gayle, Charlie Daniels, Brooks and Dunn, and Hank Williams, Jr., plus hits for Reba McEntire ("Have I Got a Deal for You") and Collin Raye ("I Want You Bad and That Ain't Good...
...Just up the hill from the Bell South building the First Baptist Church's lighted message board advertises worship services in English, Spanish, and Arabic, plus an "Empowerment Seminar" and prayer hotline...
...Lon Helton, Nashville Editor of the music trade publication Radio 6 Records, is much more the cool analyst, and makes the point that radio is merely catering to the whims of its audience...
...Doug Johnson, president of Giant Records, offered this explanation: the artists themselves don't want to be seen as possibly promoting violence...
...Talent isn't the big thing," Burgett said, mentioning superstar Garth Brooks as an example...
...And outside the Top 40 there are deeply talented artists at work, including Iris Dement, Ricky Scaggs, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Lucinda Williams, Ricky Van Shelton, and Gillian Welch, to name a few of the schlock resisters...
...Every songwriter I spoke with, however, believed the subject was out of bounds...
...We've moved from that kind of song to Shania Twain, who has a very self-assured view of men...
...It's all PC now," she huffs, and, worst of all, Nashville has unleashed a reign of terror—or, more precisely, silence—against older artists, including George Jones...
...Karen Taylor-Good is an attractive and sure-voiced blonde whose songs have been recorded by, among others, Patty Loveless...
...Programmers were also uniformly adamant that political pressure plays no role in their song selection...
...They want to make money, and they don't care for the beliefs that others of us hold sacred...
...But there is hope as well...
...But I played the song one day and in came a call—from MADD, as I recall...
...Randy Travis wouldn't get a contract today because "he doesn't wear a cowboy hat or pimple cream...
...We probably shouldn't be surprised then that a barful of tourists doesn't know Waylon Jennings from Boxcar Willie...
...There are 18o ordained Baptist ministers in First Baptist's congregation, and on a recent Sunday Dr...
...Nashville is an odd place to encounter parricide...
...I had been a disk jockey for many years, but I never heard any complaints until about the early or mid 1980's," he says...
...But the restrictions have been deadly to the art of country songwriting...
...If a song is good, he adds, it will be played...
...The other had the line 'I'll be the king and you be the queen' — and the judges ripped it apart because they believed it made unfavorable mention of an 'alternative lifestyle.' I should add that this contest was run out of Wyoming...
...Not only have lyrics been toned down...
...To lay my own cards on the table: I had briefly dreamed of placing a few modest numbers somewhere deep in the country playlist— not for glory, but merely to feed the mortgage gator...
...Any man of mine, she sings, is going to walk the line...
...Sebastian's research involves playing the "hooks" of songs (lyrics that "hook" listeners' interest) for various groups of listeners who then tell him which are the most memorable...
...Indeed, after his name was spoken to the head waitress at the Sunset Grill, a music industry hangout, heads turned at one table to give his guest a stern looking over...
...Even if someone gets shot in it...
...The singers have got throat polyps from screaming at me...
...Yet a large irony was also at work...
...You can't even cuss anymore...
...Jody Adams, who worked for Alabama and at Opryland before seeking refuge at Gypsy Heart Music in Colorado Springs, warns the trend is not confined to Nashville...
...Nola Reeves is having none of this...
...Leikin writes with this thought in mind: "Since everyone's in AA or a twelve-step program, you're wise not to offend anyone...
...Subsequent calls found that, as a general rule, Nashville was principally interested in music that would not offend anyone, including political activists of every spot and stripe, and especially appeal to younger listeners, who buy more records...
...Snyder barks in somewhat bemused disbelief as he cues his band for the next number...
...All of which leads one to wonder: What happened to country music, and what does its transformation say about America...
...The formula worked well, at least for a time...
...John Sebastian, program director for KZLA in Los Angeles, which he says is the largest country station in America (7oo,000 listeners a week), is in full agreement...
...The warnings also had a political flavor to them...
...Anyone who wants to get their songs recorded these days needs to follow these rules: no pro-drinking or cheating songs, and in general avoid subjects that might not appeal to 18-30 year olds, such as losing a job, getting old, and of course dying...
...Gannett media heavy John Siegenthaler has praised Ivey to the heavens, says Moffat...
...A prominent magazine writer recently reported that a 24-year-old Vassar graduate fact-checker asked him who Mao was...
...They lifted the word out and just left a hole in the song—a blank space...
...A number of stations wouldn't play the song, even though it was a hit...
...The old messengers, and many of their messages, have been put to pasture...
...There is also Deana Carter's "Did I Shave My Legs for This...
...The point was driven home recently when he marketed a The American Spectator • March 1998 song entitled "I Need All the Help I Can Get," in which a man attempts to console himself with two Nashville cure-alls: One hand on the Bible and one on the bottle One's for my heart and one's for my head I know whiskey and Jesus don't go together But I need all the help I can get Though a major artist (whom Leap does not wish to alienate) planned to record the song, his record company "chickened out" at the last minute...
...There's a large new left-wing contingent in Nashville...
...Gene Watson had a song out called Drinking My Way Back Home in which he sang about driving around and throwing empty cans in the bed of his pickup truck...
...That tells you all you need to know...
...In their place the country music industry has produced a genre of politically respectable, third-rate pop so shallow it could make a Valley Girl gag...
...Says Jackson Leap: "You'll see that the acts look alike and sound alike, but you'll also notice that they don't hang around very long...
...Women used to be victims...
...The music is a lot more sensitive...
...This is hardly surprising...
...He is right...
...The former's offense is that its troubled protagonist has turned to drink: There stands the glass That will ease all my pain That will settle my brain It's my first one today There stands the glass That will hide all my tears That will drown all my fears Brother, I'm on my way...
...Basically speaking," Leap said in a pleasant drawl, "Nashville has ceased writing about reality...
...That song was about a couple that had to get away from the madding crowd," he explained, but a review board at the Nashville Songwriters Association International warned that the song smacked of "child abandonment" Barber got the message...
...And others, said Leap, are the growing number of "outsiders" who have followed the dollars to Music Row...
...It's cookie-cutter junk...
...Is country music doomed to remain a bloodless shade of its former self...
...Jones, to be sure, is the antithesis of modern country sensibilities...
...Indeed, if you want a stranger to buy you a drink in Nashville, merely repeat those words...
...Sometimes a writer will hit a handful of darker topics in one verse, as in Joe Diffie's "Ships That Don't Come in": So here's to all the soldiers who have ever died in vain The insane locked up in themselves, the homeless down on Main For those who stand on empty shores and spit against the wind And those who wait forever, for ships that don't come in The desire to avoid the darker side of life, Leap and Moffat say, makes such songs increasingly rare...
...Modern country music sounds like it's all sung by the same person," Moffat said soon after arriving and diving into a mug of beer and a slab of trout...
...Modern audiences want songs with real depth...
...For the right price, of course...
...Yet if the Baptists are holding firm, there is talk of major apostasy up and down Broadway, the main street, where one finds a selection of honky tonks, the NASCAR and Hard Rock cafes, the Ernest Tubb Record Store, Planet Hollywood, and Gruhn Guitars, where Ben Burgett all but spits on the floor when asked about the current state of country music...
...It created superstars such as Garth Brooks, who took Central Park by storm last summer...
...I look at the shape of contemporary country music and I'm saddened," he co-wrote...
...Why not buck the trend...
...Sure, there's MADD and SADD, but there's nothing more politically incorrect than drinking," Helton says, perhaps not realizing that MADD and SADD have something to do with the public's anti-drinking passions...
...This also pleases radio programmers, who do not want to appear to be advocating religion, lest the village atheist take offense...
...Most of it is crap," she says...
...Four or five years ago I entered two songs in an international song-writing contest," Adams said...
...They're scared as hell of it...
...In the original version," Leap said, "she shoots him, but that couldn't be released...
...Just as companies receive royalties from radio play, they strike it rich when music videos get wide play on Country Music Television and the Nashville Network...
...Yet he finds that the swords are also out for the same sort of spiritual themes that would have been welcomed not long ago...
...Not all the changes are for the bad, she adds...
...It's attracting a lot more liberal people, even people from the Ivy League...
...It's venality run amok...
...But you have to wonder if Snyder was all that surprised, for the sad and tragic truth is that country music fans don't hear much of Waylon, Willie, or other country legends on country radio or the industry's cable outlets...
...Nothing is dictated...
...A couple of Bible Belt stations complained...
...Rogers...
...Better that, he suggests, than the modern alternative...
...In modern country music, women are angels...
...Modem fans are much more familiar with Shania Twain's mesmerizing navel and gallivanting glutes than the musings of country music's great sages...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 3
