Country Music and Reality TV

I love country music. I always have. I guess probably because my folks listened to it when I was growing up. My dad’s favorite artist was Ernest Tubbs and my mom’s was Eddy Arnold. I loved them both, along with Marty Robbins, Merle Haggard and even Buck Owens and his red, white and blue guitar.

My love of country never left me. While there was a time I loved and listened to artists like, Bachman, Turner Overdrive and Creedence Clearwater Revival, because everyone I knew was listening to them, my true love was the country artists. As I got older, I realized I had to leave rock n-roll completely behind. I just couldn’t listen to it. In the 80-s, country saw a resurgence in popularity because of the movie Urban Cowboy, I guess. John Travolta must have made it cool. All of a sudden country music was popular, and Barbara Mandrel came out with the hit, I Was Country When County Wasn’t Cool. I could relate; that was me. There has never been a time in my life when I didn’t listen to country music.

I like the beat - the 2-4 time; I love the steel guitar and the mandolin. I love being able to understand the words the singers are singing and I love the down to earth message that most songs bring. Yes, even Toby! You don’t think Toby should be included in “down to earth” singers? Listen, again! He’s awesome.

But anyway, I was scanning the channels this morning for something to watch and I landed on GAC - Great American Country. A new artist was singing his newly released single. I had never heard of this guy before, but his song caused me to reflect on why I love country so much. I guess because it is just so “Real”:

Five-hundred channels and there ain't much on tonight
Except reality shows about some folk's so-called lives
A pretty girl cries 'cause she don't get a rose
But she'll find love next year on her own show

 And they call that real

Real is a hand you hold fifty-seven years
Real is a band of gold tremblin' with fear
It's the first long tear down an old man's face,
watchin' his angel slippin' away
His heart's so broke, it's never gonna heal

I call that real

Where I live, housewives don't act like that
And the survivors are farmers in John Deere hats 
Our amazin' race is beatin' the check
Prayin' that the bank ain't ran it through yet

Real, like too much rain fallin' from the sky
Real, like the drought that came around here last July
It's the dust, boll weevils and the market and the weeds,
the prayer they're sayin' when they plant the seeds
And the chance they take to bring us our next meal

 I call that real

Real, like a job you lose 'cause it moves to Mexico
Like a mama and a baby with no safe place to go
Like a little dream-house with a big old foreclosed sign
Like a flag-draped coffin and a twenty-one gun goodbye

I call that real
Man, I call that real
Oh, I call that real

REAL- James Wesley