Gone Country

A song ain’t nothin’ in the world but a story just wrote with music to it.
                                          Hank Williams, Sr. (1923 – 1953)

I am a child of rock & roll. Paying a visit to the local record shop and deciding which two 45 RPMs I would buy was a Saturday ritual of my preteen years. It wasn’t easy to choose from among the latest hits by Chuck Berry and Elvis and Fats Domino, and I confess that part of my love for rock & roll was rooted in my parents’ hatred of the music. My parents loved big band music, Southern gospel, and country–especially country. I hated country on general principles; it was my parents’ music. But my prejudice against country music persisted long after my teens. My cherished vinyl had been replaced by four-track tapes, which in turn had been replaced by cassette tapes, which had been replaced by CDs before I could bring myself to admit that country was worth my attention and my dollars.

The two qualities that converted a first-generation rock & roller to country music fandom are the genre’s strong narrative and its unabashed emotional appeal.

Pick the top country songs of any year, and you will find an abundance of story songs. I don’t use the term “story” loosely either. These songs have a definite narrative arc, clearly delineated characters, and real conflict that is resolved, although not always happily. For example, Mac Davis covered a lifetime and made a social statement in his song “In the Ghetto”:

As her young man dies,
on a cold and grey Chicago mornin’,
another little baby child is born
In the ghetto.
And his mama cries.

Martina McBride, who told a USA Today reporter that country music is “like a great novel,” created controversy and raised awareness of domestic abuse when she recorded Gretchen Peters’s “Independence Day”:

Well, word gets around in a small, small town.
They said he was a dangerous man,
But Momma was proud, and she stood her ground.
She knew she was on the losin’ end.
Some folks whispered, some folks talked,
But everybody looked the other way.
And when time ran out there was no one about
On Independence Day…

On a lighter note, Tom T. Hall’s “Harper Valley PTA” made Jeannie C. Riley the first female country singer to have the same song top both country and pop charts. Evidently a great many people found appealing the story of a single mother “socking it to” a bunch of small-town hypocrites.

Matraca Berg and Gary Harrison’s “Strawberry Wine” (recorded by Deana Carter) evoked youthful memories for thousands of women.

He was working through college on my grandpa’s farm;
I was thirsting for knowledge and he had a car.
I was caught somewhere between a woman and a child,
When one restless summer we found love growing wild
On the banks of the river on a well beaten path.
Funny how those memories they last

Like strawberry wine and seventeen.
The hot july moon saw everything;
My first taste of love, oh bittersweet,
Green on the vine
Like strawberry wine.

And Carter’s revelation that James Denton (Mike on Desperate Housewives) was her first love and her touchstone for the song, offered a lucious image for the “hero.”

Even the country songs that are not pure story songs have a strong narrative line. I am amazed by how much country lyricists can reveal about characters in just a few words. Consider how much these lines from legendary songwriter Bob McDill’s “Amanda” (made famous by Waylon Jennings) reveal about the singer’s disappointment with his life: “I got my first guitar when I was fourteen. / Well, I finally made forty, still wearing jeans.” Then there’s Brad Paisley and Kelly Lovelace’s touching tribute to stepfathers in which the singer, looks at his own newborn and remembers the man who became his father:

Lookin’ through the glass, I think about the man
That’s standin’ next to me,
And I hope I’m at least half the dad
That he didn’t have to be.

Just as important as the story is country music’s emotional punch. One critic, who argues that reporters could learn something about storytelling from country music, notes that unlike hormonal-driven pop music, country music “goes straight for the heart.” Sometimes the emotion can be manipulative, but at its best, country music reminds us in a cynical age that it’s OK to love our country, admit our heartbreaks, and share our big dreams. The reminder matters. The honest feelings of Alan Jackson’s post 9/11 song, “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning,” earned praise from EW.com for accomplishing “something normally reserved for poetry: It describes a vivid variety of the manifestations of grief, from sorrow to rage to depression to political activism.”

Only in country music with its fearless celebration of themes that touch the heart could a song like “Where Have You Been?” become #1. The song, recorded by Kathy Mattea and written by her husband, Jon Vezner, and Don Henry, tells the love story of Claire and Edwin, who for sixty years “never spent a night apart” until they ended up in a hospital “in separate beds on different floors.” That last stanza grabs me by the heart every time:

Claire soon lost her memory
Forgot the names of family
She never spoke a word again
Then one day, they wheeled him in
He held her hand and stroked her hair
In a fragile voice she said,
“Where’ve you been?
I’ve looked for you forever and a day
Where’ve you been?
I’m just not myself when you’re away.
No, I’m just not myself when you’re away.”

My rambling tribute actually does connect to romance writing. When I reach a dead end in my writing, I find in country music a frequent source of inspiration. Once I needed a scene to move my H/H from the bedroom back to the outside world where unresolved conflicts awaited them, I had trashed a dozen attempts at the scene when I gave up. I took a break and listened to Keith Urban’s Golden Road CD. I was particularly struck by these words from “You Look Good in My Shirt”: “And maybe it’s a little too early / To know if this is gonna work. /All I know is you’re sure looking / Good in my shirt.”

A scene unrolled in my head. I could hear Max (my hero) speaking. I started writing furiously and ended up with exactly the scene and the words I needed. One paragraph I especially like:

“Morning kisses, he thought, were in a class of their own. Their promise was different from the hot rush of moonlight passion, gentler somehow, less dreamlike, anchored in a reality as warm and sustaining as the sunlight that caressed their bodies.”

Thanks, Keith!

There is a Kris Kristofferson song that seems to me the perfect opening scene for a romance. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. It’s a book just waiting to be written.

Here Comes That Rainbow Again

The scene was a small roadside café:
the waitress was sweepin’ the floor,
two truck-drivers drinkin’ their coffee,
and two okie-kids by the door.
“How much are them candies?” they asked her.
“How much have you got?” she replied.
“We’ve only a penny between us.”
“Them’s two for a penny”, she lied.

And the daylight grew heavy with thunder
and the smell of the rain on the wind.
Ain’t it just like a human?
Here comes that rainbow again.

One truck driver called to the waitress
after the kids went outside,
“Them candies ain’t two for a penny.”
“So what’s it to you?” she replied.
In silence they finished their coffee,
got up and nodded goodbye.
She called, “Hey, you left too much money.”
“So what’s it to you?” they replied.

And the daylight grew heavy with thunder
and the smell of the rain on the wind.
Ain’t it just like a human?
Here comes that rainbow again.

So, gypsies, are there any country music fans among you? Do country music lyrics remind you of romance novels? For you writers, have you ever been inspired by a country song? For you readers, would you read a book with a country singer/songwriter hero?