To know outlaw country -- to relate to it, to sing it drunkenly to nobody, to commandeer a jukebox with a $10 bill and a Lone Star, to hit repeat on an entire album while sitting on the dark porch -- is to know exactly where you stand with your masculine emotions. With those, I stand square.
Nobody seems to know exactly what country music actually is, these days. From what I can tell, the genre was lost in translation somewhere between the transition from the magnificent Texas-redneck-hippies-and-cocaine of the 60s through 80s to the soft-dicked-dilution of Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw in the 1990s. The genre just devolved into CMT and cross-over music festivals involving trite aberrations like Lady Antebellum and Rascal Flats, which are labeled 'country' for no other reason except having sprung from the trash heap that is Nashville.
Country music is -- and will always live as -- Willie, Waylon, Cash, Hank Jr., Merle, Kris, Guy, Earl, and several of their like-minded counterparts; the rough-and-ready cowboys of the honky tonk. Subsequent torchbearers, like as Robert Earl Keen, Lyle Lovett, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Cory Morrow are also acceptable as true Texas Country. And this is what I am talking about here. Leading the third generation by way of the second.
It is this defiance against the polished, twangy turd of Nashville's glitter and pomp that will allow country music to survive as, not only a genre, but as a culture of sweat, and manual labor, and Gilley's. Like Darrell Royal opined when faced with a proposal from the administration in the 1960s to adorn UT's iconic football uniforms with stripes and unnecessary orange-y glitz; 'These are work clothes. No need to candy 'em up."
Texas country is work clothes. Nashville is the Oregon Ducks.
Melissa reminded me the other day of this classic, classic Texas Country sing-along. You just try not hammering it home if in the company of one or more Texans, and even more so if the assemblage is drinking Shiner Bock by the fists full. Un-possible.
When Melissa and I took a roadie from Phoenix to San Francisco, then later from Phoenix to Austin, we were serenaded by this song that reminds that road trips across the southwest are no fucking joke. The road goes on forever. But as compensation, the party does not cease. Nope. Not ever.
Everyone in Texas needs to have a favorite country song. Its just the way it is, like picking a football team to root for or a favorite Q joint. Its part of our legacy as Texans.
I would go further than calling this my favorite country song, and without hesitation, call this perfect masterpiece one of my favorite songs of all time. End of.
As a general rule, I fucking loathe hokey narrative-driven songs. They remind me of glammy show tunes, which are great in an appropriate setting, like, let's say, the London Palladium -- but absolutely dreadful for my ears and sensibilities in small-speaker format. Unfortunately, this is a well-known character flaw in most of country music.
But like any steadfast statement, there are generally exceptions. One is Willie. The other is Robert Earl Keen. The man can tell a hell of a fucking story through harmony and melody.
Feelin' Good Again is a dewy-eyed vignette that gives a beautifully impressionistic insight into one momentary breath in the life of the protagonist: The bar, the band crooning Otis Redding, the townie surveying the typical rapscallions playing stick, the drunken caballeros outsinging the band, the perennially spatting couple on that temporary upswing, the unexpected $70 of beer money found in an auxiliary pocket, the lady friend on the stair.
The whole setting is painted so magnificently by Keen, that I've pictured the exact same detailed bar room scenario in my own thoughts in each of the countless times I've listened to it over the course of the last 14 years.
They said that David Allen Coe wrote the perfect Country & Western song, and maybe he did. But Robert Earl Keen has written the formula for keeping Country music relevant.
