“… First time that I saw you
Mmm, you took my breath away
I might not get to Heaven
But I walked with the angels that day”
I will admit, I wasn’t always a big country music fan.
When Kim and I first started hanging out together I knew one thing for sure, Kim was going to have to begin to like the music I liked.
Well, at least some of it.
So while I was introducing her to Lowen & Navarro, the Cowboy Junkies, the Bodeans, Don Dixon, and Joe Jackson; she was working on me with her country music.
And gradually we had some success on both sides.
Except maybe for the Cowboy Junkies.
Kim didn’t like the Cowboy Junkies.
That resulted in one very memorable and very funny evening at the Barns of Wolf Trap sitting seven rows back from the stage when she blurted out “You’ve got to be kidding, just shoot me!” after Margo Timmins finished singing a song. We had to make a hasty exit, laughing all the way to the parking lot.
But in fairness, I allowed myself to be exposed to Kim’s country music and began to listen and like it more and more.
In fact, Kenny Chesney’s “Me and You” became very special to us and we even had it sung at our wedding.
But it seemed lately I hadn’t been paying too much attention to country music’s current direction.
So one evening recently when Kim was running late and I was preparing dinner I said “Alexa, play some country music” and for the next hour or so I listened.
Then a few nights later we were watching TV and flipping channels and happened upon the last hour of the CMA Awards, and it was evident that country music wasn’t what it was twenty years ago.
So over the weekend on another Eastern Shore road trip with Kim, I decided to make a point to listen to what was cutting edge country music in 2021 hoping to find another “Me and You” and caught the better part of the country top 30 countdown on Sirius XM.
It was interesting.
Back in the 70’s Steve Goodman wrote “You Never Even Called Me By My Name,” a song made popular by David Allan Coe, touting that the ingredients to the perfect country song were: “Mama, trains, trucks, prison, and getting drunk.”
Well, I learned that in the perfect country song now fifty years later you still have to be getting drunk.
Yeah, drinking is still a requirement.
And beer songs are real big.
“There’s a cold beer calling my name….”
“The Beer’s on Me…”,
And sometimes it’s just “Wishful Drinking,” which I guess just happens when you run out of beer money.
But it doesn’t have to be beer, it can still be bourbon, or “three shots of whiskey,” or tequila, or even “me and you time with a little bit of red wine.”
I liked that one.
But trains aren’t cool anymore.
Nope, nowadays you gotta have a boat in a country song.
And it’s better too if you are drinking that beer on that boat, or “tequila on a boat” works too.
Yeah, boats are big.
But there is a limit to the number of drunk songs you can hear and after yet another “drunk as a skunk” on a boat song we had to take a break and turn the radio off.
That was my “Just shoot me” moment.
The next day on the way home I continued my research.
Of course breaking up, cheating, and pickup trucks are still big stuff too.
Shoot I guess you have to have a pickup truck to pull the boat right?
But not so much singing about your Mama, or being in prison.
The other big progression in country music is integrating Rap music into songs.
But I suppose you have to do what you have to do to be commercially successful with the younger fans.
Needless to say, though I still am a fan, I wasn’t too impressed with the current sampling of songs I listened to.
Ah, but then I found it.
Country music redeemed for me.
Because just like “Me and You” was the perfect country song for the beginning of my marriage, Chris Stapleton went and recorded the perfect one for my marriage today.
“The Joy of My Life.”
“…Some may have their riches
Some may have their worldly things
As long as I have you
I’ll treasure each and every day
… Just take me by the hand
I am the luckiest man alive
Did I tell you, baby
You are the joy of my life
Did I tell you, baby
You are the joy of my life”
Yes, you are.
And you still take my breath away.
Now when can we get to that “me and you time with a little bit of red wine” part?
Postscript:
The song “The Joy of My Life” was written by John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame.
And here is a little bit of that perfect country song from fifty years ago written by Steve Goodman:
“I was drunk the day my mama got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in the pickup truck
She got ran over by a damned old train”
The photo above is one of my favorites from that “Me and You” era not too much before we got married.
