In the Country of Country

Like Norm says, you can’t never have too many articles singing the praises of country music. So hats off to Simmy Richman for his excellent piece in the Independent today. He makes many of the essential points, not least the fact that this is universal music, not merely stuff for hillbillies and cowpokes (not that there’s anything wrong with hillbillies and cowpokes):

Were I ever to stop and question why this music was having such a profound effect on me, someone born so far from its origins, the answer might have lain exactly in that sense of distance – the space between what you are and who you want to be. Because if country music is anything summarisable, it is the sound of people born far from the bright lights who long to take their place and make their mark on the big city – a situation as understandable to someone from small-town Tennessee as it is to someone from Hendon, north-west London.

I’d add something else: the snobbish disdain with which some people view country music reflects poorly on them, not the tunes. It’s ignorant too, especially in this country. Because, as I’ve said before, that old-time country music is pretty much our music too. It springs from the great British and Irish folk traditions. So when you sneer at that you’re really sneering at your own ancestors. Which is fine if that’s what you want to do. But I mean, you can’t walk in the hills listening to Iris DeMent or Gillian Welch and not feel the connections and the history and it don’t much matter whether those hills are the Cheviots or the Ozarks. And if it’s anything country music is a broad, broad church that you can reach via many a highway and byway. Hell, listen to some of the Transatlantic Sessions if you don’t believe me.

Most importantly there’s no need for you to apologise for liking this stuff. Richman’s piece, while admirable, begins with the requisite kidding about liking country music. But there’s no need for that. It’s not a joke genre, it’s just good music. (We’re talking about proper country here, obviously, not the Nashville pap.)

Finally, Richman suggests there’s not many places you can find country music in the UK. Well, in the age of internet radio that doesn’t matter so much (I recommend Boot Liquor) but you can also find plenty of country on BBC Radio Scotland. There’s Ricky Ross’s Another Country and, every week night, Iain Anderson has two hours of excellent country, folk and blues. Meanwhile, there’s the Maverick roots festival in Suffolk in July that looks like something that might have to be attended.

Anyway, here’s Nanci Griffith with Sharon White and Ricky Skaggs: