"Old Town Road," the popular country/rap crossover is a
fascinating phenomena. Guess it was bound to happen that a gay Black man sitting on a horse rappin" about riding that horse down the old town road would hit the pop charts. Music in America has always been a place of cultural blending and, as such, it is something this culture can be righteously proud of. Like food, dance, and a few other select things, music has been the vehicle to showcase our best multi-cultural efforts.
Still, the genres, despite their bleeding and bending have remained fairly stable. Blues is blues, rock is rock, and country is country.
Each style has its own characteristics. The roots remain intact even though the base has often provided the foundation for all sorts of collaborations.
Speaking of country music, the great U Utah Phillips (the golden voice of the great southwest) used to say that there was a way that anyone could write a country song. Phillips was for many years a performer in the folk tradition, as well as a damn good labor historian. He wrote songs throughout his lifetime about the people who rode the rails, the broken people scattered across American skid rows from coast to coast. He was also very funny too. Just listen to his recording of "Moose Turd Pie" to see what I mean.
In the late 70s and throughout the 1980s I often saw him perform. I was privileged to interview him on various occasions for projects I was doing. One of his routines was a monologue about writing a successful country song. "All you need is a deck of cards." he'd say. He went on to say that one need only write one word on each of the 52 cards in the deck. You need words that often appear in country songs. What comes to your mind first? Most folks would say things like honky tonk, pick-up truck, boots, guitar and, of course Mama. I set out to do this little task the other day and composed a list with words like darlin,' train,Texas, juke box and of course (insert adjective) truck.
Once the cards have received their word(s) your simply shuffle them and in Utah Phillips words, "deal yourself out a few country songs.
Of course it requires a little more work to combine the words into sentences that make sense and drive some sort of narrative. But that's where the rules of successful songs and their writers comes in. Country songs love adjectives, lots of them. They survive on vivid imagery and well chosen adjectives can paint simple but vivid pictures. The songs tell stories about the things that happen to all of us. But a warning...before you start dealing out all sorts of new material, I would remind you what some recent research shows about country music. The most important thing is the melody. You have to have a melody or you have nothing. Maybe that's why many successful songs were written by teams of two.
fascinating phenomena. Guess it was bound to happen that a gay Black man sitting on a horse rappin" about riding that horse down the old town road would hit the pop charts. Music in America has always been a place of cultural blending and, as such, it is something this culture can be righteously proud of. Like food, dance, and a few other select things, music has been the vehicle to showcase our best multi-cultural efforts.
Still, the genres, despite their bleeding and bending have remained fairly stable. Blues is blues, rock is rock, and country is country.
Each style has its own characteristics. The roots remain intact even though the base has often provided the foundation for all sorts of collaborations.
Speaking of country music, the great U Utah Phillips (the golden voice of the great southwest) used to say that there was a way that anyone could write a country song. Phillips was for many years a performer in the folk tradition, as well as a damn good labor historian. He wrote songs throughout his lifetime about the people who rode the rails, the broken people scattered across American skid rows from coast to coast. He was also very funny too. Just listen to his recording of "Moose Turd Pie" to see what I mean.
In the late 70s and throughout the 1980s I often saw him perform. I was privileged to interview him on various occasions for projects I was doing. One of his routines was a monologue about writing a successful country song. "All you need is a deck of cards." he'd say. He went on to say that one need only write one word on each of the 52 cards in the deck. You need words that often appear in country songs. What comes to your mind first? Most folks would say things like honky tonk, pick-up truck, boots, guitar and, of course Mama. I set out to do this little task the other day and composed a list with words like darlin,' train,Texas, juke box and of course (insert adjective) truck.
Once the cards have received their word(s) your simply shuffle them and in Utah Phillips words, "deal yourself out a few country songs.
Of course it requires a little more work to combine the words into sentences that make sense and drive some sort of narrative. But that's where the rules of successful songs and their writers comes in. Country songs love adjectives, lots of them. They survive on vivid imagery and well chosen adjectives can paint simple but vivid pictures. The songs tell stories about the things that happen to all of us. But a warning...before you start dealing out all sorts of new material, I would remind you what some recent research shows about country music. The most important thing is the melody. You have to have a melody or you have nothing. Maybe that's why many successful songs were written by teams of two.
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