Bad Poetry: Country Music Song

Continuing the celebration of National Poetry Month, here's a lyric in country-music-song manner (tune based on "Casey Jones") about how much Nashville's current output makes me miss the more authentic, and enjoyable, country music of my youth...

Either of the first two verses can be used as the (only) first verse. The one showing up on top, I call "Tom T. Hall Was Right, or the 'No Country Music' Reprise," and I think it really ought to open with the classic sound track...

“These words I’m saying oughta be scribbled all over them billboards

In big old black and bloody letters, ten feet tall:

There won’t be no country music! There won’t be no rock’n’roll!

When they take away our country, they’ll take away our soul!”

From which the singer may improvise a bridge...If you can think of an original tune, please feel free to use one.)

Well, back around 1976

A real country song warned us of the terrible fix

We’d get into when we couldn’t hear the nightbirds cry

Or see the wild goose flying through polluted sky.

When cityfolk write “country” songs the misery of the hangover

Is weighed against the agony they feel when they are sober.

If that’s all that “country” music means today,

Why would anybody sing about it anyway?

Country music used to come from the country!

“Good times” used to mean things that left you feeling good!

Country music used to be a mix, but mostly cheerful,

And if you don’t remember that sound, man, you really should!

Well, my friend likes to listen to the radio,

Likes the “country” music on the Rabbit Show,

And it always makes me sort of sad to know

That “country” music has sunk so low.

Seems like three quarters of the songs have sunk

To “stories” about some poor fool getting drunk

And four fifths of the rest of the songs they’ve played

Are about some poor fool trying to get laid.

Country music used to come from the country!

A lot of it was silly, but some of it was real!

Country music used to be a mix, but mostly cheerful!

Love was the emotion that it made us feel!

Well, you could sing of loading sixteen tons of coal

Without losing the compassion in your country soul,

Keep those eighteen wheels rolling down the line,

Take it home to Julie, she surely was fine.

You could sing about the places that make you proud;

Your home town, or just “America” made you shout out loud.

You could sing about the children walking home from school,

On a hot summer day, stopping at the swimming “pool”—

But country music should come from the country!

Love and work and worship, that’s what country people do!

Country music should sound like real country living,

Not just drinking like a city slicker does when he feels blue.

Sunday morning singing in a little country church.

Johnny home from the Navy—if he drank beer, it was birch.

Y’know R.C. Cola’s what to serve with a Moon Pie.

(A more substantial snack might call for Canada Dry.)

What with old dogs and children and watermelon wine,

Country’s full of inspiration for songs that feel just fine,

But sometimes we wanted a protest song, back in the day;

That was time to sock it to the Harper Valley P.T.A.

Country music—don’t let it die with the country!

Country music rocks if we can keep it fresh and green!

Country music should remain the music of real cowboys

And not some drunks just riding some old “bull” machine.

Oh, line dance, square dance, sashay down the middle!

Who needs drums if they can get an old-time fiddle?

Railroads, steamboats, rivers and canals!

Good Old Faithful, Bossy, Blue, and other four-foot pals!

Dirt roads, campfires, truck stops, dusty highways,

Lovers taking detours down along the byways,

Weddings, births, and funerals made country folks’ hearts whirl,

Spring fever made’em feel like the richest in the world.

Country folk can go to Memphis or to Detroit on the train,

But it’s time to come home when they feel nothing but pain!

They write home, “Tie up a ribbon if you still have room for me,”

Then go home and see the ribbons covering up a whole tree;

Because it’s all about love, not just a woman and a man,

But love of kin and love of neighbors, love of God and land.

Country people even love the plough that turns the sod,

’Cos country’s in the second place, right there next to God—

Country music should stay in the country

(And so should reggae, jazz, and rock’n’roll);

Country music’s swept across the nation

’Cos country is the music of this country’s living soul.

(Most, though not all, of the song lyrics referenced were printed in this collection...)