The VanZant brothers' new album Get Right With The Man just earned a top slot on my wishlist, after hearing the song "Help Somebody" on CMT this morning. It's a down-home rough hewed tribute to our grandparents' words of wisdom, and these VanZants must have had some incredibly wise ancestors.Check this out:
"It's better to be hated for who you are
Than loved for who you're not..."
That's sage advice, indeed, but my favorite line in the song is this one:
"If you want to hear God laugh
Tell Him your plan..."
Oh, man, I cannot tell you how hard that hit home. I immediately got up off my rear-end, fetched my Bible and wrote it down on one of the empty pages in the back. I felt like it belonged there.
I'm really happy to see major country music performers making bold statements of
faith in their songs. Randy Travis is the most obvious example among many, but I am especially fond of the last couple of Tim McGraw singles. "Live Like You Were Dying" has already been to the top of the charts with it's message that life is too precious to waste. I can only hope that his new track, "Drugs & Jesus", will follow suit. It's theme is much more blatantly Christian, with no less than an outbreak of exuberant "Hallelujah"s towards the end. McGraw sings of the distance between right and wrong. He affirms that we're all basically looking for the same thing in life and that the paths we take in searching for it often lead to drugs or Jesus. McGraw makes his choice and proclaims "All I need is Jesus".Hallelujah, indeed.
Apparently he has two kinds of Faith in his life. :)
More power to him.
The multitudes of people who complained in the 80's and 90's that country was starting to sound too much like soft rock, what with groups like Alabama and the Kentucky Headhunters...I have to wonder what they think of the all-out barrier-breaking of the "MuzikMafia" (the most prominent members being Big & Rich, Gretchen Wilson and now Cowboy Troy)...Somebody out there likes it...a lot of somebodys, I assume, seeing how enormously popular the cadre has become. But there's something disheartening about seeing Big & Rich try to throw down and merge rap with C&W in "Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)"...which is, in my opinion, one of the most annoying songs to ever get stuck in my cranium without my permission. 
Gretchen Wilson at least has the voice to keep the heritage alive in "When I Think About Cheating", a song and vocal delivery that puts me in mind of Patsy Cline.
Quite a departure from the whiskey-bent cowgrrrl anthem "Redneck Woman" that was the first impression she allowed us.
But what, pray tell, will the good old boys at Billy's Roadside Tavern think of Cowboy Troy, who takes the rap-country crossover route to the next level with "I Play Chicken With the Train"?
Backed by those mischevious MuzikMafia kingpins Big & Rich, the only things that set this song apart from the hip hop the young thugs approve of are the REAL instruments played by real people, the conspicuous absence of "Parental Advisory"-worthy profanity and a fiddle solo tucked in the middle that sounds about as out of place as Trick Daddy in Mr. Rogers' Neighbourhood.No, it's not country. The argument that it should not be played on country radio has a lot of merit, as far as I'm concerned...but the truth of the matter is that, yes, the cowboys like it. So who am I to complain?
I'm tellin' ya...I know this from experience working in a CD store. When the National Youth Rodeo Finals blew through town and the cowboys would come in the store (always decked out in their Wranglers with official NYRF number tag and obligatory cowboy hat for easy identification) they would head straight to the RAP section. No doubt they loved George Strait just as much as the next guy, but they were buying CDs by Eminem, Tupac, Ludicrus, the Notorious B.I.G. and the rest of the hardcore crew. The only thing they liked better than rap was Rodney Carrington.
So hat's off to Big & Rich and the whole MuzikMafia cartel. They may be diluting the music to an unbearable degree, but what the hey? We still have Brad Paisley, Dierke Bentley, Alan Jackson and a whole slew of others to pick up the slack, keeping the flame of REAL country burning. And there's a lot to be said for their business savvy as well as the degree to which they really are in touch with the younger, rowdier cowpokes who speak of Kid Rock and Bocephus with equal amounts of reverence.
Save a horse? Who needs a horse when you can afford a fleet of Bentleys? And these cowboys are riding 'em straight to the bank, you can bet your bottom dollar on that, Festus.
And that's what Nashville is all about, right?
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