This week, for the first time ever in my long and not so storied blogging career, something I wrote went viral. So if anyone read that piece and decided to stick around, I'd ask you to give my podcast, Old Dad's Records, a try. This time around I decided to go with an Independence Day theme and focus on country music, the style of music most invested in nationalism. I start with Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the USA," a propaganda anthem birthed at the height of Reagan that owes its longevity to our Foreverwar. From there I pull a record from my pile of old records, and this one is a doozy. Porter Wagoner's The Cold Hard Facts of Life is full front to back with heartbreak, murder, drunkeness, and depression. Here we see the duality of country music, which often claims the mantle of "traditional values" while diving in the darker side of life. I end with a rave for Orville Peck, who has combined 80s indie British rock with country twang in a way I find very appealing. He's also gay and wears a mask, which puts him in with a long tradition of country music eccentrics, the same tradition Porter Wagoner belongs to.
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