I officially came out of the country closet and admitted my like for the genre after sipping a vanilla soy latte in a small coffee shop in Jamestown, CO. Yes, I know country wouldn't have me with my vanilla soy chaps, but like Jesse JamesI was born in Missouri, sorry I digress...
The downtown of Jamestown consists of the coffee shop and a post office and is situated some 20 minutes or so above Boulder. As I sat and read and small talked with the mountain man barista about Denver executives who pay hunters to corner mountain lions in trees until they can arrive by Range Rover to shoot the magnificent beast, a familiar voice twanged away to the some of the most delightful music I’d ever heard.
Now, maybe it was the caffeine and sinus headache finding balance within my brain and skin, maybe it was the manly story of the treed mountain lion who was freed by the barista, 45 in hand (the lion and tree were on his land and he wasn't having it), maybe it was the delicious latte syrup of a day of aimless wandering before kids, maybe it was the pure talent of Willie Nelson singing with Emmylou Harris on Teatro, that made it ok for me to like country. But whatever it was country according to the Reverends Nelson and Harris was anesthesia on that day.
Looking back, I had already flirted with country with my long standing favorite band R.E.M. who twang with the best of them on 1984’s Reckoning, Steve Earl’s Copperhead Road and of course Celtic music which permeates American country and folk. But this wonderful afternoon suspended in my mountain memory opened up country for me. I drove down the mountain to the library and checked out Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Jr., Johnny Cash, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Red Foley and others.
Now, I still don’t two step, unless it’s disguised as Indonesian Patu Patu, I shutter a little when I hear gratuitous pickup truck references and I don’t do Garth, but I do do country. I think there is something comforting in the stories told within these songs, something familiar, something comfortingly square, though not inane, unless life itself is just that.
If you haven’t been hooked by country, and are looking for a good entry point, try almost anything Willie Nelson, but in particular try Teatro.
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