Last week I was listening to the Smithsonian collection of Country music (my parents gave it to me for Christmas about twenty years ago) and marveling at how much of the early recordings would fit just as easily in a collection of "folk" or "Americana" tunes. Fiddlin' John Carson, Gid Tanner and the Skiller Lickers, The Carter Family, Bill Monroe, the hits keep right on happening.

I was given the collection about the time I started learning that it was a lot easier to support yourself in a Country Band than in a Folk Group. I also found out at about that time that you really didn't have to change your artistic sensibilities to make that switch. You just had to change your instrumentation, amplification and willingness to hang out with drunks.

At any rate, what became very apparent (to me at least) was that there really isn't an actual dividing line between musical forms at the point that the music is being made. The dividing happens when the music is being sold. And it's done for the benefit of the buyers.

The best "Country" music is the result of an attempt at direct communication between a human being and the world. Maybe the writer had to get this idea out; maybe the recording artist found something in the song that spoke for him/her (Willie Nelson does this with tin pan alley stuff all the time). When I analyze any piece of "Country Music", I look for elements that distinguish this type of "musical expression" from mere "product"(the verses rhyme, it sounds like that other song that sold a million, and I can get some-guy-in-a-hat to sing it). When a song is rooted in one person's reality it will work just as well as a folk song as it will a country song. Unfortunately, most of what you hear on the Country radio stations was written for no other reason than to generate cash flow.

The problem for a lot of people is listening through the Nashville bits to hear the artistry underneath. Most people would rather shitcan it all then take the time to listen and appreciate a Marty Stuart, or Hal Ketchum, or even Garth Brooks or Brooks & Dunn - when they get it right. But that's their loss. Being from Chicago I know for a fact that there's as much bad, commercial Blues out there as there is bad commercial country. There are as many phonies torturing the same old blues licks as there are hat acts in Nashville. But the dilettantes still rave over any blues or bluegrass hack while sniffing that they just "can't stand country music".

When a writer is truly gifted (like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zant, Steve Earle, Keb Mo' or Robert Cray) you are hard pressed to tell which song was written to express a need of the heart and which to pay an electric bill. The good stuff stays on the jukebox for a long time. The best stays in your heart forever.

Oops, I'm out of nickels; guess I'll have to yield the soapbox to someone else.