Let's go to Luckenback Texas, Waylon and Hootie and the Boys

I love music, I always have. It is interesting the way music affects people and regardless of age, creed, or persuasion, almost all people have a style or genre of music they prefer to others. Perhaps their lives contribute to their specific like or dislike of a specific style of music, be it the urban styles of the youthful generation Z or the golden oldie sound of the silver foxes, whatever your flavor, there is a musical style and rendition to suit your passing fancy or lifetime rhythm.

I am no different. I have a love for most musical genres as long as there is a musical value to the strum of the guitar or the beat of the drum. Certain styles are not my fancy but I do not discredit them, I only subscribe to their most popular versions; the Nirvanas of Grunge, the Will Smith of Rap, the Abba of 70’s dance hall, well you get my point.

My love, however, is the country music genre and the singer/songwriter set. Whether it be the solid gold country styles of Merle Haggard, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, or “The Gentle Giant” Don Williams or the more modern “countrypolitian” styles of today, my musical appreciation has most always leaned more in the direction of the cowboy than that of the concreted suburbanite. Songs like the Fighting Side of Me, Luckenbach, Texas, and Tulsa Time take me back to my childhood like that of a country road winding through the Blue Ridge mountains in West Virginia.

While today’s country music has changed a little, it has remained strong with its core audience of Middle America by appealing to working class values and strong family images. Even though the songs are a little more up tempo and the guitars a little more electric, the music still resonates with me and I presume that of the majority of America…I know this because Hootie is singing country music.



For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hootie, his real name is Darius Rucker and his fame is from his run with the mid-90s band, Hootie and the Blowfish of which I own two copies of the initial CD offering. (I inherited one when my wife and I married). Hootie was huge in his day crooning songs of relationships with a solid and soulful voice from the south. The South Carolina band seemed unstoppable but inevitably, in the pop music genre, released a sophomore album and fell into little known obscurity by albums three and four. Pop music can be so fickle. I often wondered why Hootie wore a Radney Foster shirt during his concerts and in 2008, I now understand. Hootie was a closet country music lover and now a current country music performer.

If Hootie can sing country music successfully, I wonder who else has joined the fray. A little research on my part reveals other closet country music lovers who have been unable to make their original genres stick.


The most laughable, once popular, hair band singer turned country music singer is Bret Michaels. Remember Poison? Yep, ole Bret has turned in his hair extensions and eye shadow to jam about cow fields and loyal dogs. Every rose has its thorn and the proverbial thorn in the side of country music has to include Mr. Michaels.

From this



To this



And who says country music isn’t tolerable.

The remaining list of today’s country music crooners speak to the loyalty of the country listener and the frailty and fickleness of other musical varieties. Consider the careers of Kid Rock, Jessica Simpson, Phil Stacey, and Julianne Hough to name a short list of singers flocking to the country genre due to their understanding of the value of the country music listener. American Idol understands, seemingly having their biggest successes to date with singers choosing the country music genre.



I can’t help but smile when I see people turning back to their roots, perhaps in a self-serving manner, yet still in an effort to openly acknowledge their willingness to support strong “Americana” values through music and jump on the country music bandwagon. Maybe I am overselling this trend but nevertheless going country seems to be all the rage this summer.

Welcome to the party Kid, we got you All Summer Long



Just a thought.

In Inches and Milestones

Raising children, it seems, is a series of milestones, set up in a linear fashion so the parent can adequately gauge their parenting progress in relationship with the children they raise. That said, it struck me deeply when my eldest daughter went to kindergarten that these days don't last for long and oh how we miss them when they are gone.

As I watched my wife wipe her tear stained face moments before my daughter entered the rear entrance of the school I realized that we had reached yet another milestone and from here there would be many more to come…some happy, some sad. At the ripe old age of 10, we are starring down the barrel of a loaded gun. Did I say we, well I meant the gentlemen callers who will one day appear on my door step…but I digress.

These feelings have come back recently as we have been blessed with another daughter in which to rear roughly 10 years the junior of her sister. Perhaps it will be harder, as it always is, when you know the outcome prior to the event (think about the second time you have to get a cavity filled) but nevertheless I am prepared with the knowledge that with every milestone we reach, we will choke back the tears and graduate to the next first step, lost tooth, first day of school, etc. In the end, our milestones are just progressions of life; all of which can be charted with children's programming on local cable networks.

My rankings are as follows:

Age 2 – 3

Barney the Dinosaur seems to be the most popular cartoon character for the 2-3 year-old set. Don't ask me why but a giant purple dinosaur should scare the bejeebers out of most children yet they sing along with the giant purple people eater crooning themes of cleaning and just being happy all the time. I like Barney but only when he is singing about cleaning. The happiness stuff I can do without. Nevertheless, my angel is only two during the Barney phase and still the picture of innocence.





Age 3 – 4

Mail's here or at least that is what Steve's mailbox used to shout. Now it is Joe, I think and the rest of the gang on Blue's Clues that excite most all three to four year olds. I still like Steve better than Joe but regardless of the host, Blue is the same ole Blue and always has a puzzle to solve with clues placed right around each corner. For what ever reason, this never gets old especially for the youngsters.





Age 4 – 5

Dora the Explorer seems to hit right after Blue's Clues and I must be frank, I have a small problem with teaching our children Spanish when half of them have problems mastering English. Politics aside, however, I still find myself uttering the phase "Swiper, No Swiping." Dora and the gang, boots included (he is my favorite) do their best to introduce a foreign language to our children while trekking through the Argentinean wilderness. Backpack, backpack…I left mine at home, but let me go get it on my way to Kindergarten. Where does the time go?





Age 5 – 6

I was a little confused when I tuned into Arthur the Aardvark on PBS for the first time. My first question was something like, "Who is that little boy with glasses?" "He's a what…an aardvark!" My first thought was I'm paying for cable and we're watching PBS. There is some irony in there somewhere. Arthur teaches valuable life lessons to all the other animals at school as a moral, taking-the-high-road, kind of kiddo. Arthur is also the beginning of the end for childhood cartoons as what comes next is the dreaded Disney Channel and constant struggles for adult TV time.





Age 6-8

I remember Raven Simone when she was a cute little girl watching Barney on the Cosby Show. Imagine my shock when I tuned in for the first time to find my eight-year-old singing Raven tunes while watching That's So Raven (note to self, Raven is synonymous with cool??). She explained to me that Raven sees the future and tries to get one up on her little brother while going to school. Kind of a youthful version of the Sixth Sense yet Raven, we find out in the end, is very, very much alive. Move over Zach Morris, Raven is the new cool kid, with ESP to boot. She is also a precursor to the tween milestone and the end of TV innocence.





Age 8-?

The first time I heard the words Hannah Montana, I was unimpressed. When I found out Billy Ray Cyrus was back I was even less impressed. When my wife and I spent the better part of last year begging for concert tickets to a show neither of us wanted to attend, that sold out in 3 seconds, I began to feel the gravity of the situation I was facing. And I knew another milestone was looming. Hannah Montana is the end. There I said it. Hannah Montana is adult programming for children. It is high school problems, super star status, and peer pressure troubles and the kids love it. I kind of like it too. What I don't like is looking over at my daughter and wondering where Barney went…where Blues went, where Dora went (dedonde esta Dora) where Arthur went, and where Raven went (How could anyone loose Raven?) Pretty soon, I will wonder where Hannah went and it won't be because she was cancelled. It will be because my little girl will have reached yet another milestone and one less chapter will be left in her childhood and my parenthood.





I guess there will always be another Hannah Montana but childhoods are only reviewable in reverse. I know now why my wife cries over milestones, especially when my heart breaks over Hannah Montana and I chart our progress like I chart their growth on the wall…in inches and milestones. At least our youngest is still a baby...for now anyway. Just a thought.

The Bumper Sticker Debate

I was driving the other day (because that is still my right as long as I can pay $4.15 per gallon of gasoline) when I ground to a halt behind a pea green1984 Toyota Tercel spewing gray smoke into the air at a rate of 15 CFH’s (carbon footprints per hour).







While waiting for the light to change, I did what I always do when forced to idle behind a 40 something hippie who could have made the light if he had exceeded the 12 mile-per -hour self-imposed speed limit; I read his bumper stickers…all 75 of them.





The irony of the situation aside (in this case, a hippie environmentalist spewing carbon emissions faster than an 18-wheeler’s smoke stack) was the fact that somewhere, at sometime, this citizen activist decided to make his soap box platitudes from the bumper of his relic “motorized car” while idling at red lights all over town. Is this a new form of advertising or simply an idiot with a platform and no clear, precise manner in which to digress? Sticker #54 got me thinking and it wasn’t from a political perspective.





Why is it that extremely liberal people use bumper sticker’s to sway political opinion? Is it to convince me that I have been wrong all these years for not hugging trees, not voting for John Kerry, driving a SUV, eating meat, living in a conditioned environment, wearing leather, disbelieving in global warming, and for supporting the war on terror? Call me crazy but this type of propaganda has never worked on me. I’m partial to candidates and platforms being explained objectively and in a forum that warrants equal time so that I may draw my own conclusions from the information presented. I don’t care that you support gay marriage as long as you’re cool that I don’t. Do we really need a bumper sticker to make these assertions?





Let me clarify my position, it is not my intention to engage in partisan politics. That can be done in another form and fashion. It is my intention, however, to question the stupidity of covering a vehicle in cleverly-crafted clichés aimed at sculpting a political consensus regarding liberal or conservative concepts and philosophies (mostly liberal).







My advice, get a job that pays a salary and focus your political ire in a manner that deems you credible with your audience. Then, perhaps you will convince a few people that their mind-sets should be considerate of your view-points. Or you can keep on spewing hot air out the back of your hooptie wondering how to make your impression felt. I’m off to have another bumper sticker debate…wish me luck. Just a thought