I was rolling east on US 2 across Montana, my 17-year-old son behind the wheel of my UAW-built Ford truck, when I learned that Jimmy Buffett had passed away. I disclosed to him that his grandparents were “Parrot Heads.” He was curious, not knowing too many Jimmy Buffett songs aside from “Margaritaville.”
I was pleased to start his education with “Jamaica Mistaica,” which is Jimmy Buffett’s account of landing his Grumman Goose on the water near Negril. Here’s what happened. It’s quite the story.
It’s a great song from a great American. Jimmy Buffett was a poet, entrepreneur, and raconteur, who made people smile with tales of a life well lived. He created a community of fun, and he will be missed. He was an authentic 21st century American pirate.
My son and I talked about music and history, and how it changed the world. We listened to hours of Springsteen, and jammed out to my friend Little Steven. My son fell in love with Willie Nelson, and the ephemeral beauty of his voice on songs like “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground,” and “Seven Spanish Angels” with Ray Charles.
We listened to Paul Simon, who I was lucky enough to see in Central Park. We listened to that concert, talked about apartheid, and then turned on Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, and listened to songs about dignity, change and peace. He really listened to McCartney and Lennon for the first time, and heard the great anthems of the civil rights movement play out in the context of their original meanings and purpose. From Motown to Pavaratti’s epic rendition of “Nessum Dorma,” the music rolled on and on.
I remember the first time I drove across the country in the 1990s. My car still had a cassette deck, and there were long stretches where the FM signal faded to static, and the soundtrack of the trip turned to AM radio where farm forecasts, religious sermons and local news rushed to finish before the signal faded. Today, the music never stops, and that’s a good thing because there is so much of it to listen to. There is so much to be moved, touched and inspired by.
My son and I shared a lot of music on this trip, and no small percentage of it was country music. We jammed out to Waylon Jennings, Chris Stapleton, Johnny Cash, Uncle Lucious, Sturgill Simpson, John Prime and Kenny Chesney. We listened to hours of female artists from Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris, Shania Twain and Taylor Swift.
Music is an emotive form of art that can convey the full mosaic of human feelings. Love, jealousy, anger sadness, regret, pain, separation, anxiety and depression all find their way into the lyrics of the music we live our lives by, and narrate our stories against.
What an exceptional gift it is to be able to write lyrics and words that have the ability to genuinely touch millions of people through a common frame of reference and experience.
There is no question that there is a secular religiosity at a Springsteen, Taylor Swift or Beyoncé concert, where joy and happiness are contagious, transcendent and temporarily ubiquitous. The poets of our age are our songwriters and lyricists, who put down on paper the common bonds that connect our shared experiences, values and memory. Lincoln talked about our common bonds through the prism of “mystic chords of memory,” and that is what music triggers when it is shared with love. Most music is shared with love because it is a product of love. Take for example this beautiful song written by Rodney Crowell. Listen to “It Ain’t Over Yet,” and watch the beautiful simplicity of the video, especially if you or someone you love is going through one of life’s tough seasons:
Recognizing the exceptional gifts of the artists in our society and admiring their ability to define moments, foresee change, rally towards justice and share humanity’s common story helps us see some common elements among many — if not most — of them when it comes to elemental issues like freedom, fairness and justice. Take for example this song, “Love for Love City,” written about the beautiful island of St. John by Kenny Chesney and Ziggy Marley that was written to aid the recovery from Hurricane Irma:
John Kennedy spoke to the qualities of character that infuse the spirit of “true artists.” The occasion was the last major speech of his presidency at Amherst College where he paid tribute to the poet Robert Frost. We listened to that speech on our drive as well. He said this:
If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our Nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
It’s something to listen to John Kennedy’s words in 2023 America, and consider them against our current crisis. They are astoundingly real.
Yet, on we rolled down American and Canadian highways, utterly free and feeling safe everywhere we went.
There is a song by the Zac Brown Band that will always remind me of my journey with my son across the country. It’s one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. It filled me with gratitude for some of my memories and hope for all of my children that they may know what this song means someday. I hope that they hear its grace, beauty and wisdom as an antidote to the consumerism, nihilism, despair and anger of the social media screen:
We all live in our bubbles. We all have our stories. The soundtrack of my trip was disrupted by a comment by Ylonn Jackson, a The Warning community member, that has been very much on my mind ever since. Here is what she wrote:
Steve, thank you for your writing. It takes me on a trip I never made and I am thoroughly enjoying it. You see I am a seventy year old Black American woman. When I was a child, my family never felt it was safe for us to travel by car to this area of the country [North Dakota] and explore and enjoy it. We would take the train, when I was younger, and then fly over as I got older, to Los Angeles to visit relatives. Your writing of this trip with your son brings me joy thanks again!
I read it out loud to my son, and we talked about it for a long time. We talked about civil rights, American history, slavery, segregation, Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan, Confederate statues, the Bund, fascism, George Wallace, the Birmingham Church bombing victims, Rosa Parks, Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the Tuskegee Airmen, Jackie Robinson, Barbara Jordan, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, the 54th Massachusetts, the Harlem Hell Fighters, Harlem Renaissance and Jason Aldean.
Jason Aldean is a country music singer, who wrote a song, “Try That in a Small Town,” and released a video. I’m going to explain its plain meaning against the realities of America’s history that Aldean is fetishisizing with a revanchist spirit. Aldean raised his voice to spread division and menace under a cloak of insincere wholesomeness and small town values. He wrote an ode to lynching and sundown towns where no Black American has ever felt safe. He filmed the music video in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, the location of the 1927 mob lynching of an 18-year-old Black boy named Henry Choate. He wrapped himself in the American flag, and then played victim when he was called out for the obviousness and premeditation of his malice and taste for culture war.
Here’s the video:
It is what it is, which is exactly what it appears to be.
The pattern and schtick is utterly tedious at this point. Aldean provoked the situation deliberately, consciously and with premeditation. The reaction was exactly as he expected, and hoped it would be. Now, he is denying the reality of what everyone heard him sing and watch him sing on video (the YouTube version of the video, shown above, was quietly edited, removing news clips of Black Lives Matter demonstrations and several other images). The denials of the obvious are apparently some low-brow Nashville version of Trump-inspired gaslighting where what is true is what the leader tells you, never mind what you just saw and heard.
Cynicism may abound in the business of music, but it seems to this casual observer that it seldom does in the artistry. Aldean stands out in this regard as country music’s canker, and he got called out for it big time by a 33-year-old Texan named Maren Morris, who eviscerated the racism and dishonesty of Aldean’s mediocre incitement in two brilliant songs and videos that aesthetically demolish the Potemkin image of MAGA America’s small town fetish and delusion. What she shows is that Aldean’s village is a dead and lifeless place — soulless and paper-thin. There is nothing but malice and empty slogans, and it is rotten at the root.
Maren Morris has just written and filmed two very political, very deep, very American responses to something very dark, insidious and un-American. They are brilliant and progressive responses to a growling fascism that is menacing freedom around the world, and is perfectly manifested in Aldean’s intimations towards menace and violence:
I’ve liked Morris’s music from the first time I heard her some years back. Her stardom has grown since then, and like all Americans, she is living through these times and watching the decimation of some basic values and American social constructs. One of those values is the concept that it is wrong to kick down and punch down to score points at the expense of the most vulnerable people around you. Brittany, Jason Aldean’s wife, made this comment talking about a specific group that is constantly debased and dehumanized in conservative media:
I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life🤎✌🏼.
Maren Morris’ response was spicy to say the least, but she is a Texan after all:
You know, I’m glad she didn’t become a boy either because we really don’t need another a[ss]–hole dude in the world.
Anyone inclined to give Aldean the benefit of the doubt in the matter should explain why it is that the king of replacement theory Tucker Carlson jumped so quickly into the fray to defend Aldean and attack Morris as crazy to his radicalized audience in the pre-basement days.
When I read Morris’ reaction for the first time she reminded me a bit of another Texan woman who was tough as nails:
There was another progressive Texan who spoke his mind and left his mark. As its president, he desegregated Texas A&M and admitted women. He saw a new wind blowing too. Unlike Ted Cruz who hid in a closet when the insurrectionists he incited invaded and desecrated the US Capitol, the man they called “Big Jim” never hid. He was always at the front, leading. Before he pushed back against the segregationists he was the man who led these men. His name was Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder, the man who commanded the Ranger assault at Pointe du Hoc.
I took my son to those cliffs some years back now, and we walked through the American cemetery above Omaha Beach where all the graves face west. The headstones aligned in perfect symmetry; an army at permanent rest looking back across the Atlantic Ocean towards the home they never saw again as the cost of saving us. There was music there too. “Taps” rang out at the end of the day. There is no forgetting there.
Americans are a people who live in freedom — and free people sing. They raise their voices in praise and joy, in mourning and prayer. All across the world America’s story has been told in song — our triumphs and miseries, alongside our glories and injustices. Our spirit and soul are rendered in our songs. Our songs tell the story of a people bending towards justice and freedom — never away from it.
I told my son that he should be grateful that he has never walked in fear like Ylonn and her parents. We talked about the fact that no American should be afraid because of their skin color, and we talked about the world that was coming next. There are choices ahead for sure. Sometimes a song helps clarify them. Jason Aldean and Maren Morris have each laid out a choice in a song. Ms. Morris will be the one remembered as a good American. Jason Aldean may look out at his audience and see a sea of fools, but what he is, is perfectly clear.
There is something happening here, as it used to be said.
Can you hear the song and feel the wind?
Steve, Ylonn Jackson's story touched my heart and brings a similar story that I'd like to share with you. About 18 months into the pandemic, I was talking to one of my management team. She and her husband traveled extensively every year, to Japan, China, and other places far away. They were going stir crazy. I told her my husband and I were renting an RV to take a road trip, and perhaps that might be a good trip for them during Covid-19 time. She haltingly told me the reason she and her husband traveled abroad is that they felt safer there, and didn't feel safe traveling in the US. You see, she's White and her husband is Black. It broke my heart, for them and this country. We had talked about racism in the US, and their being stopped by cops because of her husband being Black, and the denial of her grandparents (Trump fans) of racism. But for some reason, the fact of one of the basic freedoms and joys I've been able to experience (being White), that of traversing the US, strikes terror into their hearts. Says so much about where we are today. Thank you for letting me share this story.
Dear Steve!, Good Morning from Greenwich Village in NYC!, I have to re-read your piece here later today because it was making me cry, in a very joyful way about sharing our music with our children!!!!!! I’m an artist (painter) and you’re my 2nd favorite ex-Republican after Nicolle Wallace! Thank you SO much for ALL you write, this is the first one that’s made me relate so closely that it made me CRY! I love you! 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷Love, Rosemarie Tishelman, NYC & Chappaqua, NY! 🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷