I was driving around the other day, with the brown dog riding shotgun, listening to the classic country station on the radio. A Merle Haggard song came on. It was his 1969 anthem, “Okie from Muskogee.”
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee,
We don’t take no trips on LSD.
Haggard sings of a proud Midwestern ethos: flags, respect for authority and tradition, a place where “white lightning’s still the biggest thrill of all.” It was a stand-our-ground protest against ’60s longhair radicalism and marijuana culture.
We don’t burn no draft cards down on Main Street,
We like livin’ right and bein’ free.
The song became wildfire popular at the time.
But would it be today?
Country music has changed quite a bit since then, and perhaps no more so than in its attitude toward marijuana. For so long, country music reflected the red-barn values of Southern conservatism and down-homeness.
Pot — illegal and hazy — belonged to the loose and the Left.
Sure, there was Willie, but Haggard’s we don’t smoke marijuana attitude was the general rule, not the exception. Nowadays, it’s the other way around.
“Gonna lay in the hot sun and roll a big fat one,” Zac Brown sings.
Darius Rucker has a “nice long toke.” Kenny Chesney sings about a bong. Eric Church and his stash. Tim McGraw gets stoned in Mexico. Miranda Lambert and her Pistol Annies sing about sneaking out from a family dinner to get high.
“So I snuck out behind the red barn and took myself a toke,” the song goes.
Compare this to the red-barn days of Little Jimmy Dickens, who died last week at 94. The oldest cast member of the Grand Ole Opry, Dickens also sang about going behind the barn, where three things happened:
He got whipped by his father.
He learned to smoke cigarettes.
He learned to kiss a pretty girl.
“Out behind the barn,” Dickens sang.
Is it that far of a stretch to suggest that with Dickens’ passing went a large chunk of traditional country?
Consider last year’s CMA Song of the Year, which went to Kacey Musgraves (who played a fabulous show at Track 29, by the way) for her “Follow Your Arrow,” a no-rules, follow-your-pleasure tune that is pro-pot and pro-gay.
When the straight and narrow gets a little too straight,
Roll up a joint, or don’t,
Just follow your arrow wherever it points.
The award was a high-water mark, not just for Musgraves, but for the entire industry.
“Do you guys know what this means for country music?” she said from the awards stage.
No, I don’t.
Has the old-home-place image of country music been infiltrated? Or has it just changed with the times? Okies, now lighting up just like everybody else.
And which came first? The music, or the joint?
In her excellent piece in Slate, Rachael Maddux suggests that as public opinion goes, so goes country music.
“When one spikes, or sinks, so does the other,” she writes.
Outlaw country — Willie and Hank Jr. — matched an early pro-pot movement in the ’70s; the pendulum swung back in the ’80s and ’90s — “the big-haired, big-hatted mama’s boys and girls,” Maddux writes — as public opinion on marijuana dropped into really low numbers.
(Or low places, you might say.)
In the early 2000s, pot became more popular — or at least less outlaw — in the public eye.
“And it’s been in the wake of that spike that weed references in country music have become especially prevalent,” Maddux writes.
It’s one thing for alternative or progressive music to push for legalization; it’s quite another when country music does it. The movement to legalize has many drivers — we think of the West Coast and Hollywood and Denver smoke shops — but perhaps the biggest influence of all, lately, has been Nashville.
“Hashville,” Maddux writes.
What exactly is happening these days behind the red barn?
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.