How I Learned To Love Country Music, Again.
Embarrassment is out for 2025!
Dive bars.
It's the last sip of a Pacifico lager or the whack-em-back shot of Tequila Reposado before one summons the courage for karaoke. It's home to characters like Jerry, the bearded truck driver, or Sally, the local barber. And then there's the pool table, commandeered by beer-bellied companions from Pinon Street, seeking sanctuary in the shared comfort of an ordinary evening. The floors reak a potent concoction of spilled brews and lost weekends. The drinks are awfully mixed, and the local somebodies become insufferable after 11 pm.
And yet, something about the consistent level of attractive mediocrity makes it all so damn comforting.
I'm a tried and true Arizonan, born and raised with no plans to leave.
My parents worked to support my Montessori education as a UPS driver and part-time promotional saleswoman. Our backyard lacked the manicured perfection of my classmates' gated community McMansions; instead, it thrived with its own wild beauty. I tended to the sunflowers and jostled my dachshund in the Red Flyer wagon while my dad mowed at dusk. He'd drink 3 Modelos after a day's work, then put on an 'ole Marty Robbins melody as we brushed our teeth. My summers were spent at grandma's ranch, and Spring Breaks were reserved for Lake Powell camping trips, where I'd steal a sip of my uncle's Corona on the fishing boat.
Without exception, the country station was our default soundtrack. Each chorus rises with the twang of a guitar riff, punctuated by melodic interludes to break the intermittent silence of a friendly conversation. I knew every word to The Judd's "Why Not Me" but wouldn't dare mutter a lyric to my friends in middle school because only the classless loudmouths blasting that honky tonk bravado.
I wanted to be classy, proper, and likable. *gag*
So I stuffed my cowgirl likeness to the wayside and memorized lyrics to Semi-Charmed Life to impress my middle-school crush during our weekend mall crawl because he was punk and Third Eye Blind was cool. I still know every word.
High school was similar. I nodded along to pop hits, sported flashy crop tops at football games, gulped down Four Lokos, and nailed the lyrics to Super Bass (still got it). The Kenny Chesney fandom was limited to the Redbeck outliers, who disputed evolution in sophomore science class, a crowd I refused to participate in.
Then, through some combination of Stockholm Syndrome and the expansion of critical appreciation, I realized, whocares? Roger Miller and the folksy jukebox flares are absolutely fantastic.
The dawn of this realization broke during the hushed lull of the pandemic. Our quiet backyard fires, shared with our close-knit social bubble, were punctuated by the hypnotic strains of Colter Wall's hymns. And as the world emerged from its shell with vaccines and renewed social interactions, I frequented the local dive bar on Friday afternoons, sharing drinks with my fifty-something in-laws. This familiar crowd, once disregarded, became my refuge.
Like any genre, country music is a mixed bag – the great, the forgettable, and the downright bad. Some artists can make you wince, while others make you fall head over heels. It's a journey of discovery, separating the gems from the gravel through trial, error, and the occasional surge of weekend nostalgia.
Country music pays homage to love, to kinship, and to places once departed, only to be rediscovered a decade later. Folk holds a truth that's hard to ignore, a deeper understanding that subtly unfolds. Those songs I crooned during my high school years have evolved in meaning as I entered my late twenties; love ballads assigned to fleeting teenage crushes now remind me of my great aunt's ranch.
Just as seasons turn, so do we. But occasionally, we crave the solace found in life's unchanging symphony.
So, yes. I'll meet you at the local wine bar by 6pm with my black silk dress — but by the time my 3rd Temperinllo hits — I'll see you at the carpeted billiards to belt Shania by midnight.
