M.O.A. II

"...she thinks my tractor's sexy..."

so this song might seem a little silly, and sure it is. but let me say something. I sorta get it now.
Here's a story. I was talking to one of the people who rides horses here. She is a professor, but she lives in a small town in Maine, and she is very nice and informed, etc.
So I go up to her in the barn and say "You know I'd turn the music to a different station, but I'm sorta starting to like this country music." and she turns to me and says "Wait, aren't you from Arkansas or something?"

so I say "yeah, but I never listened to country music before."
"really," she says, "but I thought that people in the South listened to that sort of thing."

Lucky for me, I'd been thinking about this recently, so I had a ready answer. "Just because I'm from the South doesn't mean I like country music. Country music is not a Southern thing, it is a rural thing." I live in a city of 200,000. we don't have farms around.

People in the city don't drive tractors. Farmer's tans are farmer's tans, not Southern tans. Country music is country music, not Southern Music.
I don't mean to pick on my friend, I just wish to point to the distinction.

Regardless, what I've come to discover is that I like this music because I've begun to understand it. Farmer's tans, tractors, people you hang out with down by the river bank, driving trucks. It makes a lot more sense with my experience here on the Farm than "I hoped off the plane at LAX...Welcome to the land of fame, excess"
-Miley Cyrus, "Party in the USA"

Country music makes sense within my day to day activity. People talk about beer, women and big trucks. At least two of those are a semi-frequent part of my time here.

And so I'm glad that I can appreciate it, now, especially since it's the only thing available on a lot of backwoods roads.

so this has been dedicated to the Music of Arkansas. Our music is not country, it is southern, but I can say that regardless of being a southerner, I do now appreciate country music.