Sound and Fury
A look at how post 9/11 country music helped broaden the divide we face today
Last week, I went to Chicago to see our son in “Illinoise,” a new musical drawn from Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 album. The show is not a standard theatre experience; none of the 12 actors on stage speak. Instead, the 90-minute story is told through movement and the three vocalists leading the 14-piece band through Stevens’ music.
A love letter to the convergence of song and dance, “Illinoise” is at times a heart wrenching experience, one that takes big emotional swings and asks tough questions about identity, friendship, and extended family. It’s a simple story that somehow manages to find nuance, a trait all too often in short supply these days.
The weather in Chicago was unexpectedly mild for February — windy as always but never the bone chilling cold you would expect. Over four days and three nights, from Monday to Thursday, I walked more than 25 miles, seeing friends and extended family members, holding a couple of business meetings, and taking pictures. I spent some good time with Ben but missed Gaby, his partner — in life and in the show — as she tended to family business in Miami.
Other than an occasional glance at the headlines, I largely avoided social media and current events. But music — and music-related news — kept seeping into my conscience.
Last Monday, I was trying to stay away from the geopolitical brouhaha surrounding Taylor Swift’s anticipated Super Bowl appearance when I saw an alert about the death of Toby Keith. Soon after, I found myself reliving the post-9/11 controversy between the country songwriter and Natalie Maines of the (then-Dixie) Chicks.
That night, in a nearly sleepless effort to forget about/avoid the Keith/Maines controversy/rabbit hole, I watched Joni Mitchell’s remarkable Grammy performance of “Both Sides Now.” (Amazingly, it was her first time performing on the show, but that is a different essay.) The real palate cleanser was seeing the lovely “Fast Car” duet between Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs.
On one of my walks Tuesday afternoon, I found myself standing in Reckless Records, a store on East Madison Street near Millennium Park. I don’t buy much physical music these days — most of what I listen to is either live or streaming — but I occasionally long for the times when I lost hours browsing through LPs and CDs.
The mix of old and new music you find in a record store— nostalgia meets possibility — always renews me somehow. And while the store was small, it had a good and varied selection. As always, I found myself gravitating toward the “R’s”; a disproportionate number of bands I like (Ramones, R.E.M., Replacements, Rolling Stones to name four) seem to start with that letter.
A young woman with AirPods was nearby, picking up various LPs and scanning them for a moment before moving on. I wondered but decided not to ask if she was looking at the music she was hearing. Instead, I mentioned it to one of the store employees — a youngish hipster type — and he said it’s something that “happens a lot.”
I asked the employee about Chapman’s debut album — the self-titled one with “Fast Car” on it — and he said he hadn’t seen it in the store more than twice since Combs’ cover came out. The Combs’ record wasn’t available at that location either.
As I left, I mentioned I had noticed they didn’t have any Toby Keith music. The look on the employee’s face was one you’d get after leaving a silent fart in a crowded hallway.
United and Divided
Growing up in Texas, I was surrounded by symbols of patriotic fervor and “boot up their ass” mentality. My family was generally conservative but fortunately not overly strident, and I never felt the pull of evangelical patriotism. I understood to my very core that individual beliefs could be, well, “complicated.”
9/11, the first direct attack on the U.S. since Pearl Harbor, wiped out complexity for a nation that less than two decades earlier had dealt with an unwinnable war in Vietnam. Briefly, our united stand against terrorism brought us together in a way it hadn’t in generations, but it also resulted in songs that divided people and brought out the worst in macho fervor.
Keith’s death followed a two-year battle with stomach cancer. Across the country music spectrum, he was cited as an influence and inspiration and called one of the greats. The tributes focused on his songwriting, his unyielding support for our nation’s troops, devotion to his family, and the love he showed to his fans.
All are good things, and I’m sorry that he suffered for so long. I also respect that, like many people I know, his politics were complicated, and that he managed to praise President Obama from the stage of his successor’s 2017 inauguration party, a moment of nuance likely lost or dismissed by the crowd that night.
But I’m not a fan for a simple reason: With his post-9/11 anthem, “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American),” Keith helped light the torch and fan the flames of divisiveness that dominate this country today.
Justice will be served, and the battle will rage
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
And you'll be sorry that you messed with
The U.S. of A.
'Cause we'll put a boot in your ass
It's the American way
Keith’s song led to a two-year public feud with Maines and The Chicks, whose cover of “Travelin’ Soldier” was No. 1 when she made a series of controversial statements about then President George W. Bush prior to the invasion of Iraq. Maines, whose band had encroached on Nashville’s male-dominated mainstream, faced death threats and The Chicks were effectively cancelled by many of today’s so-called purveyors of free speech.
Two years after the Keith-Maines feud started, he apologized and said it wasn’t worth it. While it was something he didn’t have to do, it still felt a little like, "Hey man, sorry I beat you up in front of all my friends that day years ago on the playground."
To a lesser extent, and to no one’s surprise, Steve Earle was cancelled around the same time as The Chicks. Earle’s offense: His song “John Walker’s Blues” was sympathetic toward a young American who became sucked into the Taliban.
In an interview for Chris Willman’s excellent 2005 book, Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music, Earle said: “The people that control music are Republicans. But they want country music to be apolitical — unless it sells records. What Toby Keith is doing is not about patriotism, it’s about selling records.”
When Keith passed away, he had recorded 20 number one hits and sold more than 40 million albums.
Mojo, Jingo, and Nuance
As I boarded the plane to leave Chicago on Thursday, a notice came up on my phone: Mojo Nixon had just died. The trip had started and now was ending with the deaths of two polarizing figures in the music genre I listen to as often as any other.
Mojo passed away on an “Outlaw Country” cruise. His decision to “leave the building” hours after “a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners, and a good breakfast with bandmates and friends” was sad yet fitting.
Thirty years ago, as Keith’s first hit — the lovely “Should Have Been a Cowboy” — was climbing the charts, I saw Nixon (real name Neill Kirby McMillan) as part of The Pleasure Barons, a supergroup that also featured Country Dick Montana, Dave Alvin, and John Doe. It was one of those unforgettable nights that I never wanted to end.
I had first became aware of Nixon — along with Alvin, Doe, and Montana — in the late 1980s. That’s when Nixon’s first and only “hit” — the novelty song “Elvis is Everywhere” — was released. In it, the self-professed wild man and anarchist from Danville, Va., declared that Elvis built the pyramids and made ships disappear in the Bermuda Triangle.
Nixon was unabashedly profane, in your face, and quick to point the finger (usually the longest one) at any sign of hypocrisy or pious theatrics. It was a trait that I have come to admire, in part because he was not afraid to offend but refused to denigrate others in the process.
Compare that to two popular singles released in 2023, both by disciples of Toby Keith. Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is another jingoistic macho song about “us” vs. “them.”
Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they're gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck
Try that in a small town
See how far you make it down the road
'Round here we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Then late last year, an unknown musician named Oliver Anthony posted a song — “Rich Men North of Richmond” — that came from the same playbook and went to No. 1.
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
God, if you're 5 foot 3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Please don’t ignore the lyrics and what they represent. If anything, they point to an angry, deep-seated fracture in this country that exists and is not going away. Rather than enhance the divide, we must find a way to close it.
In a nation built by immigrants, a significant number of people in this country are doing everything they can to keep “them” out. Many of the same people say they work to protect “freedom,” yet difference of all types and kinds is under attack.
And nuance — which is so beautifully portrayed in shows and art like “Illinoise” — is being cast aside at a time when we desperately need it the most.
Read Willman’s book. It’s excellent.
I have been echoing your opinion for a number of years. 9/11 painfully altered the trajectory of country music into a jingoistic miasma. The folk and country traditions of rebellion got upended as copaganda and nationalistic pride took a dominant hold.