Three Chords and the Truth

I’ve mentioned my love of country music previously. Part of what I love is the sound. There is nothing more comforting to me than pedal steel guitars, banjos, fiddles, mandolins, harmonies, and anything else that could be described as twangy. It was also my first pop-culture love (cowboy hat-tip to Garth Brooks and Dwight Yoakam). But I think there’s more to it than that. Songwriter Harlan Howard once quipped, “country music is three chords and the truth.” This is a generalization, of course; a lot of country music has more than three chords (most of Glen Campbell’s work for instance), and it can get just as wrapped up in falsehoods as anything else, but at its best, it does manage to tell the real truth about people, not entirely unlike the way that Scripture does.

Every year I seek out new country music that hits the sweet spot for me. Most years, this means finding a few songs or maybe an album. This year has been a pleasant surprise, along with the normal few songs, there have been three albums that I think are pretty solid straight through: Kaitlin Butts’ What Else Can She Do, Ernest’s Flower Shops, and most recently Ashley McBryde’s Ashley McBryde presents Lindeville.

Lindeville is a concept album about “a town that doesn’t exist, except that it’s every small town you’ve ever been to,” that, while ambitious, also manages to not take itself too seriously. (It’d be hard to tip too far in that direction with song titles like, “Brenda, Put Your Bra On.”) The record is meant partially as a tribute to the late Nashville songwriter, Dennis Linde, who wrote many classic songs, including Elvis’ “Burning Love,” Joe Diffie’s “John Deere Green,” Sammy Kershaw’s “Queen of My Double Wide Trailer,” The Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl,” and what I think is maybe the perfect country song, Marc Chesnutt’s “Bubba Shot the Jukebox.” McBryde wrote and performed this record with a number of other singer/songwriters with small town roots holed up in a cabin during the pandemic. None of them could tour, so they got together for a writing session with Linde’s song catalog as inspiration. Because these songs were conceived mostly for fun, and not necessarily intended for release, the album is a lot funnier and looser than what you normally find on a contemporary major label Nashville release. It also has a little more swearing, sex, and drugs. Sometimes it feels like these things serve to make a point, while other times they seem unnecessary.

Country lyrics occasionally lean towards justifying our sins, as with Randy Travis’ “Reasons I Cheat,” which is essentially a laundry list of justification: “A wife too demanding with no understanding of why I stay dead on my feet. A dimly lit tavern, a willing young woman, are some of the reasons I cheat.” This isn’t helpful, but if we’re being honest, it does allow us to see ourselves in the stories of the ne’er do wells who populate these songs. We’d probably do the same thing. By balancing the deep sadness associated with the reality of our sin and our inability to do what we know we should do with (often corny) humor, country music opens us up to the possibility of loving our neighbors not for their attractive qualities, not even for utilitarian reasons, but just because in their faults, we recognize ourselves and our shared suffering and frailties.

The Bible also knows that we lean toward sin, that we’re more often running from God than into his arms, that it colors our interactions with others, including with those we love. The Old Testament is maybe especially good at mirroring our sinful natures to us: in certain Psalms (like Psalm 35: “But at my stumbling they gathered in glee, they gathered together against me; ruffians whom I did not know tore at me without ceasing; they impiously mocked more and more, gnashing at me with their teeth”), and through the actions of people like Joseph’s brothers (selling their brother into slavery out of jealousy), Jonah (fleeing from God’s call, then being upset about God’s mercy towards the Ninevites), and much more. The picture painted of us in scripture and country music is not conducive to an overly-optimistic view of human potential. No matter how sanctimonious it might sound.

The two songs on the record with overt religious references are surrounded by lyrics that are explicity sexual and full of references to alcohol, drugs, and other indiscretions. I think this is partially for realism, partially for humor/shock value, and also a little bit of a curb against being considered too earnestly pious. “Jesus Jenny” is about a woman (Jenny) who is unrepentant, but obviously struggling with various addictions, troubles, and sins. The song uses Jesus’ name as an expletive, but also uses it in prayer, “I ain’t sayin’ I’m a saint, but I’m livin’ proof a heart can change and honey, I ain’t judgin’, but I can’t just say nothin’. All I can do for you right now is pray to Jesus, Jenny,” implying that the song’s narrator knows that ultimately it takes divine intervention to change hearts. 

“Gospel Night at the Strip Club” as a title is provocative to say the least, but within the song, we get lyrics like “Lonnie, he’s a listener, he should’ve been a priest. It’s the same confession on a barstool or your knees. He makes a mean Manhattan, but he ain’t drank since ‘93. Does the last call benediction, and wipes the bar slate clean.” This is another example of something being sacred and profane at the same time. A listener could miss the absolution inherent in wiping a slate clean, or they could take it (I think mistakenly) to be saying that the same sort of absolution is available at a bar as at church, but I think the main point is that the same sins are being confessed. Lonnie can’t actually wipe our slates clean, but Jesus, who appears in the song leaving a $20 tip for the down-on-his-luck, sleeping-in-his-car guitar playing narrator, can.

A cover of the Everly Brothers/Linda Ronstadt hit “When Will I Be Loved,” comes near the end of the record, “I’ve been cheated, been mistreated, when will I be loved?” This is a song all the characters from Lindeville could sing with conviction. It’s a song we’ve probably all been able to sing with conviction ourselves at one point or another. It’s the ultimate question on all of our minds. The answer, of course, is that we are all already loved, but even though that is the actual truth, it often doesn’t feel that way.

On any given day, we tend to dwell most on our troubles and insecurities. Like in “Bonfire at Tina’s,” in which McBryde and company sing, “You don’t feel pretty. You’ve been lonely. He’s so damn lazy. My step-kids hate me,” we get stuck feeling unworthy of love. But then someone shows us a glimpse of unwarranted love, and it changes everything for us. Like Pete, the widower who maintains the local baseball diamond in Lindeville, does for the narrator of “Play Ball.” The narrator remembers when as a teenager, he “broke into concessions once, but Pete didn’t call the cops. He just made me clean the grease traps and replace the bubble pops. That’s the spring that daddy left, he knew I was actin’ out. And when I hit that first home run, he took me to Golden Corral.”

In an interview with Esquire, McBryde said, “Sometimes you look and realize, this town is such a mess, everybody here is a disaster. And in the same breath, in that same three minutes, everybody’s okay. And I love those times. Sometimes I wish I could make that stand still a little bit longer — we’re all a disaster, and it’s beautiful.” I don’t know that it’s beautiful in the way that McBryde might mean. There’s nothing inherently beautiful about our messiness, but in some ways what McBryde says can be melded with an oft-quoted line from Jacob Smith: we’re all three days away from becoming a country music cliché. And most of us are on day two. 

It can be freeing to recognize yourself in a country song, to hear of one’s frailty and failures without any self-justifications. The soundtrack of our lives is far from a victory march. Giving up the illusions we hold of ourselves (and others), we can be as real with each other (and with God) as characters in country songs are. We probably won’t like everything we hear, but we might just worry less about keeping up appearances and truly love one another in all our messiness. All it takes is three chords and the truth.