Behold, I have found it!
The ultimate redneck song title: Heart Like a Truck.
I got a heart like a truck
It’s been drug through the mud
Runs on dreams and gasoline
And that old highway holds the key
It’s got a lead foot down when it’s leavin’
Lord knows it’s taken a hell of a beatin’
A little bit of love is all that it’s needin’
But it’s good as it is tough
I got a heart like a truck
Though for the ultimate redneck song lyric, I’d go with Garth Brooks: “Papa loved Mama, Mama loved men/Mama’s in the graveyard, Papa’s in the pen.” (Heard that when I was driving across Nashville years ago and almost went off the road).
Yes, I’ve been listening to country music radio lately. Our kitchen radio is tuned to Classic FM, which is middle- to low-brow light classical. (“They play movie music,” sniffs Uncle B). Lately, though, they’ve been playing lots of mawkish tinkly piano music – the kind of thing they use as background music for mindfulness meditation apps. No thanks.
Radio 3 has got a more sophisticated playlist, but they’re also the station most likely to indulge itself in the occasional hour of atonal mood music on the Peruvian nose flute.
Thanks to the Internet, I have choices! There was a country station in Providence I really liked. I’ve been frustrated trying to find it again, but I have just found it at last: WCTK-FM Cat Country. The fun part of that is trying to remember all the places in the traffic reports and all the stores in the ads. It’s fading fast, y’all.
Oh, but I have even older braincells! Been streaming one of my favorite old stations from Nashville: 103.3 WKDF. Though I have a strong feeling it was a rock station in my youth. I wouldn’t have been caught dead as a 16 year old Nashvillian listening to a country station.
I can occasionally remember some of these places, though Nashville has changed enormously, especially in the last twenty years. The last time I tried to drive there it scared the poop out of me.
Have a good weekend, everyone. Going to be viciously cold in Old Blighty.
Posted: December 9th, 2022 under music.
Comments: 13
Comments
Comment from Drew458
Time: December 9, 2022, 10:08 pm
Plenty of good country tunes that tell it like it is, new and old. And some are a bit funny too. Check out Buddy Brown in “Republican Neighbors” on YT, or several of his others. Reminds me a lot of those little videos Babylon Bee has been doing about “Californians move to Texas” also at YT.
I enjoy Zac Brown Band too, but I’m not sure if it quite counts as country. Especially when they do island music.
Comment from Greg
Time: December 10, 2022, 1:15 am
I can listen to a little bit of anything now and then (except rap–that crap is not music), and my favorite CW tune is Dwight Yoakum’s “I Got You”. Check out those lyrics.
Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: December 10, 2022, 4:10 am
My personal favorite country song:
Me And My Uncle
John Phillips
Me and my uncle come riding down
South Colorado, West Texas bound.
We stopped over in Santa Fe
That being the point ’bout half way
And besides it was the hottest part of the day.
I hitched our ponies into a stall
Went to the bar, boys, bought drinks for all.
Three days in the saddle, you know my body hurt
It being summer, I took off my shirt
And I tried to wash off some of the dust and dirt.
West Texas cowboys, all over town
With gold and silver, they’s loaded down
Just in from roundup, ain’t that a shame
‘Cause my uncle, he starts a friendly game
And it’s high-low jacks and the winner take the game.
Right from the beginning, Uncle starts to win.
Them Texas cowboys, they’re as mad as sin.
Some say he’s cheating, but oh that just can’t be
‘Cause my uncle, he’s as honest as me
And I’m as honest as a Denver man can be
One of them cowboys, he starts to draw
I grabbed a bottle, slapped him on the jaw.
I shot another, hot damn he won’t grow old
In the confusion Uncle grabbed the gold
And we high-tailed it down to Mexico
God bless them cowboys. God bless their gold.
God bless Uncle, rest his soul.
He taught me well, boys, taught me all I know.
He taught me so well, that I grabbed that gold.
And I left his dead ass there by the side of the road.
Comment from technochitlin
Time: December 10, 2022, 2:16 pm
Nashville, huh? I once spent a century living in Murfreesboro between ’80 and ’84. I love East Tennessee, you can have the rest.
(The locals referred to that city up nawth as “Nastyville, Tennisshoe”)
Comment from durnedyankee
Time: December 10, 2022, 7:26 pm
Hi-Lo Jack – fun game.
My favorite is “All my exes live in Texas”.
But I have to say the line from the Garth Brooks song you mentioned
“The desk clerk said he saw it all real clear….
‘He never hit the breaks and he was shiftin gears'”
Is definitely one my favorite all time country song lines.
Well, that and “Up against the wall redneck mother” – by Ray Wylie Hubbard, the whole song.
Comment from BJM
Time: December 10, 2022, 11:30 pm
Stupid song, but the Girl got a set of pipes.
I was raised with honky-tonk,shit-kicking country music. Hated it…except for Patsy, some Hank Williams. IMO The Eagles pretty much lifted “Lyin’ Eyes” from William’s “Your Cheating Heart”.
The Carter Family, and the Madison County musicians and singers Dellie Norton were favs. Judy Collins covered quite a few of Dellie’s songs “So Early, Early in the Spring” comes to mind. Guess it speaks to my Scots ancestry.
Comment from lauraw
Time: December 11, 2022, 4:03 pm
There’s a little funky station just outside CT that I tune to every time we get to that part of NY near Hudson. I have their app on my phone too and play it at work. Different collection of music, some of their DJs play interesting mixes of old and new.
http://981kze.com/
It can be pretty hit or miss on the weekends.
Comment from Deborah HH
Time: December 11, 2022, 4:12 pm
I have this lovely memory of washing the supper dishes and singing to the songs on the radio. In particular, Buck Owens’s “I’ve got a Tiger by the Tail,” and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.” It had to be in 1965 or ’66 because my two older sisters were in college by then, and that left me to do the dishes by myself. I guess I soaked up a lot of that Bakersville sound with the soap suds, because I really liked Dwight Yoakum when he came along.
But my mother listened to the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons during the season (…brought to you by Texaco.). I had opera in one ear, and country/western in the other. Any time my father sang, it was always a Hank Williams tune, and he’d dance my mother around the room. He never hummed anything from Tosca.
Comment from The Neon Madman
Time: December 11, 2022, 10:35 pm
Some Veg –
“Me and My Uncle” was also a popular number performed by the Grateful Dead. It’s included on the Skull and Roses album, along with songs written by the likes of Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard and Chuck Berry. Well worth a listen.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: December 12, 2022, 7:37 pm
Technochitlin: I was born in East Tennessee and spent a lot of time there. We also lived in Chattanooga for a few years. Even Memphis for a little while.
Comment from April
Time: December 12, 2022, 8:11 pm
Listen to Classic FM at work, only problem is Toronto five hour time difference means that they play sleepy time music when I need my afternoon jolt of overwrought opera
Comment from Anonymous
Time: December 12, 2022, 11:49 pm
David Allen Coe “You never called me by my name”
Comment from BJM
Time: December 13, 2022, 1:15 am
Does anybody remember XERB (the border blaster)?
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