Songs About Me?

I used to want to live in Toronto. What was I, nuts?

I spent the first nine years of my life in Bramalea, a suburb of Brampton, which used to be a city in its own right and is now pretty much glommed on to the whole Greater Toronto Area. We moved to London when I entered Grade IV, and after living in what seemed like every neighbourhood on that city's west side, we eventually relocated to Ingersoll for my final year of high school.
Ingersoll was my first exposure to small town life and I vowed within a week of moving there it would be my last.
I still remember touring the pitiful downtown area on one of my first days there. Cool, there's a music store!...wait a second..."Open 10:00-4:00, closed Mondays." It was the kind of town where the sidewalks rolled themselves up shortly after dinner. Nothing made a point of happening pretty much daily, so by way of counterpoint, the local teenagers would populate the weekly police docket in alarming numbers. Nothing serious, so long as it wasn't your car that got bashed or your house that was robbed. Surveying that docket over the first month or so, looking for patterns, I quickly counted myself lucky to live where I did: the petty crime never got within four blocks of me.
Once I started in at the local high school, I found another thing about small-town life to detest. There being nothing ever going on (see above), those not disposed to illegality instead concentrated their efforts on finding out every last detail about everyone around them. What they couldn't find out, they'd make up. The grapevine was relatively fast...relativistically fast, I'm trying to say: news had a way of spreading across town before it happened, by some process still unknown to science. It was unsettling, especially since I'd just come from the kind of high school that let everyone pretty much be themselves...no nosy questions, very little psychodrama, next to nobody ostracized.
It took me months to fit in at all, and secretly, I always wanted out. Back to the big city, where all the action was.
I harboured that dream right up until just before I met the woman I would marry. By that time (1999), the crime rate in Toronto was starting to get worrisome...the "action" tended to be the pump action of a shotgun. Also by that time, I had seen several lifetimes' worth of university students majoring in drunkoholism with a minor concentration in rude, obnoxious barfery. It slowly began to dawn on me that most of these "people" (and I'm using that word in its loosest sense) were bound for the Big City themselves. Whatever way they were headed, I told myself, I would go in precisely the opposite direction.
Settling down into married life, I slowly realized: not only am I not the urbanite I always thought I was...the thought of subjecting myself to the tension of big city life actually frightens me a little.
My friend Jay worked, at one point, in one of the highest skyscrapers in Toronto. I'll never forget the day I bussed into town and met him for lunch. Noon. Entire regiments of officepeople were letting out, cascading down the escalators in a flood tide. The very air hummed with stress: it was palpable and deeply disturbing, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. It was the first time I understood the truth behind the cliche: sometimes you can cut the air with a knife.
Five whole minutes of that left me slightly nauseous. Imagine a lifetime.

When we drove down to my Dad's winter home in Destin, Florida this past February, we went equipped with about twenty hours of comedy routines I'd burned, as well as a CD by Trace Adkins, given to us by our friend Sue. Trace has the deepest voice this side of Crash Test Dummy Brad Roberts, and he sings a mix of boozy ("Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" being his biggest hit) and soft, introspective ballad "Metropolis", "My Way Back"): the music resonated with me the way nothing had for years. The very first track ("Songs About Me") is a justification of country music, and seemed to be tailor-made for a skeptic like me. Long story short, I found myself enjoying pretty much every track on the album. In the days of the downloadable single, you have to admit that's pretty much unheard of.
Halfway through Alabama, tired of talking (we saved the comedy routines for the trip back), I asked if I could turn on the radio. Spinning the dial, I was faced with a choice: get SAVED! BY! JEEEEEE-ZUSSSSSSSSSSS! on a dozen stations, or listen to country music on the other dozen.
I've been saved before: eventually you go moldy. So: country. The very first song I heard in its entirety was Me and My Gang by Rascal Flatts (first line: "Way on down to Southern Alabama with the guitars jammin', that's where we're headed")
Well, yup, that's where we were headed. About ten bars in, Eva said "turn that up, I like this song." No problem: I didn't just like this song--the last time a song had turned me into an instant goofy pant-drumming fool was "Joyride", by Roxette, way the hell back in first year university.

Once we were home again, I threw myself into this unexplored genre of music with a will. I've since found several more artists I love, most notably Brad Paisley. Here's a guy who does it all: hilarious songs like "Online", uplifting songs like "The World""...and instrumentals like "Throttleneck" that show this guy can flat out play guitar.

It took me a while to figure out why I've fallen in love with this music. After all, the standard country lyrics don't describe me well at all: I don't drive a car, let alone a pickup truck; I've spent next to no time on farms; I'm anything but a cowboy. I'm definitely not "Rough and Ready" (Trace Adkins again):

Mudgrips - white-tip
Cigar stickin' out of my face
Earnhardt racing sticker on the window
Banged up fender
4x4 - straight pipe roar
Primer and rust all over the door
Scarred up knuckles, Mack belt buckle
White t-shirt - Ain't afraid to work
Got a "what-are-you-looking-at-asshole" smirk
Cold beer, hot wings
Wranglers, Skoal ring
Get just what you see
Gun rack, ball cap
Don't take no crap
Ain't a pretty boy-toy
I'll rock you steady
Rough and ready

But even though I don't fit the country-boy mold to the letter, I am one in spirit. I do have a very strong streak of independence, of not caring what the world thinks, of going my way. I also have a great deal of respect for people and things that came before me, a trait I see mentioned over and over again in country music. Many songs make a point of referencing other artists: I like that sense of camaradarie.
And I like a story well told...which is what a lot of country ballads are. (I defy you to listen to this one without tearing up a little).

Don't be surprised to see me out in the country by the time I retire. I'm countrifying by the day, and I'm glad.