The Cryin’ Side of Me

flagcoveredcoffins.jpg 

We’ve recently posted here about the latest album from the Dixie Chicks and about flag burning. Before those implictly related topics get too far behind us, I’d thought I’d make the connection explicit by posting a piece I wrote when the Chicks’ controversey was still raging. Originally published in the March 20, 2003 issue of the Nashville Scene, the essay below lets me talk a bit about country music and its responses to war over the genre’s history–not all of which have been of the “boot in the ass” variety favored by Toby Keith. As usual, I’ve sprinkled mp3’s liberally throughout as aural evidence.

THE CRYIN’ SIDE OF ME: The Dixie Chicks latest single is part of a country music tradition that calls for alternatives to war

“Travelin’ Soldier,” the current single by the Dixie Chicks, is the most powerful anti-war record of the moment. Partly that’s because it’s the one now being heard by the most people. But it’s also because the song, written by Bruce Robison, doesn’t look away from war’s inevitable human costs. A high school girl falls in love with a boy who is eventually shipped to Vietnam. At its end, she stands beneath the bleachers, sobbing. Her sweetheart has come home, but he is dead.
 
The record is careful not to take a explicit stand on war either way. It neither threatens revenge, as Toby Keith did in “Courtesy of the Red, White & Blue (The Angry American),” nor does it denounce military action, as John Lennon did when he implored, “Give Peace a Chance.” Even so, “Travelin’ Soldier” is an anti-war song of the most persuasive variety–it cries out for alternatives to war by speaking honestly of its fatal consequences. 
 
This personal as opposed to political approach to military conflict has long been a part of the country tradition. The young girl in “Travelin’ Soldier” is reminiscent of characters in earlier recordings where Americans have had to bury their dead: Jimmie Rodgers “The Soldier’s Sweetheart” (which looks back to WWI), Ernest Tubb’s “The Soldier’s Last Letter” (from WWII), Loretta Lynn’s “Dear Uncle Sam” (from the Vietnam war), among many others. Country artists have also sung about the loneliness experienced by soldiers far from home (Gene Autry’s “At Mail Call Today” and Floyd Tillman’s “Each Night at Nine” and Merle Haggard’s “I Wonder If They Ever Think of Me”) and about the terror. “I am so afraid of dying,” Glen Campbell sang in “Galveston” as the record’s arrangement exploded around him like incoming rounds of fire.
 
Still, for many listeners, country music is more typically associated with jingoism. It’s hardly an unfounded connection. Keith’s recent hit, for instance, follows in the footsteps of Merle Haggard’s 1970 chart topper “The Fightin’ Side of Me,” Johnny Wright’s 1966 hit “Hello Vietnam” and Red Foley’s jaunty “Smoke on the Water.” A pop and country hit during World War II, Foley’s record predicted, with transparent glee, that the Land of the Rising Sun would soon be a “graveyard” populated by “vultures” feasting on dead Japanese people. And it’s the glee many of these records express that turns your stomach–not the human necessity to protect oneself or others, or even the all-too-human desire for revenge, but the bald-faced revelry at the anticipation of spilling foreign blood.
 
We hear a great deal of talk these days about good and evil. The former might best be represented by Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” which at each chorus embraces “faith, hope and love.” By contrast, Keith’s “Angry American” may not be evil, exactly, but it does indulge a sickening moral relativism: Our lives are precious, and our deaths mourned; your lives are not precious, and your deaths will be celebrated. “We lit up your world like the Fourth of July,” Keith exults. That doesn’t sound like a war he’s singing about; it sounds like a party. “A mighty sucker punch came flying in from somewhere in the back,” he adds, before taunting, “We’ll put a boot in your ass.” In Keith’s expression, our nation’s foreign policy and the safety of our citizens sound as if they were of no more consequence, and just as much fun, as a parking lot tussle on a Saturday night.
 
Similarly, Darryl Worley’s current single “Have You Forgotten?” speaks of events in language more appropriate to barroom fisticuffs than to armed global conflict.  “Some say this country’s just out looking for a fight. After 9/11, man, I’d have to say that’s right,” he sings, shaking his head as if to ask, “How could it be otherwise?” Worley’s anthem has generated some controversy: When he announces in the first line, “I hear people saying we don’t need this war,” it is nearly impossible, at the moment, not to read “this war” as “the coming war with Iraq.”  The rest of Worley’s lyrics make plain he is speaking more broadly of a war on terror, though that only confuses the matter: Who are these people Worley claims have forgotten about Bin Laden and al-Queda?  The only war some are saying we don’t need is the one with Iraq. Still, it’s not the way Worley’s song blurs the line between self-defensive and pre-emptive wars that rankles. It’s the notion that any grievance, even one as horrific and inconceivable as the terrorist attacks of 9/11, could justify the actions of a nation that is “just out looking for a fight.” That’s a wholly different proposition than being determined to fight, if we must. 
 
Of course, how the United States fights is also a matter of concern. And on that point, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” portrays one reality of war, or at least one reality of how the United States wages it, with more honesty than perhaps any record before it. “It’s going to feel like the whole world’s raining down on you,” Keith warns. This is true. In the first rush of attack, U.S. military might overwhelmingly does not take the form of boots on the ground. Rather, it rains missiles and bombs on enemy combatants and innocent civilians alike. The stated intent will be to drop those bombs only on the enemy combatants. But we know that even smart bombs will maim and kill husbands and wives, senior citizens and babies, lovers–people who are, in the most basic respects, no different from you and me.
 
A strategy of “We will shoot only at those who shoot at us” would come much closer to moral precision. But it also would result in far greater numbers of American casualties, of Americans returning home–but dead. Must we forever come face to face with that grim reality before we pose, finally, the key questions: Is this cause (which, for the current crisis, seems to change from week to week, and even from press conference to press conference) worth killing innocent people for?  Is it worth dying for? 
 
“[E]very war is both won and lost,” novelist Barbara Kingsolver has written, “and that loss is a pure, high note of anguish like a mother singing to an empty bed.”  Every dead soldier creates a scene similar to that young girl standing beneath the bleachers, in “Travelin’ Solider.” Her boyfriend has returned, at last. But he has made his long, lonely journey in a body bag, and he’s not headed home but to a graveyard. The girl is crying, weeping, sobbing, and she can’t stop. Then the record is over. There is nothing left to say.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 10:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 Responses to “The Cryin’ Side of Me”

  1. eric Says:
    July 8th, 2006 at 5:49 am

    I don’t think this war has produced good music, either on the anti- or pro- side. I have yet to be moved by any of it. I wish the Dixie Chicks and the Alan Jacksons would all shut up. The Iraq war (which seems to be the one most upsetting to everyone) was a war of calculation. Neither blind “gung-ho-ism” or blind sympathy for the victims is particularly germane to the issue. You can’t answer the question, “Is the ‘one-percent doctrine’ reasonable national policy?” with a song, only with a very long and informed debate.

    On your earlier flag post, I agree in the abstract that, in a sense, men fought and died so that we have the right to burn the flag. But in the real world, many who did serve and defend this country feel that to desecrate the flag is to spit on the graves of those who gave their lives for it. That isn’t a universal sentiment among those in the services, but out of respect the flag is one thing that should be sacred, or as sacred as any secular object can be.

    If burning or desecrating the flag is speech, it is pretty moronic speech anyway. Because seeing someone do it doesn’t tell me anything really, except that this person is having an emotional reaction. I don’t know whether it is a terrorist sympathizer who disrespects our country simply because we do not have an Islamic government following sharia law, or whether it is someone protesting the violation of civil liberties. That’s a very large ambiguity.

    It is best, I think, to have people express themselves in real language. And to have one national symbol that is inviolable is not a serious imposition.

    I love your vintage RCA Living Stereo graphic by the way. I just started collecting some of that series on CD. :)

  2. livingin Says:
    July 8th, 2006 at 3:46 pm

    Hi Eric: On the musical responses to the Iraq war…I’ve found some of it quite powerful, though much of the best of it has been about that war only in the sense that it addresses some war during a time when war means to most listeners the one in Iraq. Bruce Springsteen’s Mrs. McGrath on his Seeger Sessions, for instance, or Travelin’ Soldier which of course was written and recorded before the impending Iraq war created a new context for it. I’ve also been greatly moved by the anti-war music of Michael Franti & Spearhead. They’re last album, Everybody Desreves Music, is among my favorites of this century, and the upcoming one, which includes Yell Fire, promises to be strong as well.

    But on the issue of long and informed debate…that’s the appopriate response only if one agrees that there is ever a reason to engage in war, other than self-defense or the ceasing of some immediate humanitarian attrocity. And I don’t agree. Flag issues in a new post.

  3. Barry Says:
    July 8th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    The thing about picking an “inviolable” SYMBOL is that the nature and extent of the symbol is decided by power–not by consent. And if this sounds high-fallutin’, perhaps we should ask my Senator Bill frisk if the flag desecrayion ammendment, interpreted by some loose Supreme Court, coud make it a fe deral offense to fly say, a Confederate Flkafg. now THAT’s a desecratio of the star-Spangled anner, which did not “yet wave” over THIS part of the country for a while there. that other flag cna be sene as a dircet a ssualt on it?

    Our relatively newish country has been somewhat slack in finding true common ground and symbols that come out of the culture we’ve produced together, and so we have this rather unnatural situation of adding all of that extra power to the flag symbol as an icon iself. We have kids pledge allegiance to the flag (of all things) and, oh yes, then to the nation for whic it stands, and a few worthwhile things attached to that. We make a song about this banner–and that’s what it is, a banner– lasting through time the national anthem.

    We can’t deny that, culturally, this puts extra weight on the thing for many Americans; it’s not easy to see why they get worked up.

    Because what the people who sacrificed much ,including lives, was FOR, was a nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, we need to leave people who mess with a symbol alone. In the name of that liberty.

    “Don’t tread on me” was a flag too. And the line was not self-referential.

    PS: Lousy wars yield lousy songs…doo-dah; doo-dah.

  4. livingin Says:
    July 8th, 2006 at 3:57 pm

    Let me ask you a question, Eric: When have Americans service personnel died, and I mean when have they EVER died, to preserve a right to burn the flag–or the right to free speech of any variety? I can’t think of any ex’s. All of them fall into the other categories we’ve mentioned–wars of calculation, of (arguably) self-defense, and of humanitarian goals.

    I also wonder why the emotional reaction of burning a flag is moronic speech, but that the emotional reaction of veterans feeling disrespected by the burning of a flag isn’t. At any rate, the meaning speech is only understandable in context, and in those exceedingly rare instances when flags have burned, it’s been in a clear context provided by the burners. There’s no ambiguity at any rate. Which isn’t to say I don’t think flag burning mighn’t not be moronic but it depends on who and how it’s done. Real language, as you say, can be moronic too.

    Thanks for the comliment on the logo. That was my idea, I’m proud to say, but LIving in Stereo’s best friend, Roy Kasten, did the hard work to make it happen and look as striking as it does.

    Please keep checking in, sir. You write thoughtfully and well, and dialogue is one big reason why I’m doing this thing anyway. So, thank you for writing.

  5. Ed Ward Says:
    July 9th, 2006 at 12:19 pm

    Incidentally, there are two great soul compilations, A Soldier’s Sad Story and Does Anyone Know I’m Here, on Kent, which deal with the Vietnam War. The songs start out all gung-ho, going to protect our freedoms, and so on, and they wind up asking the question which the Dells ask on the title song of the second comp. Last song on the second one is Funkadelic’s “March to the Witch’s Castle,” which deals with returning servicemen, addicted to drugs, forgotten by their loved ones, and trying to figure out the society to which they’ve returned. Powerful stuff, and all too relevant to the current situation.

    Which, I agree, hasn’t produced anything nearly as good to date. Unfortunately, it looks like it might last long enough to do so.

  6. livingin Says:
    July 9th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

    I second Ed’s recommendation of Kent’s two the black experience in Vietnam sets. First rate stuff. I wish they’d do a country version of the concept, though I guess the music I’ve shared here in this post is at least a beginning.

  7. Roy Says:
    July 10th, 2006 at 3:25 pm

    Off the top of my head, I can think of two recent and very moving anti-war songs: “Alone on the Homestead” by The Mammals and “Black Doves” by Amelia White. Both of them capture the essential loss of war; in their own way, they’re as moving as any songs I’ve heard this year.

    Josh Ritter’s “Girl In the War” is much more oblique, but no less remarkable.

  8. Shelea Says:
    December 7th, 2006 at 12:03 am

    I can only think of one war song that I have ever heard and that song is “Travelin Soldier” by the Dixie Chicks.I love this song!

  9. Shelea Says:
    December 7th, 2006 at 12:33 am

    This website is cool!
    HEY ROY CALL ME!!!!!!!!!

  10. Roy Says:
    December 8th, 2006 at 4:15 am

    Hey Shelea. Thanks for the compliment on the site. The genius, however, is David Cantwell. I just convert that genius into html :)

    Roy

Leave a Reply