A good song says it all in three minutes or so. That’s why I love Tyler Childers. When you get past the singing about drugs, drinking, and general heathenry, he has a lot of songs that just talk about folks on the hill and in the holler. “Country Squire” is a perfect example. Childers describes what’s it’s like to turn the “songs into 2×4’s” to just be “waiting on the day, sitting by the fire, huddled with my honey in the Country Squire.” It’s the simple sort of dreaming that most people do at some point in their lives. For Childers, that dreaming involves a camper “gutted to the studs and the rafters” in the song. To other folks, it is a paid-off mortgage, traveling, or just the right to live as they see fit. But I see more to this song than just an ode to early retirement.
Childers is as much a product of Appalachia as mainstream culture has embraced in recent memory. His songs are filled with references and language you might hear from old men at the local Hardee’s in nowhere West Virginia. “Country Squire” is just the American Dream with Appalachian syrup poured all over the top. That’s why it’s important. There’s a sense out there that Appalachia is an exotically boring place full of misfits, troublemakers, and racist, sexist, and bigoted conservative rednecks. The reality is that Appalachian folks are just normal folks with normal wants shaped by different cultures and circumstances. We just want to be respected as much as everyone else. And left alone.
Childers’ success is funny because he is the latest Appalachian curiosity to be discovered by mainstream culture. It seems like Appalachian culture gets marginally “cool” every ten to fifteen years. Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, Morgan Wade, Chris Stapleton, and some other singers are recent examples of the latest trend. “O Brother Where Art Thou” was the previous round. The reason for the random periods of wide appeal is authenticity. In a world made of plastic and shipped from China to be sold in every look-alike big box store across the country, Appalachia is the ornery old fruit stand and flea market on the side of the backroad that never looks busy, but never shuts down. We don’t want to be Walmart. We’ll take your business when it comes, but we’re going to stay right where we are. We know you’ll be back.
It all comes down to respect for our remodeled Country Squire. We know you don’t want one. We don’t necessarily care. Our Country Squire is no different than your McMansion and gated subdivision with a Tesla out front. When the culture moves on from Childers, Simpson, and the other products of Appalachia, we’ll still be selling our fruit by the side of the road. Just remember when the culture does back to the regularly scheduled poverty safaris and redneck reeducation camp stories, we are still here living normal lives, having normal dreams, and huddled with our honeys in our Country Squires. And we can’t stand your HOA’s.
High Toned Hillbilly 