I'm a Little Bit Country

In this post I asked, "If you were about to walk through a magic doorway that exaggerated all of your latent and secret personality traits and the qualities that you intentionally suppress to make your public image more appealing would you emerge on the other side of the doorway as a cowboy or more like a Goth?"

It's not an easy question to answer. I think most people suppress depressive qualities which, if manifested and exaggerated, seems goth.

I'm more of a cowboy and I don't really see a need to suppress it for any reason other than that cowboy stuff isn't in style, Pioneer Woman excepted. Hopefully ABC's new show Nashville will change the face of Pinterest the same way Mad Men made us want hard modular furniture. It probably won't, which is why my desire for overstuffed plaid arm chairs will remain suppressed.

I love this new show with Connie Britton. I rewind parts. I love every second of it, except for scenes with her dad because he's a little too diabolical. I love to hate Hayden Panettiere. (Oh my gosh. I spelled that right first try. I don't, necessarily, feel good about that.) I love this guy because he looks like Bruce Springsteen and sings like Dwight Yoakam (That one I had to look up. Sad):

I think about this show when it's not on. And I had to do the same thing I've done with other things, (Harry Potter movies) which is to Google the characters and look at pictures of them in their real life to drive home the point that they are not really the characters so I can stop thinking about them. Yes. I do that. It's a way of coping.

But of course the best part of this show is the music. I LOVE the music on this show. I'm a huge fan of Alt Country or Country Nouveau. But I just call it that because plain old Country music (which I also love) is not, per say, in style. What I mean when I say "alt country" is simply, "good music." An example of this genre is The Civil Wars, who I love. Unsurprisingly, (but really very surprising considering the quality of the music in much of today's television) John Paul White of The Civil Wars writes some of the music on Nashville. Guess who else does? Elvis Costello.

Is it any wonder I love this show?

Each show features several songs. It seems like so much work. I love that they write and record real songs for it. Plus, they reference old country standards which I also love. It is so cool to me. And here's why: T-Bone Burnett is the music producer on Nashville. Why? Because he's married to the main producer, Calli Khouri. Way to write a honey-do list like a boss, Callie!

You may recall T-Bone Burnett produced Robert Plant and Allison Krauss's album which I am intermittently obsessed with. He played guitar for Bob Dylan and produced the music for O Brother, Where Art Thou and Walk the Line. T-Bone represents my aesthetic exactly. It's no wonder I'm super into this show.

I'm also impressed that the actors are actually singing. Good for them. I love Connie Britton (coach's wife from FNL) as much as I love T-Bone.

In summary, I love Nashville. And because of it I have been inspired to learn to play the guitar so I can strum T-Bone Burnett-type songs and feel happy. I'm sick of trying to get my kids to play guitar. They won't. But if Connie Britton can become a country singer at age 45 I can learn to play the guitar at age 40. So I want a guitar for Christmas and I want Jenny Eckton to teach me. She's in Africa now, which is almost as inspiring to me as the TV show, Nashville--which is a lot.

Here are Rayna's (Connie Britton's) kids singing her rival's (Hayden Panettiere's) really commercial song in a talent show at school. This is as wonderful as anything else on the show.