Merle Haggard wrote better songs than Okie from Muskogee – up here in the CrowsNest, we always hum along to Sing Me Back Home. But Okie is still Haggard’s signature song. Released in the late 1960s, it staked out middle America’s position on the Vietnam war.
“We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
‘Cause we like livin’ right, and bein’ free”
To Haggard’s fans, Okie from Muskogee said something simple and true and important. The song is also a celebration of rural life in Oklahoma. (Haggard’s parents left the state for California during the Depression, after their barn burned down.) Heck, with its bouncy singalong rhythm, Okie is even kind of light-hearted.
You can’t say the same for Jason Aldean’s new release Try that in a Small Town, which has caused a ruckus in our contemporary culture wars. Aldean’s song, which topped the music charts in the USA at the end of July, warns city folks to stay away from middle America if they want to stomp on flags or cuss out cops.
“Try that in a small town,” he sings, “See how far you make it down the road.”
Aldean’s lyrical threats – if we can put it that way – include a reference to the “gun that my granddad gave me”. The original YouTube video, partially shot outside a southern courthouse where a young black man was lynched in the 1920s, also incorporated a montage of Black Lives Matter protests. (You’re getting the picture here, and it’s not a pretty one.)
In some ways, Aldean’s song is comparable to Haggard’s. Both ‘’anthems” spoke to an angry ‘demo’ that wanted to be heard at a divisive and pivotal point in American life. It’s just that ‘Try that in a Small Town’ is a whole lot nastier than Okie from Muskogee. Aldean’s song doesn’t celebrate small town folks as much as it denigrates outsiders. Sadly, this treatment of “others” makes it emblematic of the cultural wars of the 2020s.
Up here in the CrowsNest, we don’t expect anyone is about to call a truce in these battles soon, but we still wish the cultural provocateurs (of the left and right) would back off a little. We’d like to see a little more Merle, and a lot less Jason.