Discover more from Catalectic
So the radio waves I wrote to you about last time – the same ones I’ve been riding back and forth to my parents’ place in the Virginia countryside – wrought havoc on my love life this week. For one, M.’s failure to reach Delilah with a romantic dedication (and I quote, “The New York Times says she gets 20,000 calls a night!”) continues to rear its head as a point of contention.
For another, I got that “Applebee’s” song stuck in my head. One thing led to another and, despite myself, I ended up fall-cleaning our apartment this Labor Day weekend to a soundtrack of Walker Hayes via YouTube at full blast. One catchy chorus about Bourbon Street Steak and Oreo Shakes while stuck in traffic on I-66, next thing you know I’m knee-deep in the no-longer-quite-so-rising country star’s entire repertoire curtesy of a $40 Amazon Firestick, pausing the Swiffer only to read through various interviews with Hayes on my iPhone 13 Mini. (“Babe, did you realize two record labels dropped the guy and he worked morning shifts at Costco?!” I’d ask. To which M. would reply, “I’m going to go hang out on the roof.”) To my credit, I moved on from “Fancy Like” fairly quickly and am much more prone to repeat-playback of Hayes’ more recently debuted single, “AA.” Either way, M. can’t seem to tell the difference; he’s convinced he’s lost his girlfriend to an overnight crush on a Jesus-loving family man with a high-school sweetheart wife and seven children.
It’s not a crush, but… am I alone in how much I adore this guy?
I try to display American hyperbole in carefully balanced doses, but nevertheless I write to you, dear reader, to share my opinion that Walker Hayes’ latest album, Country Stuff, is indeed the best. thing. ever. Like, God may have sent him to save country music from…
…wherever it’s been since my childhood.
Is Hayes an imperfect messenger? Absolutely. The man’s nothing if not attuned to the importance of evocative imagery and yet, a not insignificant percentage of his writing sounds like it takes checks from corporate America. Applebee’s isn’t the half of it! Wendy’s. Skoal. Jack Daniel’s. Costco. Victoria’s Secret. He’s just a John Deere guy reminiscing about his girl’s love for Bath & Body Works perfume.
Yes, and…
What is America, sometimes, if not a haphazard collection of chain stores and fast food indulgence? And what is a great writer except one who writes what he knows — one who acknowledges the veneer while he scratches at the best of whatever’s hiding underneath? It makes me think of what George Saunders wrote in his profile of Trump rallies leading up to the 2016 election:
“All along the fertile interstate-highway corridor, our corporations, those new and powerful nation-states, had set up shop parasitically, so as to skim off the drive-past money, and what those outposts had to offer was a blur of sugar, bright color, and crassness that seemed causally related to more serious addictions.”
I’m reading too much into it, undoubtedly, but I find something hopeful in how Hayes’ lyrics make me feel like breaking into a line dance. Like if Red and Blue America can catch the same ear worm, what other divides might we bridge? At the very least, maybe we can bargain our way out from under the fluorescent lighting of an Amarillo Wal-Mart and back to the evocative storytelling that epitomizes Southern songwriting at its best, guided by Hayes’ subtle callbacks to — Garth Brooks? or Brooks and Dunn? All with a subtext that seems to whisper: “I know country music has gone left, but what if we take that overly commercialized energy and redirect it?” e.g. not unlike however he plans to steer “his daughters off the pole and his sons outta jail.” (Heart of a public defender, too, amirite?)
The man holds a music degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You won’t convince me he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
TL;DR For awhile now, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that all country music may have left on offer is, well, whiskey for its men and beer for its horses. But now here comes Hayes with an honest account of sobering up from family traditions and ciga-regrets. My guess is he, too, probably has fond memories of chewing tobacco spit at his feet in childhood — (is that not how your next door neighbors in Dallas, GA greeted you?) Two failed record deals under his belt, he’s here to usher in an era of kisses without the Skoal. Forget the recent bro country that looks upon women as props, he takes dance cues from his daughter and is the first to admit his wife married up and he married way way –
(Actually, depending on how you hear it, this line kinda feels like it’s lacking a metrical foot. Does he mean his wife married way way down, or does he mean she married way, way — switching topics now, he’s just “down in Alabama” trying to write a song?) (And, if the latter, does that make that line, um, catalectic? Are any actual prosody experts reading this? Thoughts welcome.)
And I'm just tryna keep my daughters off the pole
And my sons out of jail
Tryna get to church so I don't go to hell
I'm just tryna keep my wife from figuring out
That I married up and she married way, way
down
In Alabama where they love Nick Saban
Tryna write a song the local country station'll play
Hey, I'm just tryna stay out of AA
I’ll be back next time with thoughts on Chekhov, I promise.
Speaking of Chekhov, you should definitely check out Vanya's translations - https://www.ioann.xyz/s/translations.