Seven Oaks Magazine.

You probably missed country star Darryl Worley’s performance at the 38th Superbowl, overshadowed as it was by the headline grabbing antics of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson (yes, amazing that such a little boob can cause such a fuss; not that Janet Jackson helped matters much). Nonetheless, it’s been a pretty good 12 months or so for the country singer who went from being just another stetson in the country music firmament to one of its biggest stars with ‘Have You Forgotten?’; an emotive call to arms in which Hardin County’s most famous son asked: ‘Have you forgotten how it felt that day/To see your homeland under fire/And her people blown away?/Have you forgotten when those towers fell?/We had neighbors still inside/Going through a living hell/And you say we shouldn't worry 'bout Bin Laden/Have you forgotten?’

According to Worley’s record label, Dreamworks, the song scaled the charts faster last year than any single in recent memory, prompting one Dreamworks talking head to claim that ‘Daryl has hit a nerve that strikes to the core of this country’s conscious.’ ‘Have You Forgotten?’ helped Worley bag a Best New Male Vocalist nomination at last year’s annual Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards as well as a hat trick of nominations at the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Country Music Awards. In the event, Worley was pipped to the Songwriter and Artist of the Year titles by Alan Jackson, whose more contemplative ’Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?’ (‘I'm just a singer of simple songs/I'm not a real political man/I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran’) also helped him to Country Music Awards Entertainer and Male Vocalist of the Year titles into the bargain.

Where the likes of the Dixie Chicks are only now starting to recover from the adverse publicity and country radio boycotts caused by very public anti-Bush coments, some country stars have jumpstarted healthy if unremarkable music careers thanks to their twangin’ post 9/11 triumphalism. Foremost among these is Toby Keith, who recently walked off for the second year in a row with the coveted Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year Award. Most famous for ‘Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)’, Worley’s Dreamworks labelmate scored a massive hit last year with a finger-wagging song which angrily warned that ‘Justice will be served/And the battle will rage/This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage/And you’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A/’Cause we’ll put a boot in your ass/It’s the American Way.’ It comes as no surprise that the Commander-in-Chief is a card carrying member of the Toby Keith Appreciation Society (Keith’s unique brand of angry Americanism has already wowed them at the Pentagon and on a USO tour of Bosnia and Kosovo last year. This year the self proclaimed big dog undertook an extended USO tour with firearms habitué Ted Nugent which took in Kosovo, Germany, Italy, Afghanistan and Iraq).

“It was a song I was inspired to write because I lost my father six months before 9/11,” explained Keith at the time. “Nobody wrote an angry American song, and this was one. It was the way everybody felt when they saw those two buildings fall.”

Enjoying what can only be described as a hot songwriting streak, Keith also went onto pen ‘The American Soldier’ and ‘The Taliban Song’ which not only pushed the country music envelope for doggerel verse and bad taste further still (‘So we prayed to Allah with all of our might/And then those big U.S. jets came flyin one night/They dropped little bombs all over our holy land/And man you should have seen em run like rabbits, they ran - the taliban’) but helped Keith’s overall album sales touch the 20 million mark. The name of his latest album? Shock'nY'all.

Performing at a 'Spirit of America' concert at Tampa's MacDill Airbase last year, Darryl Worley took time out to tell George W Bush that he prayed for him daily. Bush, himself no stranger to the delights of prayer, responded by saying “that is the greatest gift you could ever give a President.” Not to be outdone by his Dreamworks labelmate in the lickspittle sycophancy stakes, Keith dedicated his Country Music Television 2003 Flameworthy Video of the Year award to Donald Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks as well as “all the people over there [Iraq] putting it down for us tonight.” Winning the same prize again this year, Keith told the audience, “I know it’s getting to be old hat sometimes to be patriotic, but don’t forget our brothers and sisters overseas making it free for us tonight.”

Of course, all of this songwriting service above and beyond the call of patriotic duty is not without its rewards. Notwithstanding the obvious financial benefits of hit singles, tie-in DVDs and prestigious country music award nominations and prizes, Worley and Keith have perhaps been the most high profile country music recipients of civic and military services awards for their public relations services to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In January, Keith received A West Point Saber from West Point Military Academy for his tribute to the American soldier. “Toby Keith hit a bulls eye at West Point,” said Bill Yost, director of West Point’s Eisenhower Hall Theatre, “his tribute to the American Soldier warmed the hearts and souls of the Cadets and Soldiers who were in attendance for the concert.” Last year Worley received an American flag from Lieutenant General Richard Cody during a concert in Montgomery, Alabama. The flag, one of many flown at the Pentagon on the first anniversary of 9/11, was presented to Worley in recognition of his vocal support for American soldiers and their families patriotism.

It is doubtful whether country music has ever enjoyed a higher public profile, with interest in country music at a premium thanks to country’s favoured sons current willingness to champion the patriotic cause at the drop of a ten gallon hat. Visitors to countrygoldusa.com (‘lyrics for country music and patriotic songs’) can express their patriotism by investing in a ‘Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning?’ collector plate (‘Act now! This unique exclusive Bradford Exchange collector plate won't be available long!’). Certainly, the patriotic furrow which has been ploughed so relentlessly since September 11 by country music stars has captured the imagination of large swathes of the American public. However, it’s a peculiarly exclusive sort of chisel-jawed, chest-beating patriotism; a patriotism equally in thrall to syrupy sentimental notions of some bygone white picket-fenced America as it is to the might of the modern American military complex.

Of course, how much can truly have said to have changed? Country music has long been a repository for conservative thinking and a reactionary force for the enshrining of ‘traditional’ American values way outside the common cultural experience of most of that fine land’s multicultural population. Substitute the hokey comedy factor of Merle Haggard’s ‘Okie from Muskogee’ (‘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/We like living right, and being free.’) with the righteous indignation of current country stalwarts and you’ll find that not much has changed. The song remains very much the same. Country music’s hijacking of populist blue-collar values has long acted as a cloak to an industry more at home in the corporate boardroom than it is in the front porches of the regular down home folk it patronises.

Nowhere is the country music industry’s symbiotic relationship to power and commerce more apparent than at the glad-handing awards ceremonies where corporations like Wal-Mart (scourge of working poor Americans and small communities alike) pick up baubles like ASCAP’s Partner in Music Award for their exceptional dedication to promoting and expanding the reach of country music. Academy of Country Music members can likewise vote for the Home Depot Humanitarian Award or the Don Romeo Talent Buyer/Promoter of the Year. It is to be hoped that both Wal-Mart and Home Depot do a good run on collectible patriot plateware.

Yet perhaps more curious still than country music’s hardly surprising right leaning instinct are forums like Conservative Punk (www.conservativepunk.com), created “to educate, inform and increase the little known demographic of the Conservative Punk” in the run up to this year’s presidential election. And no, you did read right, that really is the little known ‘conservative punk’ demographic of punk rockers who believe in small government, low taxes and acting when necessary to defend the country. Promoting itself as a conservative alternative to liberal ‘Rock the Vote’ type initiatives, Conservative Punk aims to give “today’s young people a way to view politics from a different perspective.” That’ll be the different perspective offered up by conservative punks like Nation of Suspects who sing ‘Beat ‘em till they couldn’t take no more/blood and teeth splattered on the floor’ on ‘America 2 – Iraq 0’. Quoting that much revered punk icon, Winston Churchill, Dickies’ singer Leonard Phillips notes the ‘fashionably political’ cottage industry that has spun up around skateboard punk which promotes a ‘hip to be angry’ attitude very much at odds with the wise counsel of Churchill: “If a man is not Liberal in his youth, he has no heart. If not Conservative when older, he has no brain.”

Staking his claim to be the voice of conservative punk reason, former Misfits singer Michale Graves argues that the Punk Voter initiative (coalition to educate, register and mobilize progressive voters) is a dangerous doctrine “being set forth on naïve minds.” Writing for Conservative Punk in March, Graves, who now fronts Gotham Road, warns that “they are contributing to and feeding a fire” which could have serious consequences to American security. Showing a disarming lack of self-awareness, he argues that the punk rock left indulges itself in “vogueish conspiracy-mongering and an increasing belief that they are persecuted from all directions.”

Not to be outdone by their progressive punk brethren, a number of country music fans have also decided to challenge the plaid and gingham checked conservative country status quo. In Nashville, disgruntled music industry leaders have banded together to form the Music Row Democrats in order to recruit and organize Democrats within the music community. Set up in December 2003, Music Row Democrat activities include Kerry-oke fundraisers with artists like Emmylou Harris and Allison Moorer performing to raise funds for the Kerry presidential campaign. Yet, fine intentions and a few notable country music exceptions aside, most country singers are loathe to say anything vaguely critical of Bush or the occupation in Iraq lest they find themselves on the receiving end of a consumer and Clear Channel type boycott (an allegation still fiercely refuted by Clear Channel who claim that local managers make their own programming decisions). As one poster to FreeRepublic.com points out, “if they plan on recruiting all the liberals in country music, they could hold a concert in a closet. Willie Nelson and the Dixie Pigs are definitely the exception, not the rule.”

Richard Perle famously said that: “If we let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now. Americans owe it to themselves to choose their own soundtrack.”