My Songs Grow On People - Like Warts

[Troubadour]

I'm one of the few who loves country music. I'm not so much a fan of some of the modern country-pop that is around, but real country is all about the stories. I fell in love with it as a child, riding in the back of my grandparents car, listening to the lyrics of Ode To Billy Joe, Jolene, We're All Alone and Blanket On The Ground. I was eight or nine and although I may not have fully understood the deeper meanings of the stories, I loved them - I used to listen to the lyrics and feel the heartache and sadness in them, even if I didn't quite grasp the darker concepts. Ode To Billy Joe is a perfect example. I remember having the same claustrophobic feeling that the girl in the song is having as her family make small-talk around her at the dinner table while she is hit with a bolt of horrific news that will change her life forever. Like I said, for me country music is all about the stories. It gets down to the grass roots and talks about everyday life like no other kind of music does. It's also important not to underestimate the impact that country music had on the singer-songwriters of the '70s... Don, Glenn, James Taylor, Gram Parsons, Bonnie Raitt, Joni Mitchell... They were all heavily influenced by the songs of Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and George Jones. Eagles wouldn't exist without country music.

[Freypower]

In an attempt to get this back on topic, old though it is, a couple of the tracks from After Hours that weren't right up there for me have grown on me since seeing them performed last week; those are For Sentimental Reasons & Worried Mind, though if I had my way he'd do I Wanna Be Around rather than Worried Mind. He does seem to enjoy singing it.