Hippies and Cowboys

Though I had never been south of the Mason-Dixon before the the 1990's, I somehow found a love for Country music. It crept up on me. I started with Irish and Scottish folk, got sucked into Bluegrass when I wanted to learn to play the mandolin, and before I knew it, Merle, George, Waylon, Willie, and Johnny were an indispensable part of my life.

I was fortunate enough to have discovered Country at a time when the folks they then called the "New Traditionalists" ruled the airwaves. A few years earlier, or a few years later, and I would have probably turned up my nose up at the pop pablum that usually passes for Country. I remain grateful to Ricky Skaggs, Randy Travis, Alan Jackson, Vince Gill, and Keith Whitley for pointing the way back to the classics for me. In my mind, Garth Brooks and George Strait were always pushing their luck.

I could clear a room in two minutes flat back when I was in college, just with the sound of a steel guitar or a fiddle. It taught me who my real friends were, and what life was really about.

Many years later, I sat down next to a stranger with a big white Stetson at a BBQ joint in rural Oklahoma, and we somehow hit it off. This song by Cody Jinks came on the jukebox, and he was quite amused by the fact that I was the hippie, and he was the cowboy. He laughed and laughed, pointing back and forth between us as the lyrics came up.

He later became my NA sponsor, and I then spoke at his funeral. I don't usually do funerals, but I did for him. He was the sort of man whose sense of right and wrong transcended all boundaries.

I don't carouse like I used to, and I don't want my children to live as poorly as I once did. But the song is still an anthem for me. . .

Cody Jinks, "Hippies and Cowboys",  from Less Wise (2010)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRnDpQc8pwQ

Well I started on the whiskey pretty early this morning
That's alright, I was up all night
But I passed out before the sun came up
I really wanted to see one of those
I know that's no way for a man to behave
With a mortgage due and a baby on the way
But somehow I made it to where I'm at
It's been a living as a matter of fact

I get a bad attitude from being tired and running 'round
I never ask for anyone to say they like my sound
I've never been a part of any musical scene
I ain't just talking Nashville, if you know what I mean
They don't write about me in their magazines
And I don't ask for no reviews on the songs that I sing
I never had a lot of friends and I'm alright by that
But people keep on coming back

Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys
They don't care about no trends
They don't care about songs that sell
Yeah, tomorrow I'll be gone
So tonight everybody just sing along
Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys

I've been standing on the outside for all of my life
But I like the view, I'm not gonna lie
Yeah, the yuppies and the hipsters and the wannabe scenes
That ain't down home to me
I like two dollar beers, I like three dollar wells
At some old honky tonk bar that I know by the smell
Some old drunk on a bar stool on a Merle Haggard tune
That's my kind of room

Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys
They don't care about no trends
They don't care about songs that sell
Yeah, tomorrow I'll be gone
So tonight everybody just sing along
Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys