I Like It, I Love It (even though it’s new).

Okay, so I have been a country music fan ever since “I Like It, I Love It” by Tim McGraw was a hit in ’95. I was two in ’95. I wasn’t a country girl, despite the idea that some of my city friends have of me. I was a town kid. Small town, though, so I was raised on country music. Now, I had my Spice Girls, then Britney Spears phases, as any small-towner did, but country was always my music base.

It still is. I have listened to the genre from “Thunder Rolls” by Garth Brooks (even though the music video terrified me), through “Wide Open Spaces” by the Dixie Chicks (and every other Dixie Chicks song on each album), through “Drive” by Alan Jackson (highly relatable), and finally and proudly, right through until “Drunk on You” by Luke Bryan. I have listened to all of these songs a hundred times and to hundreds of songs in between.

Lately, however, I have been hearing a lot of negativity about the newest country music songs and the artists who write and perform them. I think that there is a place for the Garth Brooks and George Straits of the country music business — absolutely. During my lifetime at least, they are the most “authentic” country artists who stay true to the country sound, and I love their music.

I also think that there is a place for the Tim McGraws of the genre — the artists who started out playing traditional country, and have adapted to a new spin on the music, arguably more pop-y. He sang “Not a Moment Too Soon” “Just to See Her Smile”, and proceeded to do a duet with rapper, Nelly, and just released a song, “Looking For That Girl”, in which I detect some almost-rapping, and synthesization. Catchy as hell though.

Yet again, there is a place for the Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Lines.

But this is where it gets interesting.

If you compare the first song I mentioned in this post, or basically anything from the 90s, to a Florida Georgia Line or Luke Bryan song, it doesn’t even sound like the same genre. That is the point of contention for many country music fans. But I say, it’s simply not the same genre, and that is just fine.

I don’t think that these new country artists who incorporate rapping, pop-y sounds, and synthesization to a country themed melody and lyrics, are any less of artists for it. As I said, I think it is catchy as hell.

Yes, these songs are now all over country music radio, television, and award shows, and that may be why some people are peeved, but that is just the state of the industry. That is the direction it is heading in, it seems. There are definitely artists releasing songs right now that could resemble a George or Garth song form the 90s, but so many will not. These new songs and artists fall under the same umbrella as the artists decades before them, even though their sounds are night and day. So what?

Country music fans can choose either to like the new direction, acknowledging or not that it is vastly different than old school country, or they can hate it and not listen to it. Perfectly understandable either way. I am going to do the former and acknowledge that these talented new artists are creating a genre within country music. I am probably going to continue to flip back and forth between my “90s Country” and “Hot Country” playlist, because I can and do really get into them both. And that is okay!

Kudos to these young men and women. They have created a new sound. They are taking risks and forging a new path. And it seems to be paying off.

 

For your reference (these are just examples of the two vastly different styles):

A Tim McGraw oldie

Luke Bryan’s latest hit.

 

My town

I just had the pleasure to introduce the beautiful little town of Minnedosa to some of my friends from the city. 

I love showing my home to people who aren’t familiar with it. I am so proud of where I come from and some day may end up. With its small town charm, most people are hooked immediately. 

Even though, after a drink or two at the local bar and grill, the two bars in town let us down by being closed, Minnedosa prevailed. A friend of mine invited us all out to his farm to finish the night.

A group of friends, both old and new, sitting around a country kitchen table, drinking and laughing. It doesn’t get mich better than that. 

Sargent & Victor & Me & Me

I’m not artsy. Ask anyone who knows me at all, I don’t know art.

Artful to me is the perfect tic-tac-toe hockey play. What moves me to tears are the dramatic stories between characters on cheesy TV dramas.

So, walking into the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film on Tuesday night, I was fully expecting to simply endure this performance and hoping to have something to write about it on my blog. I didn’t expect to have an opinion — and compared to a lot of my classmates, my opinion after the fact is still fairly mild, but I found myself liking and disliking certain elements.

The last play that I saw, I believe, was in grade seven. Our class loaded onto a school bus and drove from Minnedosa to Brandon to watch The Sound of Music because one of our classmates, and my best friend, was playing (is that the right word?) one of the Von Trapp children. Now, I realize I just called it a “play” and she would probably not be pleased that I did so, since it is technically a “musical”, but regardless, that was the last piece of theatre that I saw — eight years ago. That one, I was excited for. I assume the reasons were because I knew people in it (her dad was playing Captain Von Trapp), and I knew the story already.

Flash forward eight years and I feel unenthused about spending my Tuesday night watching a play I have never heard of until two days prior. Overwhelmed maybe, too, because of my lack of theatre experience.

Sargent and Victor & Me ultimately surprised me.

The playwright and only actress, Debbie Patterson,  essentially documented and performed the deterioration of the neighbourhood at Sargent Avenue and Victor Street in Winnipeg, using eight characters, to the deterioration of her own body, which she describes in the play as being owned by multiple sclerosis.

In the play, she is a woman with MS volunteering in a food bank at Sargent & Victor, where she encounters all sorts of people who have had an experience with the neighbourhood. She based these characters off of real people from the area, and 90 per cent of the action and dialogue was verbatim.

The first, and longer half of the play introduced these characters, and the audience got a glimpse into each of their lives and views. The first half left me asking, “What about Theresa?”. I wanted to know more about her. Most of the characters in this half, I felt had equal amount of time — other than Gillan, the character based on Patterson.

Theresa was by far the most captivating, and the snipits we got into her life in the first half were so intriguing that I wanted the second half to be entirely about her. Of course, that was an unrealistic expectation, as the play was representing the neighbourhood and that couldn’t be done through one person, but her story was so dramatic.

Theresa was a gang member. She lost her mother when she was 10, and since then had endured a life of non-stop turmoil, being beaten, raped, prostituted, and incarcerated, all by 15 years old — the age she was in the play. Her story was so heartbreaking that I actually paid very little attention to the way Patterson portrayed her character. I wasn’t interested in the acting so much as the story. This was the case for most characters in the play.

After the first half of the play, I wanted two things: more Theresa, and an explanation as to what the hell Gillian was even doing there? The first half had not been bad. I am at a loss for how else to describe it, but it was not bad. It didn’t captivate me in any special way, but I didn’t want to run out of there screaming or anything. If I had the option to leave, I likely would have stayed anyway to find out how it was going to end.

The second half was what I wanted. It was an exploration of Theresa and Gillian’s characters mainly, eventually leading up to, or back to, their first interaction, which also answered the question I had about why Gillian was at the food bank. It left my questions answered, and me feeling like I had been enlightened — brought into a world I really knew nothing about.

Something that I, and many of my classmates, went into the play worried about was how and why this woman with MS was going to portray herself in the play. Was it going to be a pity party? Was it going to be empowering? To be completely honest, I found it to be a bit of both, which made sense to me. She shared very personal stories from before and after her MS diagnosis. These stories, just like the other characters were emotional, and frankly, heart-wrenching.

In the end of the play, following her and Theresa’s final (but first) interaction outside the food bank, she circled the set, staring into the audience as a tape of all of the real characters voices played in the background. This was the perfect ending. It brought these people to life outside of Patterson’s portrayal.

After this, she proceeded to have one final monologue as Gillian. This, I could have done without. I remember listening to her speak what I assumed were the final lines of the play. “I….” “I…..” “I…..” I wanted the ending to be clearly based on the characters from the area; namely Theresa. I think that ending on the tape of their voices would have been much stronger.

This brought me back to a question that had been in my head all play. Why include herself at all? Not that her character wasn’t intriguing. She was the largest part of the play, and I didn’t dislike her, but I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little self-indulgent or self-pitying to include herself in the piece. I felt cynical thinking this, and was pleased to hear her answer to this very question in the talkback session.

She was portraying people — their values, most personal experiences. She was revealing them — exposing them to a crowd of people, but her struggles and potential revelations remained hidden. She felt that she was doing herself and her characters a sort of injustice by not revealing herself to the audience as well. I may have been cynical before, and I may be naive now, but I believed her. It made sense to me, and that answer was good enough for me to take back any questions I had about her as a character.

Like I said, I am not artsy. I didn’t have much of an opinion on the set, or the costumes. I don’t know what makes “good art”, or a “good artist”. I liked the lighting because it made it easy to tell when Patterson was playing which character, but I didn’t look too far past that. Knowing this about myself, I paid attention to the story. The story of people who are living in the same city as me, but seem like they are worlds away. When I was 15 I was getting my learner’s license, sneaking vodka out of the house to go a party, and making out with my first boyfriend. Theresa was doing things I would not have even fathomed at that age — and barely can now.

I said it in my last blog post about the conflicts in the Middle East — it is honestly hard to believe how different some people’s lives are from mine. I think that this revelation in relation to Sargent & Victor & Me is even stronger. The people who are facing these adversities are literally a fifteen minute drive away from where I sit right now. It’s hard to believe, and also even harder to think about.

I don’t think that I’m going to be a regular theatre-goer or anything in the near future, but it was absolutely not a Tuesday night wasted.