Originally published August, 2023
Americans have been singing the praises of small towns since our inception, but recently the tone has changed
The comedian Trae Crowder, who bills himself as the liberal redneck, was recorded on stage recently talking about Jason Aldean’s new countrified, Maga ballad, “Try That In A Small Town.”
“Now I’m from a very, very small town, so I was interested in this story,” Crowder says. “One of the first lyrics in this song is, ‘Hey, try carjacking an old lady at a red light, right?’
“I was like, ‘A Red Light? What is this Times Square?’
“Legend has it they tried to install some red lights on the square in my hometown in the 80s, but that didn’t take, because, I kid you not, people kept shooting them out in the middle of the night.
“Jason Aldean don’t know what he’s singing about, alright? He’s from Macon, Georgia. Y’all heard of Macon, Georgia? Yeah—that means it’s not a small town. The fact that you’ve heard of it, right? I looked it up. They got a goddamn Target. Shit might as well be Paris, dude.
“When I first saw the song, I thought it was going to be something different. Something like, ‘Find a good piece of pizza. Try that in a small town. Be a gay teenager. Try that in a small town.’ That’s what I thought it was gonna be.
“But they’re getting all fired up about things that ain’t never gonna to happen. They’re worried that like big city ANTIFA are going to come and fuck shit up. I’m like, ‘Dude, they ain’t coming here. They’d rather go to Somalia, man. They got better coffee.’”
“Imagine ANTIFA having a meeting and being like, ‘Yeah, we know all the media’s eyes are on Portland and LA and the big cities and everything, but where we can really make the most impact with our message is in Bucksnort, Tennessee. That’s where we need to focus our efforts at. Bucksnort.’”
America has historically been defined by its small towns. From the earliest days, most of America lived in small towns and villages. Only a tiny fraction lived in cities of any merit. Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation’s founders, believed that America’s promise lay in agrarian principles of living off the land and believed in preserving small-town life, while his nemesis Alexander Hamilton believed that urban manufacturing and commerce were the keys to success.
It was a heated debate then, and it still is today. Where does the soul of America reside? Is it in vibrant urban centers of innovation and creativity or the largely vacant pastoral hinterlands of middle America?
According to the 2020 census, 63% of the US population lives in one of 19,500 incorporated places in America, and 42% of them had less than 500 people. Only 4% of cities (780) had 50,000 or more people, but they comprised 83% of the total population. By 2050, it is estimated to be almost 90%. (1)
We may still think of small-town America as some sort of Jeffersonian ideal of agrarian utopia, but it’s far from the norm for the vast majority of Americans. And news flash for all the advertisers out there trying to sell us pickup trucks and coolers. Most of us aren’t farmers or cowboys, either. Just a whole lot of empty pick trucks sucking up fossil fuels to compensate for a lack of purpose. All hat and no cattle, as they say.
James McMurtry, an American singer and songwriter from Texas who writes about the American experience, has written many songs about small towns. One of his first was called “Talkin’ At The Texaco.”
“Well, if you’re lookin’ for a good time, you’re a little bit late. We rolled up the sidewalks at a quarter to eight. It’s a small town. We can’t sell you no beer. It’s a small town, may I ask what you’re doin’ here?
“Hey, what you up to? I already know. I heard the boys talkin’ at the Texaco. It’s a small town.
I know how you feel. It’s a small town, son, and the news travels quicker than wheels.
“I woke up feeling foggy, and I called old Mrs. White. I figured she could tell me what I did last night. It’s a small town. She’s bound to know. It’s a small town, son. I believe that I better go.”
There have always been positives and negatives about life in a small town. There is the safety and security of knowing that not much changes, that you can predict what people are thinking without even bothering to ask. You know where everyone stands and what your place in society is. This is comforting for some and suffocating to others.
John Mellencamp, back when he was still a cougar, famously sang about small towns.
“Well, I was born in a small town. And I live in a small town. Probably die in a small town. Oh, those small communities. All my friends are so small-town. My parents live in the same small town. My job is so small-town. Provides little opportunity. Educated in a small town. Taught to fear of Jesus in a small town. Used to daydream in that small town. Another boring romantic, that’s me.
“No, I cannot forget from where it is that I come from. I cannot forget the people who love me. Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town. And people let me be just what I want to be.”
How quaint. I guess it was a good thing that John wasn’t a gay teenager.
In 1969, with the country deeply embroiled in a combination of the war in Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and a broader culture war between liberals and conservatives, recording artist Merle Haggard released a single titled “Okie From Muskogee,” which quickly rose to the top of the country charts.
“It’s just a song,” Haggard would say later. “I wrote something that I thought said something a lot of people would like to say. ‘Okie’ made me appear to be a person who was a lot more narrow-minded, possibly, than I really am.”
“I didn’t put the record out to reprimand or anything,” said Haggard in 2012, speaking to The Music Hall magazine. “The main message is about pride. My father was an Okie from Muskogee when ‘Okie’ was considered a four-letter word. I think it became an anthem for people who were not being noticed or recognized in any way – the silent majority. It brought them pride. And today, the song still speaks to conditions going on in this world.” (2)
If you look at the lyrics with regard to what was happening in the country, you might consider his response as a bit of revisionist history because it certainly wasn’t taken that way at the time. He might feel differently today, but back then, it was a line in the sand. It was an anthem for small minds who rejected the change happening in America, not the least of which was racial equality and integration.
“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 livin’ right, and bein’ free.
“We don’t make a party out of lovin’. We like holdin’ hands and pitchin’ woo. We don’t let our hair grow long and shaggy. Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.
“I’m proud to be an Okie from Muskogee, a place where even squares can have a ball. We still wave Old Glory down at the courthouse, and white lightnin’s still the biggest thrill of all.”
Maybe it’s nothing more than the same fight Jefferson was having with Hamilton about who the true America was. Those who embrace the ideal of small-town, rural America, with its endless pasturelands, open spaces, and relative freedom, versus nearly the entirety of American culture and commerce. You can understand why they feel outmatched and overwhelmed—because they are.
There was a time when I felt all warm and fuzzy about small towns. The quirky characters and idiosyncratic culture of a small town. Simple, honest people living simple, honest lives. That was until I learned more about the dark past of lynchings, night raids, and tying gay kids to fence posts and throwing rocks at them.
Suddenly, it wasn’t so quaint.
Jason Aldean’s country charm is nothing more than a thin veil attempting to obscure the real purpose of the song, which is to intimidate and terrorize. This is what rural America has come to mean to me. Small towns. Small minds.
If that’s the soul of America, it’s dark and rotten and not worth saving.
Write a song about that.