Tuning in to America

Itraded in my Mercedes 350 for a new Chevrolet pickup. I regretted not having a Sirius subscription to listen to NPR. Instead, I switched between local AM/FM stations and the best reception came from Albany, WGNA-FM 107.7, which is contemporary country.

The picking, twanging and energy enlivened my trips. Increasingly, I listened to the millennial singer/songwriters’ stories. I found myself moved by Ingrid Andress’ warnings to her boyfriend of six months prior to taking him to meet her family and friends in her ballad, “More Hearts Than Mine.” It reminds me of a Jane Austen novel.

I’m of the group that Rush Limbaugh calls the “elites who hate you.” My consciousness of the other America comes from reading J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” and Tara Westover’s “Educated,” graduates of Yale and Oxford/harvard, respectively. Their memoirs of childhood trauma experienced growing up white and poor, outside the mainstream, provided a view of the reality of white poverty.

The raw, emotional immediacy of the songs I heard brought a different response. In Luke Combs’ “Even Though I’m Leaving,” words to a child from a father about to leave for war in Uncle Sam’s plane: “Just ‘cause I’m leaving, it don’t mean I won’t be right by your side,” brings tears. The father’s pain and the child’s fears of the parting comes through the dialogue. It recalls my Vietnam experience. The guilt I felt sitting in a law school classroom while friends died and others’ lives were transformed. Who now fights in our endless wars? Would we so passively accept wars like Iraq and Afghanistan if draftees rather than volunteers were dying?

Sometimes driving back roads with the radio on, I feel like I’m eavesdropping on the millennial musician’s private conversations — too personal to overhear but too moving to ignore.

Back at home, I pick up a new book: “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, two Princeton professors.

With charts and data, they chronicle the rising deaths resulting from suicide, drug overdose and alcoholism among white, working-class Americans caused by the changed social and economic conditions in the United States. They suggest strategies, programs and plans to address these issues.

In the songs, I hear a more emotional story. Drinking beer and whiskey are a recurrent if not predominate theme: good times (“Beer Money,” Kip Moore); comedy (“Drunk on the Plane,” Dierks

Bentley); aloneness (“Drinking Alone,” Carrie Underwood); escapism (“Beer Can’t Fix,” Thomas Rhett); independence (“Buy My Own Drinks,” Runaway June), to name a few. Raised by an alcoholic father, I experienced the evil of alcoholism. Hearing these songs, I accept how intertwined drinking must be in the lives of the 76 million who listen to country music each week; 57 percent are millennials and their music reflects a cultural norm.

The avoidance of personal commitment recurs in the lyrics, too. Ashley Mcbryde’s “One Night Standards” gives a chilling account of disconnected sex: “I don’t really care if you’re here when I wake up.” Luke Bryan sings of “What She Wants Tonight” when he meets a woman in a bar. “Hotel Key” by Old Dominion provides a more playful example. How do these songs relate to falling marital rates and rising singleparent households?

The music also includes hopes of a better future; the love of country life and the attachment to the simplicity of country living: fishing, going to church, fried chicken dinners with kinfolk and the joys of owning a truck. Randy Houser sings about riding the hollows and hills to show a city girl “How Country Feels.” Feeling country, not thinking about elitist programs, is what we need — empathy not sympathy.

The people I meet in these lyrics are individuals, not Hillary Clinton’s condescending “basket of deplorables” or Mitt Romney’s disdaining “47 percent taker class.” The music we hear affects what we feel and influences what we think. Listening to country, we feel the pain of a father going to war, the need to drown our disappointment, the satisfaction with the small victories in life, the need to connect even for a night, sharing a cold beer with buddies on a hot night.

Of course, country music is popular in cities, too, and not everybody who loves country music lives the lifestyle of the lyrics — any more than every fan of Bruce Springsteen is engaged in the struggles of working-class families. But there’s a reason this music is so popular across rural America: The emotions it evokes ref lect the lived experiences there, which many of us tend not to see.

In response to COVID-19, several country stars collaborated on Thomas Rhett’s “Be A Light,” which includes: “Yeah, it’s hard to live in color, when you live in a world of black and white.”

If the United States is to become a more perfect union, we need to hear other voices, have empathy for the pain, and address the needs of all Americans. We are all in this together.

Sometimes driving back roads with the radio on, I feel like I’m eavesdropping on the millennial musician’s private conversations — too personal to overhear but too moving to ignore.

Michael Belknap, a graduate of Harvard College and Law School with an LLB from Cambridge University, lives on a 150-acre farm in Columbia County.