NYT : In Nashville, Sounds of Political Uprising From the Left

In Nashville, Sounds of Political Uprising From the Left

by THEO EMERY | August 19, 2006

NASHVILLE — Country music videos flashed on a television set at the Idle Hour, a Music Row bar where a Crock-Pot of beef stew simmered for hungry musicians.

Sitting at a table in early August, Bobby Braddock, the longtime songwriter, lamented the conservatism of the country music industry that was demonstrated when the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks became a target of fury three years ago after saying she was ashamed that her band and President Bush shared the same home state.

Asked whether his recent song “Thou Shalt Not Kill” would have airplay, Mr. Braddock said, “Oh, never.”

“Something political will not get played on country radio unless it’s on the conservative side,” he added. “If you show both sides, it’s not good enough. It’s got to be just on the right.”

Country music, the genre of lonely hearts and highways, lost jobs and blue-collar woes, has become a cultural battleground. Conservatism is widely seen as having the upper hand, a red-state answer to left-leaning Hollywood.

Democrats on Music Row, the country music capital here, have grown frustrated with that reputation. A group of record-company executives, talent managers and artists has released an online compilation of 20 songs, several directly critical of Mr. Bush and the Iraq war.

The price for the set is $20, with most of the proceeds going to the group, which calls itself Music Row Democrats and is using the money to support local and national candidates who share its values.

Bob Titley, a former manager of Brooks & Dunn and a co-founder of Music Row Democrats, has no illusions that the songs will shoot to the top of the charts. Rather, Mr. Titley said, he hopes to use them as fund-raisers and to change the image of country as strictly Republican music.

“My hope would be that they would play this music at campaign rallies,’’ he said, “and when the volunteers are out on a hot day driving door to door, they’ll put it in their cars to keep themselves pumped up and in a good mood.”

The songs include Mr. Braddock’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and “Big Blue Ball of War” by Nanci Griffith. Another longtime songwriter, John Scott Sherrill, contributed “You Let the Fox Run the Henhouse,” and former Vice President Al Gore speaks a few words at the end of “Al Gore,” which was written by Robert Ellis Orrall and includes the line, “President Gore lives on my street.”

Many singers and songwriters who contributed are not household names outside Nashville, but their work is recorded by many big stars, including Toby Keith, LeAnn Rimes and Travis Tritt.

The songwriter Darrell Scott contributed “Goodle U.S.A.” Faith Hill had recorded it under a different name and without the line “It’s like Joe McCarthy was our acting president.”

Mr. Scott recently recorded a new song, “W Cheese,” in a basement studio at Famous Music on Music Row. One verse ends, “They filled our plate with freedom fries, red, black and blue, white lies/And a helping, heaping, hating size of stinkin’ W cheese.”

“I’ve never thought of myself as very political,” he said. “It just seems like in the current environment even I have to write about it.”

Chris Willman, a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly magazine and the author of “Rednecks & Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music” (New Press, 2005), said that although the members of Music Row Democrats had industry credibility, few were in the limelight.

“They have a tough row to hoe in convincing people that country music is really, seriously Democrat friendly,” Mr. Willman said.

Though Music Row occupies a small patch of Nashville, it looms large over the city’s culture. When the lead singer of the Dixie Chicks, Natalie Maines, said at a concert in London in March 2003, “We’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” the reaction was fierce and swift.

Country stations stopped playing the group’s songs. Talk-radio hosts urged listeners to complain about Ms. Maines’s remarks. And a Nashville audience of 18,000 booed the host of a music awards show who urged forgiveness.

None of that was lost on Music Row. Democratic songwriters say that they have since hesitated to express political views, for fear of being “Dixie Chicked.”

Record company executives said they were leery of discussing their opinions, to avoid damaging artists they represent.

“I felt like at the time of the Dixie Chicks, as outraged as I was at the whole thing, I couldn’t say anything, because I’d put artists that I’m associated with in jeopardy,” said Luke Lewis, co-chairman of the Universal Music Group. “They might not go on the radio or a lot of other places.”

At the same time, the Republican Party’s use of country music at political events and the popularity of patriotic songs like Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American)” and Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten?” rankled industry liberals.

Music Row Democrats started in late 2003 with a meeting of more than 20 label executives and songwriters. It says it now has 1,200 members from the Nashville music industry and 1,100 others.

James Stroud, Mr. Lewis’s co-chairman at Universal and a Republican, said that many Music Row Democrats were “dear friends,” but that he disagreed with their using music for political ends.

“I don’t think we need to use music to influence, or try to influence, a big bloc of people when all they want to do is just listen to the music,” Mr. Stroud said. “You start fooling with that, and you’re going to start having some failure.”

Mr. Keith’s publicity agent, Elaine Schock, said his conservative reputation was a result of the times. He is a lifelong Democrat, Ms. Schock said, and the perception of him as conservative is a “myth.”

“I think when you have a war,” she said, “people want you to be on one side or the other.”

The singer and songwriter Chely Wright has felt the heat of crossfire, but she said she was not affected by it. Ms. Wright’s song “Bumper of My S.U.V.,” about a confrontation over a Marine sticker on her vehicle, earned praise from conservatives and scorn from liberals. The daughter of a military family, Ms. Wright says she has no allegiance to Democrats or Republicans.

She recently recorded “I Ain’t Gettin’ Any Younger,” which opens with, “The cost of crude keeps going up/More precious now than gold.”

It ends by asking “Why it makes somebody mad/That a baby named John Doe/Might get to have two loving dads.”

Ms. Wright said: “When one does say anything less than, ‘Ooh baby, ooh baby, I love you,’ in a song, in my format, out of this town, you really put yourself out there as a bit of a lightning rod. I can’t have those fears.”