God's Got A Heaven For Country Trash

I was worried about myself the other day because I had remembered about the Mermaid Avenue sessions and was enjoying them, but at the same time realizing that I do have a small class prejudice regarding your sort of generic white country folk. Not the people with land and goats and old trucks as much as the ones topless at the river, or the ones building pole barns to sell dollar store junk out of. Girls twisting tattooed hips with mean grins walking up a gravel road. And, I mean, Guthrie and Bragg and all them, they were and are all about the working man, and do I lack some sort of understanding? Am I being hypocritical, turning down country roads listening to new folk songs from years ago while maybe just a little looking down my nose at the other people who've appropriated new country as their genre of choice to set them apart from the city people and their shiny non-functional sport utility vehicles? I mean, I do believe Johnny Cash should be canonized into the list of Catholic Saints, but in twenty years would I be holding on to Travis Tritt as some symbol of class rebellion?

Patsy Cline, I'm okay with. I hold no qualms about my identifications with her. She plays the jilted with an overarching sense of bitter so well, and I can't help but to be drawn to that and attempt to claim it as my own. Mr.Cash loses me every now and then, but he's more of that father figure I never had (or did I...?) and so I cling to his black clad side with an unfailing devotion.

What does disappoint me is that I don't feel nearly as drawn to the original recordings of Guthrie's music. I have to have the combination of Wilco, Billy Bragg, the occasional female interlude to really get sucked in.