A no-name beer joint. Just off the highway. Somewhere outside Atlanta. Glowing Coors signs. Unlevel pool tables. I had been driving for several hours. I’d just hit town and my throat was dry.
I stepped into the dark room and made my way to the bar alongside the other hands. There was a kid playing music on a plywood stage. He had tattoos, a trendy mullet haircut and he wore his ballcap backward. He looked like a frat boy. He was singing what passes for country music in today’s melodically deprived America.
Then the kid started “country rapping.”
“Country music is dead,” said my bartender, who was pushing 70. Or maybe he was pulling it.
“The real cowboy singers have disappeared,” he went on. “I miss Willie Nelson, every day.”
He brought me a cold Pabst and asked what I wanted to eat.
“A burger,” said I.
He leaned onto his elbows. “We got vegan burgers, black bean burgers and chicken burgers.”
“Vegan burgers? I thought this was a beer joint.”
“New management.”
“But, I want a beef patty that’s
bleeding so badly it needs Band-Aids.”
The bartender sighed. “Don’t we all.”
The barman looked like a real cowpoke. He had smoker’s teeth. His skin was crepe paper. He wore a tan so rich he looked as though he’d been born in the Mojave.
His hands were veiny and rough. I know this because we actually shook hands. Just the way real guys used to do before the “fist bump” made us all look like schoolgirls playing Patty Cake at recess.
The kid strumming the guitar was still rapping. It was hard to watch.
The bartender looked at me. “They call it redneck rap. It’s all over the radio these days. Kids eat it up.”
“But it ain’t music,” said the guy next to me. He was wearing a crumpled suit. He looked like Fred Mertz after a long day.…