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The Fourth of July Soundtrack: Why Country Music Sounds Like America

This week, the Country Music Dads celebrate America 250, country music’s role in this — and other — uniquely American celebrations, and how to honor our history, the details of our past, and advance the American experiment. Happy Birthday America! 

Show Notes:

00:05 – Dave and Donnie talk about their memories of the Fourth, how they are getting ready for America 250 and so much more. From childhood memories to debauchery of young adulthood, the guys go over what makes the Fourth of July awesome.  

4:46: What makes a great Fourth of July playlist song? And Dave asks if non-country fans use this holiday as an excuse to enjoy something they feel like they can’t otherwise. 

6:35: The history of country music and patriotism. The discussion turns serious as the dads address Joseph Thompson’s Time magazine article that explores how the country music industry, titans of industry and the Department of Defense teamed up to feed the concept that country music is the music of America. 

12:50: “God Bless the US” has been stuck in Dave’s head since the second grade due to grammatical corrections his school made to the song. 

14:05: Fourth of July family traditions growing up and sharing with your kids. Both of us want to raise proud Americans who can still love America while understanding the more complicated aspects of our history. 

22:49: The playlist debate. The dads start with “Clear Patriotic Anthems/ Celebrations of American Life.”

36:45: The next section is about “Blind Patriotism” songs, and yes, they talk a bit about post-9/11 reactionary country music.

43:30: And now, for a few Protest Songs because there is nothing more American than speaking truth to power. Just ask our kids. 

49:57: Songs that People Mistake for Patriotic Anthems but are Really About Something Else 

52:15: The Dad Life Sound Check – American Edition

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Mentioned In Episode:

References/Songs: 

Transcript

This week on Country Music Dads, we’re talking about America.

0:05

Fourth of July Memories

With the 250th anniversary coming up right now, we’re talking about red, white, and blue songs, the history of patriotism, and what it means to bring up proud American kids today. We’re the only parenting podcast with a twang.

So whether you’re a dad, a country music fan, or a little bit of both, we’re here to help where the red dirt road of country music meets the long white line of modern fatherhood. That’s where we live. We’ll see you there.

Greetings, listeners.

Howdy, wherever you may be, and happy birthday to America. Donnie, we’re celebrating a big milestone as a country this year. As you mentioned, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The Fourth of July has always been an important holiday in our country, an exuberant holiday, accompanied by parties, parades, fireworks, grilled up plates, and ice down coolers of classic Americana.

Country music is one of the few uniquely and unapologetically American art forms out there, and it seems to go hand in hand with the celebration of this magnitude, especially for country fans like you and me.

Oh yeah.

So on today’s episode, we’ll spend some time reflecting on some of the symbols, feelings, and traditions that go along with the Fourth of July, the traditions we remember growing up, the rituals we’re passing on to our kids, and the new ones we’re

creating in our families. Of course, we’ll touch on the twangy soundtrack that seems predestined for the summer’s festivities.

We’ll talk about patriotism in country music history and have a little debate about what kinds of songs make the ideal playlist for your Fourth of July barbecue. Donnie, how is the lead up to America 250 going for you? Are you ready?

I think I’ll be able to figure it out, yeah.

I don’t know if I’ll be celebrating any differently than I would otherwise, but we will celebrate America.

It seemed to sneak up on me, just like the summer tends to do. All of a sudden, it’s here and I haven’t had a lot of time to process the milestone.

Yeah, let’s see if we make it to the next one.

So what first comes to mind when you think of the Fourth of July?

Well, without question, it is a song, but it is not a country song. It is Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa.

My dad was in the marching band when he was in school, and he loves a good march, and he can’t get much better than John Philip Sousa.

And so every morning of the Fourth of July, my dad would put on that album of John Philip Sousa marches as loud as the stereo could go when I was a little kid. And it would be like getting shot out of a cannon, quite literally.

He’d been up for hours getting ready for the parade and all that stuff that happened when we used to live in New Jersey. And I was a real little kid, and I just remember Stars and Stripes forever waking us up. He turned it up to 11.

There was no other way to describe it. But it was good times. I mean, we had a big party.

It was like a brunch breakfast thing. And then we’d walk down to the end of the block where the small town parade was, and the high school bands would play.

And you’d have the car clubs who drive their cars down, and the municipal groups, and whatever it was. I mean, I was little, so all I remember is that it was a parade and it was awesome. So fire trucks, all that stuff.

It was fun. I mean, I have positive memories of the Fourth of July.

And positive memories of the song, too?

Oh, yeah. It still plays.

I appreciate that there’s a clarinet part as a former clarinet player. I didn’t make it all the way to marching band, but always the support instrument. It’s never featured, but in that song, it’s featured.

It’s later. You got to wait for it.

You got to wait for it.

Commit to the full song before you get to it.

Oh, we commit to the full song at all times. So what comes to mind when you think of it, maybe not on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, but just like on a regular Fourth of July.

In general.

Yeah, in general.

Regular Fourth of July. Really for me, it’s the party. Like it’s a summertime party.

Can’t always count on the weather to be great for Memorial Day, but the Fourth of July, it’s like you’re in the sweet spot of summer break. It’s a good reason to celebrate, get together with people.

I think about community also because usually there’s, you don’t just stay home for the Fourth of July. You go out, there’s parades, there’s a block party, there’s people on the streets lighting sparklers. There’s a community aspect to it that I like.

Every good party has a soundtrack.

What makes a good Fourth of July song for you?

Kim and I used to, and we still do, we host a Fourth of July adjacent party, usually.

4:46

What makes a great Fourth of July playlist song?

Usually it’s not on the Fourth because we don’t want to conflict. But for a few years in a row, we’re holding a good like July 3rd or July 5th party. And people come over, kids would come over.

And since it’s at my house, I would always play country music at my Fourth of July party. But I’m getting the sense though that like, it wasn’t because they were specifically Fourth of July songs. It was just, I played country music at my parties.

The Fourth of July seemed like a great excuse to do it. And so I wonder if people who aren’t country fans, if they maybe use this as the excuse to play country music at their Fourth of July parties.

Yeah, I think it’s possible. Country music allows people to explore stories, I think really effectively. And the Fourth of July is about stories, right?

It’s about telling the founding of our country and some of the the apocrypha of America, all the different things that we like to believe happened in one way or another.

And it’s a good time to allow for storytelling and country music really allows for that. For me, you know, Fourth of July music is broader than just country because a lot of that marching stuff is really important to my understanding of Americana.

Not necessarily the genre, but like the actual term. So you know, flags and Statue of Liberty and stuff and you know, ridiculous hats and fun shirts and the gear and the lights and you know, all the decorations and things like that.

The bunting, it’s an important part of how I grew up with my parents. And so for me, the music is, it has to have the right vibe.

There’s a really long history of patriotism in country music, specifically, but also across a number of genres and marches pretty obviously because they were military songs.

6:35

The history of country music and patriotism.

But the history really that we were going to get into here is quite cool.

There is a professor, Joseph Thompson, who wrote a really interesting book called Cold War Country, How Nashville’s Music Row and The Pentagon Created the Sound of American Patriotism.

He wrote an article in Time Magazine a few years ago, outlining the highest level of this and how that process took place. It gives a great snapshot of kind of that military connection, but it goes well beyond that.

In this article, he explains how the CMA, the Country Music Association, started, and it saw itself as a chamber of commerce for country music, kind of an advocacy group for country music, and how they worked closely with the US Department of Defense

and political groups and commercial interests and all that stuff. And it went together with the common goal of presenting country music as all-American.

This concept that it wasn’t always, it was uniquely American, of course, because it was born here from many different influences. But it wasn’t, it wasn’t blindly patriotic before then.

It was about Hill’s stories and Lolan’s stories and people and church music and cowboy stuff.

But when it really started to get codified as country music, taking away the Hillbilly music and taking away some of that other kind of perhaps negative connotations in the mid-50s and early 60s, it really kind of got solidified as all-American.

I think one of the cool kind of interesting stories that was in this article was that in the mid-1950s, Tennessee had a moderate Democratic governor named Frank Clement.

And at the time, Nashville was gaining prominence as Music City, you know, due to a number of different things, mostly the national footprint of the Grand Old Opry. And so he’s like, let’s make this really last and make this make this work.

And so he wanted to maximize this potential. And so he went about this.

Clement was talking to radio and television executives and said at this event in 1956 that today’s country music has captured and held the melodies of our forefathers as they trudged through the tall rhododendron covered smokies.

This music was the music of the pioneers, right? This whole concept that it was bringing personal taste and mixing it in with kind of patriotism and American identity wasn’t always there.

And he said in closing that I love country music because when I hear it, I hear America singing, which is I just kind of want to vomit a little bit. But it’s like a perfect kind of political thing.

It went on and kept doing this World War II, Korean War, all these stars went out and did these things and it’s just kind of crazy how far it all went.

Music Row teamed up with Armed Forces Radio and TV Services to get rid of disparaging language about country music. And they banned the words like Hick and Hillbilly to describe music on air. And they wouldn’t use those anymore.

So it was quite intentional.

This is a super interesting article. They will link it in the show notes. So you can catch up.

But that part about the Armed Forces Radio was really interesting to me because of my family’s history in the Armed Forces. So my grandfather was a career Marine. And I didn’t know him because he died when I was two years old.

But when I started listening to country music in adulthood, my mom would hear what I was listening to and say like, oh man, my dad used to listen to that stuff. And he was from Oklahoma. He was an Oakey.

And I always just assumed it was because of where he is from, that of course he listened to country music.

But when I heard about this, about how it was actually like a very specific marketing campaign to get the armed forces involved and listen to this stuff, I wonder how that impacted my family’s history and my grandfather and all that stuff.

Yeah, it’s all intentionally created, right? This concept that modern country music is a creation, is a marketing tool, it was created to sell records.

And for the most part, it was created to sell records to white folks because the music of the time was very similar. You had very similar styles of music between what people were listening to in the rural South, which is where a lot of that started.

This is the first recorded country music was in the South and was sold out of, for the most part, out of Atlanta. You had these hubs where there were communities that were very much separated, but the music was very similar.

You have what was created to sell a specific kind of music to a specific kind of person.

And it’s quite interesting and as Thompson kind of outlines, the reasons why this worked so well is that you had political interests and commercial interests across the spectrum of political belief, as long as they were pretty much the way they were

white. And so that’s one of the reasons why country music is seen as all American, because of the institutionalized racism that was in our country. Yay, America!

There’s nothing really any less American about blues or jazz or R&B, but it’s not as white as country music was, especially in that time period. So it’s quite an interesting kind of exploration of how it came to be.

I don’t think that it really is all the same today, but you get into all of these other parts of how country music is now utilized to portray an America that is a specific type of experience, you know, trucks and beer and I don’t even know what else.

I was going to say rock and roll, but that’s not it, but it sort of is, right? It is this picture of establishment American identity, and it’s part of that.

And I think that it’s kind of interesting that so many left, right and center claim it as part of their American identity, especially during celebratory times or times where you might want to look back and think about things a little bit differently.

So it’s an interesting history, a long, violent, complicated, dirty, harsh, and beautiful history.

Well said, man. Well said. Nice work.

But you know, it’s not all bad.

Another part of that article that I personally connected to was he mentioned Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA and he mentioned it in the context, it became a Gulf War anthem among the troops.

12:50

“God Bless the US” has been stuck in Dave’s head since the second grade.

That song has been stuck in my mind since I was in second grade because we sang that song for Grandparents Day. I still remember it because they corrected one line in the chorus.

They didn’t want us to say, there ain’t no doubt I love this land because it was bad grammar. So they made us say, there isn’t any doubt. I thought it sounded so bad.

How dare they change the lyrics. Lee Greenwood’s canonical work. So I sang it as loud as I could as Lee Greenwood intended it.

That was like the most rebellious moment of my childhood, I think. So that’s why it stuck out in my mind. Thank me later, Lee Greenwood.

You were a rebel.

I didn’t realize the connection because that was probably during the Gulf War when I was singing at Grandparents Day.

The time frame lines up.

It does.

And I love history, man.

It’s a whole thing. So from the general history to our specific history, what are some traditions you remember growing up?

14:05

Fourth of July family traditions

And how are you looking to keep them going with your kids?

I mentioned my mom’s dad was the career marine who died when I was very young. We would always go to his wife’s house, my grandmother’s house, for the Fourth of July. They met in Okinawa.

My grandmother is Okinawan. They met when he was stationed at the base in Okinawa. So it’s a big part of my history.

But that’s not the reason we go to grandma’s house. We went to the grandma’s house because she insisted we come over on the Fourth of July. And Grandma Matiko got her way.

The smell that I remember was the charcoal barbecue that my dad would fire up in the back. And then the main event, the fireworks in the street.

And this was in Santa Ana, one of the few neighborhoods around Southern California that still sells the fireworks on the street corners. And I loved it. It was the best.

I remember as I got older, leaving Santa Ana while this was all going on was a pretty intense experience.

A little harrowing.

Yeah, just explosions right by your rear tires. But I was really looking forward to it. My uncle and my dad were always responsible for responsibly lighting the middle of the street fireworks.

And I still felt safe. I was not a risk-taking kid. I wasn’t jumping over the fireworks.

It was so relaxing and nice, warm summer night watching the little sparklers go off. It was the best. I graduated from that.

And in my, I mean, this wasn’t, I guess I was, I was a grown up in my 20s, but I didn’t feel very grown up. But those were the years when the more broish exuberance and excesses of the holiday were being enjoyed.

I lived in Hermosa Beach for a good portion of that. And Fourth of July in Hermosa Beach is quite the experience. For people our age, I would not recommend going to Hermosa Beach for the Fourth of July.

But at the time, it was, that was like the main holiday that they celebrate down there. There’s actually, I wrote a Whiskey Riff article during my Whiskey Riff days, about the Hermosa Beach Iron Man.

One-mile paddle on a surfboard, a one-mile run on the sand, and then you crush a six-pack of beer as fast as you can. America. Celebrating freedom by freely drinking on the beach, which is definitely illegal.

I never participated, I just watched this unfold. It’s gross, but a tradition unlike any other.

That sounds like a lot of fun.

Check it out if you’re free, man. I’m sure they’re doing it.

I think I’ll skip that one for any number of reasons.

Fourth of July with the Cutlers.

Yeah. What was that like? My family did it big.

My grandfather, who I’m named after, died before I was born, but he was in the military in World War II. He was a artillery spotter in Europe and saw some stuff that was pretty heavy. I saw his pictures when I got older.

My dad always took it very seriously to have a big Fourth of July party, with the carved watermelon and the flag cakes and all that stuff. My mom is the daughter of two immigrants who escaped Nazi Germany.

For us, it was very much a part of our growing up. We had a big banner that we put up, another Fourth of July at the Cutlers.

It’s intense, from waking up with Stars and Stripes Forever, to the parade and the big party of people who were there, enjoying the adult punch very early in the morning. It was really something.

It’s interesting that you remember the Lee Greenwood singing. I think the Gulf War shifted my understanding of it a little bit. I couldn’t figure out why people were marching in the street with flags against what we were doing.

I was like, we were little kids. It kind of changed my perspective of it. Around that time, a little bit later, we moved to LA from the East Coast and it was getting older.

Figuring out who I was, I was a little bit more rebellious than you are. There were times where I didn’t engage as much as I once did. It ebbed and flowed as I got older.

There are a couple of times where I was just like, I can’t get myself to celebrate what’s going on here. Those types of things.

I can imagine that happens for people who are deeply engaged on any side of the political reality we find ourselves in this country. But for me, it was just too much. But I’m back.

I think that to go on to what I want to bring up for my kids is like, I want them to love this country. It has done great things for our family. But I also want them to be aware of all of it.

It’s not just fireworks and hot dogs and beer chugging Iron Man events. There’s some pretty hairy stuff in our history that we should be aware of and willing to confront. And I think that it doesn’t take away from the celebration.

In fact, I think it adds to it, if we’re being honest and real. There’s a lot to be done. But for sure, we will be waking up to Stars and Stripes forever, really loud on July 4th.

I love that that’s the one that gets continued, I can just imagine.

It is like full blast from the downbeat.

There’s no working up to it. It’s just all there.

My oldest son is starting to get curious about history, probably because he’s learned about it in school. And it’s just become a little bit more real time as he goes into third grade.

So we just traveled as a family to the East Coast and saw the site where Washington crossed Delaware, famously.

That’s cool.

And he was the only kid in our family that was locked in on what the tour guide was saying and the maps and all this stuff and imagining what it was like to be one of these young men fighting.

And in particular, the history that he’s locked into is the Japanese internment here in the US because we have some books that I think maybe his grandparents gave to him.

But he’s been really studying those because a lot of them are from the kid’s perspective, imagining what it was like to be interned. And I’m with you on that.

I’m happy that he’s learning about that because he’s gonna hear a version of history at school and he’s gonna hear stuff from us.

It’s an important part of our family’s history as Japanese Americans on both my side and on Kim’s side to realize what happened in pretty recent history in our own state of California.

It’s pretty wild that happened then and arguably has been forgotten enough to allow for certain things to be taking place in the country today.

And as we are a country music podcast as well as a parenting podcast, there’s this great song by a artist named No-No Boy.

As part of his PhD thesis, he wrote a song called The Best Goddamn Band in Wyoming, which went deep into the swing band that was in one of the internment camps that was up in Wyoming. And it chronicled his Japanese grandmother’s story.

He was not Japanese, but it was a family friend who served as that type of person in his life. And the song is like a history lesson. And it’s also catchy as all get out.

I’ll listen to it from time to time, you know, like four times in a row. And I’ll be like, it’s just stuck in my head.

I can’t wait to check it out. I had not heard of that before you brought it up.

It’s a great song. And it’s one of those things where you’re tapping your foot, you’re enjoying the song, the melody is great. And you’re like, I can’t believe this happened.

You sit there thinking, how could people let this happen? And we actually all know how people could let that happen. Because it’s one of those things that it doesn’t just happen somewhere else.

It also happens here.

And I think that’s something that’s important, especially when you start thinking about celebrations of a much longer period of time, like the 250th, is that if we’re really honest about what our history has told us, we can learn from, we can get

better. The idea that America is an incomplete project, that it’s always striving to be better than it was, more inclusive, prouder, more beautiful, it’s trying to do more.

We need to know that we have some pretty awful history that we need to be honest about. And if we embrace it, I think we’ll be better off than if we sweep it under the rug and ignore it.

And that’s something that comes up a lot, a lot of the songs that we have listed here that we will argue about vigorously.

Let’s get to it, man.

22:49

Clear Patriotic Anthems/ Celebrations of American Life

Like, we’re planning the party. What is on the playlist?

We got a big list here of things to go back and forth on, so I broke them up into a couple of categories.

And some of them, I think, legitimately should make the list because even across the categories, it gives you something to think about, even while you enjoy and celebrate. Our first sections are longest.

Clearly, patriotic anthems slash celebrations of American life. Then you have your blind, jingoistic patriotism. Rah, rah, rah, go war.

God bless America and nobody else.

And… I mean, those might be the first country songs that come to your mind, too.

Yes, they are. And then you get your protest songs, which may also be part of your first grab. And then I have a section of songs that I added to this list called Songs People Mistake for Patriotic Anthems But Are Really About Something Else.

And there are two songs in that one. We’ll get to that later. That’s my favorite category.

So let’s start with the positive ones in clearly patriotic anthems and celebrations of American life. Starting off way back, speaking of Okies, folks from Oklahoma, Woody Guthrie, this land is your land. A classic.

But does it belong on the playlist?

It’s, if you’re looking for vibes for your party, I don’t know. I was happy that at the elementary school, they had the kids singing this during one month this year.

They have one of the teachers comes out and he plays the guitar and he has a song every month. So this was one of them. You didn’t get to the later verses.

That was a little heavy.

Yeah, he stopped short of the more biting verses of that song.

It’s so timeless and quintessentially American. And he’s talking about California even in this song.

I don’t know if I’m crushing Miller lights to This Land is Your Land. I’m just saying, it’s not like jumping in the pool. I’m not growing up a hot dog.

You gotta have some balance.

This is when you’re hydrating in between.

So chorus light is what you’re saying.

Yeah, that’s right. The next one on our list kind of falls in the same category. Ragged Old Flag, Johnny Cash.

If your crowd is into spoken word. You were mentioning the story songs in Country Music. At the Fourth of July party, I’m not really in it for the story, I don’t think.

No.

I’m in it for the environment.

But that song, we’re talking about the checkered history of our country. Whenever I hear that one, it’s kind of emotional, because you’re like, man, I’ve been through so many things as a country. We can do this, whatever is in front of us.

I mean, I think if we’re going to be going to take a look at that one too, like the Waylon Jennings song, America, is another one that you could kind of go in both directions on that.

And I think there’s one section of it that I think is kind of an interesting one. It goes, and my brothers are all black and white and yellow too, and the red man is right to expect a little from you, promise, and then follow through America.

It’s an interesting aside for the whole thing because the rest of it is very much a straightforward patriotic song, and I’d argue that’s a pretty straightforward patriotic message within it.

Perhaps not what you would expect from maybe the next section of songs, or maybe you wouldn’t expect it from Waylon, but I think that then you don’t know who Waylon Jennings was. So we can spit some fire there if we want.

But I think it’s an interesting one, and I like that one because I think that it splits the difference between the heavier messages of a more mature understanding and a upbeat early 80s country song, which is fun. I could drink some beer to that.

The tempo is starting to catch up to the vibe that we’re looking for at the party, but you read those couple of lines, he sneaks into the middle of the song, give it a little bit more depth that might make you stop before the next step.

Yeah, American.

The next song we have here, Born Country, Alabama. Now we’re getting into the vibe I think I’m looking for. Where’s the closest person I can cheers?

Perhaps even a fist bump.

Oh yeah.

I think this is where we get into kind of the divergence, right?

A patriotic anthem versus a celebration of American life. Where’s that line? And where’s that line intentionally created within country music?

It’s right there in Alabama, hard to beat, probably top three country music band of all time. I’m sure folks would argue number one, they’d be wrong, that’s Turnpike Troubadours, but they are great and they made great songs.

There’s so many country songs that just describe American life.

If you go and peruse any playlist out there for Fourth of July music, a bunch of them are just your standard run of the mill country songs, but they happen to hit on those themes that we’re so familiar with.

Born Country, isn’t there a line in there about being proud of your country? Yeah, at least they throw in a line.

But is it a capital C country or is it lowercase country? Is it proper noun, my country, or is it like the country? I’m a country.

That is true.

I think that’s the point, right?

Yeah.

Speaking of things that aren’t exactly the point, we got to go with Fourth of July with Number 4 and TH of July, by Shooter Jennings because that song kicks ass.

Well done. That one gets played loud on the Fourth of July in my house, usually driving from our house to parents’ house for said barbecue. That’s when it gets played.

My wife loves it. My kids love it. It is a must have on our playlist.

If you don’t like it, that’s too bad because this is America and we’re going to listen to Shooter Jennings.

No notes, man. No notes.

Come on. Also, you got George Jones sampled on the end of that. It’s just so great.

But that one I think is exactly the point, is that country music makes you feel like America, and that’s the whole point of the song, right? It’s like you’ve had too much rock and roll, and I need a little bit.

I need to put that O back in country, live a little bit more through the life that I grew up with as opposed to the life that I chose, and it’s making you feel nostalgic. It makes you feel comfortable. It does all those things.

But that song kicks so much ass. It’s so good. Two former guests of the podcast on that one, with Ted Russell Kamp on bass and Shooter Jennings, not to name drop at all, but completely shameless plug.

Interviews will be linked in the show notes.

Always.

We will find a way to put that into every single one. It’s such a good song, and it does two things.

It links you back to this deep feeling of Americana, but also the deep history of country music and commercial country music with referential treatment to George Jones.

Even he’s like, you guys are a bunch of punks, where’s my mic on the recording, which I just think is just fabulous. Anyway, I could talk about that song for a long time, because I think the imagery in it is pretty spectacular, and it’s a good one.

This next subsection here is a more modern take, a little bit more present day stuff in this one. I want to hear your take on this one, because I believe you added this to our list, is Americana by Ryan Bingham. It’s on the new album.

It’s a great song. I don’t know if it fits for a number of reasons. So I want to hear your argument.

I first heard it last summer.

He played it before the album came out. I want to say he released this as a single on, I don’t know if it was the Fourth of July, but it was some kind of patriotic holiday. Dave again from Post.

It was July 1st, 2025.

Bingo.

It was almost like he made this song specifically for like, I need like a good party song to kind of fit in with the new era of his life. He’s like newly married, seems to be doing well. He’s happy.

He’s not the sad cowboy anymore. Let’s have a party. It kind of surprises you because it’s not like, it’s not your typical like beer drinking, tailgate party type of a party.

He’s talking about marijuana, gummy bears, and psilocybin, a more colorful way of celebrating a life that he’s enjoying. It starts off with that he lost his job today because his boss can’t afford to pay him anymore.

It seems like it’s made for the right now experience. People are struggling out there, and we’re still expected to go celebrate, and so he’s gonna numb his senses and do that. The song just always just makes me smile.

It’s for an adult crowd, so you can’t have this at the kid’s Fourth of July party.

Yeah. I mean, if it’s in the background enough, you probably get away with it, but this is the thing. I think there’s enough tongue-in-cheek in this one.

I will not read the last stanza of this poem, but I will read a middle one, where it’s, we’re cooking hot dogs and hamburgers. We got lots of dogs and lots of kids, which is one of your favorite lines.

And fireworks for all our friends, because we’re Americana. We’re gonna do what we wanna. We support our troops, salute our flag.

No one gonna make us sad. Aw, play that sad fiddle. Which I think is, it’s almost too on the nose, in my opinion.

The last stanza, which I will paraphrase, we love country music and television. We all know a conspiracy might just be our reality, because we don’t get mad. We don’t make a fuss, because life’s just too short to give to psilocybin.

So I think that this is a real interesting take on his perspective, because as we all know, Ryan Bingham was a fairly significant Texas country musician prior to his time on Yellowstone, but he became a giant star on Yellowstone.

We love country music and television. It’s his life. We all know a conspiracy, but it might be our reality.

It’s where we are today, right? It’s this division in the country. We don’t get mad.

We don’t give a fuss, because life’s too short. It feels autobiographical in a sense. I don’t know.

I think it’s a great, it’s a great song. Not sure if it’s on my playlist.

There’s kind of a sense that maybe he’s trolling us a little bit with it.

A little bit, right?

It seems a little right here and there. I love that stuff though, because if you just listen to it on the surface, this is great and a little bit edgy. I like that.

This is for the illegal fireworks show.

How about that?

Yeah, there we go.

When we drive up into the canyon and the people are being so stupid and shooting off fireworks, but we’re also enjoying them.

We try to get up above the valley floor here and look down on the valley and see five fireworks shows at once, which is cool because for our youngest, the sound is too much for them and it scares them.

Being that far away from it and being at eye level, a cool experience. Problem with that is that people are shooting off fireworks along the canyon roads, which for anyone who knows Los Angeles and canyon roads, that’s not a great idea.

Things tend to burn down. Moving on from really stupid things to a somewhat straightforward winning song here. I can’t imagine an argument against this.

American Saturday Night by Brad Paisley.

Just another American Saturday Night. It’s got the tempo for your vibe that you’re looking for. It’s celebrating the diversity of America, the kind of message you’d expect from Paisley.

It’s fun, man.

It’s a win.

Good. No arguments.

No arguments. And I would say similarly, maybe with a little bit more salt and pepper on it. Middle of America by Haily Whitters featuring American Aquarium.

Also a good song, solid, enjoyable. Can’t make much of an argument against that one either.

We’re like filling out the meat and potatoes or the hot dogs and burgers of your playlist with these.

Indeed. Now here, I have a little bit of trouble with this one, God’s Country by Blake Shelton. Has nothing to do with Blake Shelton though.

I don’t think he makes great music, but this one opens us up to the is every country song a song about America? So, I don’t know.

This is my pick for the list. It’s not even necessarily because I love the song. It’s because Hardy wrote the song.

I want more people to realize this. Hardy wrote it. He wrote it for Blake.

I think it actually helped to save Blake Shelton’s music career. He was having a good career as a celebrity, but he wasn’t putting out new music until this song came up and became a big hit.

I don’t really think the subject matter isn’t particularly patriotic. Honestly, like a lot of songs that Hardy writes, it’s like a list of a bunch of country things.

But Hardy loves to remind people at his live shows, and I’ve been to quite a few of those, that he wrote the song and he plays it at his shows. Hardy has decided that this is his patriotic song.

He did a live at Red Rocks album, so you can hear the live version of the song on his album.

I could.

You could. He loves to start a very raucous USA chant. Hardy’s audience, they are eating up a good opportunity to give a USA chant.

So they’re just waiting the whole concert. Yeah. So I think it’s the delivery that makes it a patriotic song.

Blake Shelton’s delivery, probably not.

I think that brings us to our next topic pretty well. A blind chanting of terminology. Let’s get into the blind patriotism songs.

That’s definitely more appropriate spot for God’s Country, I think.

The Hardy version.

Some of these are going to land on your list, whether you like it or not. This one probably won’t because I did some research and I was like, I was looking for more women to put onto this list.

36:45

“Blind Patriotism” songs

Shockingly, not as many as you’d expect. That’s sarcasm for anyone who didn’t pick it up. God Bless America Again by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty is awful.

It’s an awful song. It’s just bad. I listen to about, I don’t know, I listen to it.

I try to listen to the songs all the way through carefully, and I did listen to it all the way through, but I did not listen carefully after the first minute and a half of this song. That’s not a great song.

It’s not going to bring you the vibes you want. It used to be great, and now it’s not. It’s like, oh.

This was 1969.

Things were hard, and we made it through, and now all these hippies with their long hair.

Oh, shut. If we’re going to do something like that, let’s get some more fun.

Yeah. We’ve lost God’s blessing. Let’s release this song and we’ll win it back.

Speaking of, you got to have Lee Greenwood on the list.

I don’t really like Lee Greenwood personally. You can’t not have that song. It’s going to be on every broadcast of fireworks no matter what.

You might as well lean in to God Bless the USA.

I’ve been leaning into it since I was in second grade. I can still, word for word, bad grammar and everything. Oh yeah.

An instant classic for all the right and wrong reasons.

We do have to take a little bit of a detour into something a little more serious here. There is a ton of scholarship regarding post-911 country music in this country.

Massive terrorist attacks shifted our entire culture, and it made it a very strange place to be for a long time because we were used to not having to worry about those types of things.

All of a sudden, we were attacked by people who didn’t want us to live our lives, and people were confused of how to express that.

Some people, Toby Keith among them, was pretty clear how he wanted to express himself in that particular time period, and the Chicks were also a group of people who understood how they wanted to express themselves in that time period.

Both of them expressed themselves, one group won, other group didn’t.

The Chicks were kicked off country radio for saying that they were disappointed and ashamed of President Bush and what he was doing in the Iraq War and after 9-11, and Toby Keith lived on until he passed as a stalwart of country radio, and still is,

even after his passing. With that particularly serious part of the way, courtesy of the red, white, and the angry American, that song kicks ass. It does, man. You can’t ignore it.

The politics of it are gross. I don’t like blind patriotism. I think that it is immature, but that song is frigging great, man.

For anyone who hasn’t listened to it, I highly recommend the 60 songs that explain the 90s, Cola and our parentheses, the 2000s.

The episode about this particular song is fabulous, and Rob Harvella does a great job of threading the needle about how awesome the song is and how troubling it is.

I think a lot of middle schoolers learned what the word jingoistic meant when considering this song. It is a warmongering song. It just is.

That said, I’m going to pound a beer when I hear this song. There’s no two ways around it.

Yeah, absolutely.

It is conflicting.

That is a great podcast episode. We’ll also link that in the show notes. It kind of reflected something we were all feeling.

We were feeling defensive. It resonated with a lot of people at the time. And it resonates at a good Fourth of July party, too, because it’s such a banger.

You forget the history and the message behind it. It’s hard not to get a little bit fired up.

Oh, and justice will be served and the battle will rage. This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage. And you’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A because we’re going to put a boot in your a** the American way.

It’s like Shakespearean. I’m pretty sure that was iambic pentameter. It wasn’t.

That kicked off his era where he had cornered the market on patriotic music.

It’s like you hear Toby Keith’s voice and you assume it’s about America. There were those photos circulating on social media not too long ago. People in foreign countries celebrating throwing America parties.

Red Solo Cups, that was the first prop they had. All thanks to good old Toby.

Our culture isn’t your costume. Where do you fall in the Alan Jackson song?

Where were you when the world stopped turning? That’s going to bring the vibe down. I’m just a singer of simple songs.

Also just like wildly ignorant.

Similarly, and I think Rob Harvilla talked about this, he was similarly just trying to respond to all the uncertainty in the world at the time after the 9-11 attacks.

If he had to write the song again, he probably wouldn’t have the line about not knowing the difference between Iraq and Iran, but it rhymed.

And to me, it was just a poorly worded way of saying that he’s just a simple dude in the middle of America somewhere and why would someone who lives here not know anything about anyone else? Too far from the coast and you don’t know about that stuff?

I just, I don’t buy that. I think that’s an unfair. I don’t want to put that on anyone.

I’m also not an Alan Jackson fan. I know that’s like sacrilegious, but I find his music to be pretty meh.

You can speak your mind. I don’t agree with you on this one, but say what you want.

I’ve had long, long conversations with other podcast hosts about this, including our friends from Canada and the Country Country Podcast. I just don’t love it. I like some mainstay 90s country artists.

I don’t love Alan Jackson. I think he’s all a little bit too serious. Because like Chattahoochee, that’s the only super fun song I can think of by him.

That could be on your playlist, but-

Gone Country.

There’s like snark in that. You’re dismissing people who are experiencing things. I feel like he could have sing that about us.

Maybe he was.

He doesn’t care.

Alan, if you’re listening to this, no, I don’t like your music. Come on the podcast and defend yourself. Next section.

This is probably a section that I feel a little more comfortable in. Personally, both-

No Alan Jackson songs in this section?

Not so much. These are the Protest Songs. Some of them will bring you down, and some of them work great for a barbecue.

43:30

Protest Songs

Then again, I think they’re here as a counterpoint. The first one on this list, I think, is a great song and is a smart play for a playlist that you may just kind of have in the background.

Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore by John Prine. It’s pointed, but it’s upbeat and it’s fast, and you could have it on in the background and you’d be like, hey, that’s snarky. Okay, cool.

Then you can continue to play volleyball or jump in pools or grill things or light stuff on fire.

Next up are the Alan Jackson songs.

Yeah, exactly. You could get away with it. I feel like that won’t be totally appropriate.

It’s a good smart song.

You get some points, people listening, paying attention at the Fourth of July party.

It is a rebuke of the Blind Patriotism that we addressed before. Perhaps you put it after courtesy of the red, white and blue. Point to counterpoint.

The next song on the list, Isbell, you’re the Isbell stan here, man.

So you got to talk about Dress Blues.

Dress Blues is an honest war anthem. It talks about how young kids go away to fight wars and they die. And then they come back in pine boxes.

The old guys from the Corps show up in their military gear and that the buntings up and the flags are up and there were no protesters. It was just a sad, sad day. And it’s a beautiful song.

It’s a sad song and has no place on a Fourth of July playlist. However, it’s an important piece of Americana. Oftentimes there is a very stark divide of like, this is good, this is bad.

And both sides see it that way. And arguably Jason falls a little bit to the left and has aligned himself with Democratic politicians and causes. But this song really is a song about mourning the loss of a soldier.

It’s not about the politics. It’s about the person. And I think that we oftentimes forget that.

And, you know, as we talked about with Nathan Evans Fox, the politics are highly personal. It isn’t some abstraction. It’s real.

It’s human life. And when we lose somebody, regardless of how, we should remember that they were a person. And I think that song does that.

And that’s an important part of American history, too. Yeah, these are all real downers as I look at them.

Yeah.

Next up.

Let’s keep the party going. All American Made by Margo Price. She makes a great protest song.

She does.

Compare this to, say, like, Made in America by Toby Keith, like, the play on words and just the difference in what she’s referring to as, I think, just really clever.

Because what you’re expecting from a song called All American Made, those are all the good stuff that we’re so proud of.

It’s the balance that we’ve been talking about this whole episode, between the parts of American history that we’re proud of and where we’ve come, through all the ups and downs, and the things that we’re not proud of and we have to own.

Yep, speaking of that, history repeats itself.

American Aquarium.

Man, we are just picking downers, dude.

This one’s very upbeat, though. They get a new album out. If people are at your Fourth of July party and maybe they’re not listening to the words, this one’s going to keep the vibe going.

But if they do happen to listen to the words, there’s an important message for our time. Like it’ll be BJ Boram is not being shy about.

Okay, I want everyone to know who’s going to hear this. I want to throw up in my mouth as I’m going to say this. It’s just going to make me want to puke.

Just I’m saying that right. Try This in a Small Town also belongs in the protest. Protest Song section.

Why, Donnie?

Look, the idea here is that the song is a protest against some perceived affront to what is particularly poor reading of what real America should be.

There are a number of songs like that, but this one was on the top of country charts for a long time and was extremely popular, was one of the top stream songs when it came out.

It’s an awful song and it has a terrible message, but there’s a certain place for it. I think we’d be remiss not to include it in this type of a conversation. It does represent a particular point of view.

When we’re thinking about the broader picture of where we are in this country, this is a part of that. So without getting into too much more about it, because I really will vomit, it’s a protest song about problems perceived in this country.

I’m done talking about that.

I was as surprised as you are, listeners, to hear Donnie put this one on the list. But mostly because when it came out, it seemed like the message behind the song was, don’t protest.

Correct.

So it’s strange for me to think about it as a protest song, when it seemed like the whole message was like, go home, don’t be in the streets anymore. But I see your point, you’re protesting the protesters.

Yeah. It’s the shut up and sing song, the whole concept, keep your politics to yourself, let me go do this. That statement is inherently political.

We could probably talk about that for an entire episode. Being able to tell somebody to not take something personally, that’s political, it’s a point of extreme privilege, and I need to move on.

You’re not having fun at the party anymore.

No, I’m not having fun at the party anymore. But let’s have some more fun at the party, but perhaps misinterpret it. Here is the songs people mistake for patriotic anthems that are really about something else.

There are two winners of this one, and I think they both take home the gold. It’s a shared win. One, not so much a country song, though it has been interpreted as such in many different great anthologies.

49:57

Songs that People Mistake for Patriotic Anthems but are Really About Something Else

The first one, Independence Day by Martina McBride. This is not a song about Independence Day. This is a song about leaving an abusive relationship.

It’s what it is. Listen to the damn song, folks.

Yeah. Maybe this is like the Die Hard is to Christmas movies as Independence Day is to Fourth of July songs.

Shut your mouth.

It takes place on Independence Day. It’s part of the song.

Okay.

Are you telling me that Die Hard is not a Christmas movie? I’m just saying that’s the main claim is it happens on Christmas party.

Knock it into that.

Save this for later.

We’ll revisit this in December.

Take the sun flying.

The other song that people mistake for patriotic anthems that are really about something else is Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteena. It’s not a patriotic. It’s an anti-war rallying cry.

Listen to the damn words, people. Come on. Great song.

It’s on my playlist. But it is not about America being awesome.

No.

The first line, come on. The first time you got kicked is when you hit the ground. Come on.

It isn’t about it. It’s about how there’s no jobs and you went to war and no one’s going to support you. This is not about how great this country is.

But I will say one of the greatest versions of it was on Dead Bandstown, Born in the USA revisited by a whole bunch of fantastic artists. It was done in the early 2000s.

Born in the USA was done by Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, who at the time were together. It is a eerie, eerie, creepy, sad version of that song.

You’re not mistaking that for good vibes for the July party.

There are no good vibes at all.

There you have it, our picks for the best country songs for the Fourth of July. Bring it up for the party, bring it down when you want people to leave party.

We’ll move on to our recurring segment, the Dad Life Soundcheck, where we talk about a song that is touching us right now, either as dads or just as fans or just as patriots. What’s been speaking to you recently, Donnie?

52:15

The Dad Life Sound Check – American Edition

I have gone back through the Sturgill Simpson first few albums.

I’m not really sure why. I’ve been doing a lot more driving here during the summer, as there are summer camps that are further away than school. And so I put on an album that is about length, the drive there and back.

And Call to Arms has been speaking to me. And don’t even notice the drone because we’re all too busy looking down at our phones. I think it speaks to me as I live vicariously on Instagram.

It’s a banger of a song. It is a protest song. Don’t get me wrong.

But you’re like, yeah, I like it. And I got to tell you, when you listen to the first two albums of Sturgill’s albums, people are arguing about how Johnny Beluk’s guys is such a huge departure. They aren’t listening to the music.

So I’ll let that be a statement of a different sort. And I like that song, you know, keeping with our America edition of the Dad Life soundcheck.

I like a Sturgill Simpson song about fighting against the perception of being a proud and happy veteran and questioning your patriotism as a patriotic duty.

Nice pick. Yeah, Donnie was just doing a little dance. You couldn’t hear his dance, but…

There are horns in it too.

The horns really just bring it to another level. Back to Stars and Stripes Forever, marching band.

I’ve also picked one that fits with the theme. I don’t know if it’s speaking to me necessarily, but it’s timely if you’ve been paying attention to Country Music News. Florida Georgia Line is getting back together, folks.

So to help celebrate that, my pick for My Dad Left Soundcheck is I Love My Country by FGL. Maybe not their most patriotic song, but you can play it at your Fourth of July party.

What a comprehensive, wonderful list of things that you would enjoy at a country, Fourth of July party. That’s what pretty much makes up the song.

So in honor of their comeback and also just to like for a full palate cleanse after all of the seriousness in this episode, let’s just have a good time and put FGL on and not try and think too hard to end things.

Yeah. Maybe we go out on Cruise, just take it all the way to the end.

Yeah, the original. I feel like they were with I Love My Country. I think they’re trying to recreate the joy of Cruise, but it’s like you can’t improve a perfect song.

Yeah.

It’s like Shibuti’s latest song is like, hey, that bar song thing was great. Let’s do another one of those. Bar song which just went 12 times platinum today.

Let’s do it again. Speaking of doing it again, thanks for listening. The best way to support us is to subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or whatever platform you use.

If you want to see new episodes and more content delivered straight to your email inbox, please subscribe to our newsletter which we promise to use. It’s countrymusictads.substack.com.

You can find everything we do on our website countrymusictads.com, and we’d love to hear what you think. So send us comments, suggestions, friendly banter, or not so friendly banter on Instagram, countrymusictads or via email.

It’s countrymusictads at gmail.com.

Stay tuned for our next episode and until next time, whether you’re at the dance hall, the playground, or just getting your house ready for the America 250 party. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll talk to you soon.

Yeah, America.

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