Old saying.
There is no "I" in "team".
New saying.
There is no "they" in "they".
Or "them" in "them", depending on your past, present or future tense status.
Dean Dillon is an accomplished Nashville songwriter with dozens of hit country songs on his resume'. George Jones, Kenny Chesney, Brooks and Dunn, Toby Keith, Blake Shelton and LeeAnn Womack are just a few of the country singing star names that Dillon can truthfully drop when and if name dropping is called for.
Dean's main claim to songwriting fame, though, is that he is the composer of many, if not most, of the number one hits recorded by one of the icons of country music, George Strait.
"Unwound", "The Chair", "Marina Del Ray", just a few of the Strait super hits where you will find the name "Dean Dillon" in the little parenthesis just under the titles on the CD covers.
And, come May, you will be able to see and hear the story of Dillon's rise to country songwriting royalty in a documentary entitled "Tennessee Whiskey". For those interested in hearing the Dean Dillon story, the film is cleverly subtitled, "The Dean Dillon Story."
In conjunction with the release of the documentary, interviews with Dean are showing up here and there in print and/or online media. One such interview, published online at Wide Country.com finds Dean reflecting not only on his career and his success with Strait, but the current state...of country music. And as you might expect from a basic value, down home Tennessee boy, Dillon doesn't fancy up his feelings about how things are musically in Music City.
“Every song is about the same damn thing. Daisy Dukes, trucks, beer, lake banks, time, after time, after time, after time. The bro country thing started 12 years ago, and 12 years later, they’re still singing the same things. Do they not evolve? Get older? Get married? Have kids? Get jobs and shift in society? There’s no movement in it.”
Having spent more than a few years working the same streets and song business as Dillon myselfg, I was both agreeable, and a little amused, at Dean's observation.
First, yeah, what he said.
Second, though, it's not a new perspective nor a new expression of that perspective. Criticism of banality in country music, combined with the oft heard lament that "country just ain't country anymore" traces back, at least in my own memory banks, to the mid 70's when what was derisively referred to as the "countrypolitian" sounds of borderline Vegas acts like Kenny Rogers and Lee Greenwood, among many others, was anathema to purists who were weaned on the pioneering Nashville music of George and Tammy and Loretta and, going even further back, Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells and Roy Acuff and, of course, the Holy Grail of Grand Ole Opry alumni, Hank Williams.
During that 70's period of a more pop/EZ listening approach to the tried and true, the town known as Music City itself saw the birth of an additional nickname that is, depending on your musical loyalties, either right on the money or an affront to all things sacred, "NashVegas."
Today, with country music acts actually doing "residencies" in the actual Las Vegas and the, again, depending, buzz or blasphemy of CMA Award shows featuring entertainment by, among other less than down home country folk, the Backstreet Boys, those who love, and long for, the good ol' days of the good ol' boys doing the Friday and Saturday night Grand Ol' Opry are blunt and boisterous in their condemnation of country music's "new fangled ways".
Dillon's point, meanwhile, is really more of a critique of songwriting content than it is of the cast of characters who inhabit the country stages and airwaves. And, on that point, as a broadcaster, songwriter and, simply, consumer, I'm totally more "fer" him than "agin" him.
Dillon rightly points out that the songwriters seem to be stuck in a space/time loop in which nothing exists in that universe except the aforementioned trucks, beer, lake banks and Daisy Dukes.
Well, Dean, I'm right there with you, buddy. But I'll see your same damn things and raise you a same old song. The result, for my money, of, at least to some extent, nothing more or less than laziness.
The composer/lyricist equivalent of what Seth MacFarlane, among others, do in contemporary television. When you can't think of anything uniquely or cleverly or innovativley funny to offer your audience, just fall back on the tried and true giggle generators from generations past.
Tits, dicks, fucking and flatulence.
Not necessarily in that listing of laviciousness.
In Nashville songwriting rooms, the prevailing winds have, for a lot of years as Dean points out, been blowing in the direction of "why spend hours trying to articulate the blessings of love or the layers of heartache in the blues, when we can just start counting the royalty payments by cranking out yet another ode to a big beautiful badonkadonk?"
And, of course, if big asses aren't the "in demand" item at the moment, surely someone on Music Row is looking to sing about trucks, beer, lake banks....or Daisy Dukes.
At the same time, though, there's a hidden fly in the ointment of Dillon's disappointment. And my own go-to rationalization that laziness is at the core of the conversion of country to crap.
Put simply, songwriters are only giving the masses what they want.
And to those who are inclined to rebut and debate that premise, let me offer you a pretty set in stone rule in the category of basic marketing.
If people don't want it, it won't sell. And if doesn't sell, it won't be around very long.
Dean Dillon dates the demise of depth in country songwriting as beginning 12 years ago with the arrival of "bro" country. Bro country, for the neophyte or non-interested, is defined as country music that appeals to not so much an age group or even specific gender as a certain mindset. Bro being the non-gender specific equivalent of the non-Nashville world's "dude". And "bro country" being the kind of songs that, when being described, not only appeal to those of the mentioned mindset, but also, both ironically and comically, imply, if not outright call for, the use of the term" bro" as in "hey, bro, check out that truck"...."hey, bro, hold my beer"..."hey, bro, hold my beer while I check out that truck down there on the bank of the lake"....and, of course, "hey, bro, hold my beer while I check out that truck down there on the bank of the lake where that hot mama with the bootylicious badonkadonk is killin' those Daily Dukes."
Not exactly "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", right?
But the audience, at least the pay for the downloads, pay for the concerts, pay for the t-shirts audience isn't clamoring for Hank. They don't see anything amiss or askew with Backstreet Boys mingled amongst their Blake Sheltons, nothing but pride and joy at Carrie U or Miranda L or Kelsea B sharing a stage with Queen Bey.
Just like your father's Oldsmobile, this ain't yo mama's country music.
And what the hell is an Oldsmobile while we're at it?
Numerous articles, books, op/eds and essays have addressed, and are addressing, a "dumbing down" of the culture in general, a generational one step forward, three steps back in terms of America's preferences for music, literature, television programming, motion picture presentation, actually, the cultural facet of the culture itself. Not much of a stretch to assume that country music would follow suit with their own do the one step forward, do the two step back approach.
And in literal answer to the accomplished and acclaimed Dillon's rhetorical query about singers getting older, getting married, getting jobs, "evolving" and/or "shifting" in society.
Reasonable questions. Total buzzkill, dude.
Oh. Make that total buzzkill, bro.
Dean Dillon's take on Nashville tunesmithing is, if absolutely nothing else, factually correct. And there's a legitimate case to be made that current country music songwriting is long, way long on sizzle and short, way short on steak.
But the finest cut of the finest beef lovingly and carefully prepared to a gourmet level delight is doomed to fail in a society that lines up around the block to order yet another cheesy version of what amounts to nothing more than yet another same old bacon cheeseburger.
It's not the "they" or the "them" who are "ruinin' good ol' country music".
Country music fans, in particular, and America, in general, simply arent all that interested in tasteful.
Just tasty.
And easy to swallow.
In its programming, in its reading material.....
...in its country music....
and in its President.
Talk about unwound.
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