Pubdate: Sat, 22 Jun 2013
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2013 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Sarah Boesveld
Page: H13

STAND BY YOUR GANJA

Rebellious Nashville musicians cosy up to weed

"Give me weed instead of roses / Bring me whiskey ' stead of wine /
Every puff, every shot you're lookin' better all the time."

Ashley Monroe's voice is sweet-like-Dolly's as she proposes an illegal
drug as marital aid, the need to get a little wild in the face of monotony.

The Nashville singer-songwriter can also be heard on some country radio, 
dropping the most controversial line in the current 
anti-small-town-stuffiness single from her all-girl country band, the 
Pistol Annies: "So I snuck out behind the red barn/ And I took myself a 
toke/ Since everybody here hates everybody here/ Hell I might as well be 
the joke."

They're surprisingly blatant references to marijuana, a drug that
that's common and yet surreptitious - still a restricted substance in
North America save for, until last fall, the states of Colorado and
Washington. These mentions are also somewhat jarring to find tucked in
a genre more broadly associated with corn-fed good ole boys than
law-busting rebels.

But the 26- year-old and her band are far from the only ones in on the
Nashville pot party. Country music has always been a haven for outlaws
- - that White Lightning George Jones enjoyed early in his career could
have been moonshine or something else; either way, it was definitely
illegal.

But just as country enjoys a slight uptick in mainstream popularity
today thanks to Blake Shelton in The Voice chair and Taylor Swift
feigning surprise at every turn, the pot lobby is also enjoying an
upswing of support. For the first time in 40 years, the majority of
Americans support the legalization of marijuana - 52 percent - a Pew
research thermometer on popular opinion reports. In a recent Slate
article that asked ' When did country music and weed get so cosy?'
writer Rachael Maddux draws parallels between pot approval and dope
references in country music through time, dating back to the 1970s.

"If my popular music geared toward a younger demographic, I'd be
surprised, frankly, if it wasn't talking about smoking weed and smoke
in all of its ambiguities," said Jocelyn Neal, associate professor of
music and director for the Center for the Study of the American South
at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Popular music reflects popular experience - if people are toking, or
at least open to talking about toking - it's fair game for
songwriters, says Kristine McCusker, a music scholar at Middle
Tennessee State University near Nashville.

"It's supposedly illicit behaviour that many are doing anyway and
these singers are simply validating a shared audience
experience."

Take Kacey Musgraves. Touted as country's next great hope, this
24-year-old songwriting wizard is sending up more dope smoke signals
than most, with liberal nods to marijuana dropped throughout her debut
album Same Trailer, Different Park, released this spring. "When the
straight and narrow/ Gets a little too straight/ Roll up a joint, or
don't/ Just follow your arrow wherever it points," she sings in Follow
Your Arrow, a twangy answer to Lady Gaga's Born this Way. On the
critically acclaimed Merry Go Round - her first single about stunted
life in a small town - Musgraves sings ' Mama's hooked on Mary Kay/
Brother's hooked on Mary Jane/ Daddy's hooked on Mary two doors down."
She's publicly paid homage to her hero, Willie Nelson - Nashville's
most prominent pothead who, somewhat surprisingly, sings very little
about his drug of choice, Maddux points out.

Musgraves' current single is the aptly titled Blowin'
Smoke.

Still, these young artists are merely adding to a slow forming pile of
positive pot references amassed over the decade. In 2008, The Zac
Brown Band vowed to "lay in the hot sun and roll a big fat one." In
2005, Kenny Chesney mused about "floating ' round through Gorda Sound/
With a cooler and a bong."

The 2003 Toby Keith tune Weed with Willie, is, well, what the title
suggests.

So when did those square-boy Okies from Muskokie start hitting the
bong?

Well, they haven't - not exactly, Neal points out. There's still
plenty of clean-cut, dirt-road, beer-drinking, four-wheel-drive
songs in mainstream country ( think Shelton's new hit Boys Round Here).

Some of these more rebellious songs are an answer to that, and a
reminder that today's country owes as much to outlaw rebels like
Lynyrd Skynyrd as the clean-cut likes of John Denver.

But all good songwriting lends to gentle ambiguity that's open to
interpretation, Neal says - and who's to say the artist or songwriter
herself is actually a pothead?

Until marijuana is legalized, perhaps we'll have to be satisfied with
veiled references to weed. Maybe then, the joint will be hoisted as
proudly as a red Solo cup.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt