what's the problem with country music ?

I know, I know. The whole twang thing. The clothes. The accents. When I was kneehigh to a tadpole, my parents listened predominantly to the Beatles, or country music - my father seemed to have a bit of a thing for Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and so forth. Once in a while I noticed some boring-looking Hank Williams records, but didn't think much about it, or the others. It wasn't my sort of thing.

In 1994, The The released an album of Hank Williams covers, called Hanky Panky. I bought it as soon as I saw it, just because it was a The The album. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, really. I thought bands like The Smiths had poked the depths of loneliness. Little did I know that it'd all been done before, almost half a century ago (and look, there were probably others before Hank, too...). It really ripped into me. weary blues from waitin', six more miles, and perhaps the pinnacle of pining, your cheating heart.

From that start, I picked up a Hank Williams compilation (which, funnily enough, turned out to have an intro by The The's Matt Johnson at the start of it, explaining about his cover album, and how great Hank was, etc.). It all started to gel. From there, I went on to revisit other things I'd sneered at in the past, like the Cowboy Junkies' Trinity Sessions. Eventually I finally got into Neil Young. Lambchop came later.

I love music.