Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 45: Don't Rock the Jukebox (w/ special guest Tyler Mahan Coe)

Episode Date: April 5, 2018

This week we're joined by Tyler Mahan Coe of Cocaine and Rhinestones, a podcast about the history of country music. We talk about some popular songs, such as Merle Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee" and Loretta Lynn's "The Pill," as well as other miscellaneous country music stuff. The song at the end of this episode is "Winter's End" by Michael Howard.

All right, well, so yeah, so our guest today on the podcast, we've got Tyler Coe from the podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones, which is a history of country music in the 20th century, almost the 21st century, which is pretty close. That would have been a different show. That would be a different show, correct. Described by the New Yorker as sparkling, and I tend to concur. show of Christ. Described by the New Yorker as sparkling and I tend to concur. I think she's, I think she, I think she called my writing provocatively zesty, which was, felt kind of nice, I think. It is. I'd say it's provocatively zesty for sure. You know, I think that like one of the things I like so much about it is that you, instead of just telling a straight story, you sort of try to frame every episode with a larger theme. For example, I believe you

started one of them off, I think it was, it might have been Wynonna, I can't remember, but with the Tina Turner quote, it was... Oh, that would have been Reincarnation, so that would have been reincarnation so that would have been buck owens and don rich yeah right right right yeah no yeah no it's so it's yeah it's a very it's a very educational experience and uh very sparkling as well well i mean i i am a high school dropout so i get nervous about words like educational. To me, that sounds like me getting kicked out of the room when words like that start getting thrown around. But I mean, I feel like I'm not a dumbass and I try to treat other people like they're not dumbasses.

That's the way I would put it. Yeah. Well, that definitely comes through um but so yeah so like uh how did you start the podcast like where did the idea come from you know I was noticing how so you just wrapped up the first season correct yeah that's right okay and so you said that you had the second and third seasons already planned out. So, yeah, like what is your sort of process for it and, you know, where did the idea come from? It sort of hit me like a ton of bricks. It kind of freaked me out when I had the idea to do it.

It's a big old scary idea, you know. And I have made a lot of people mad already by doing it and i knew i knew that i was gonna make a lot of people mad by doing it and that was one of the reasons why it was so scary but i don't really care so much about that the real terror is of being a person who is not formally educated and trying to, you know, I called it the history of country music. You know, like, who the fuck am I to decide I get to be the one to do that? And but yeah, I mean, as far as starting doing it, you know, I really I just looked for the podcast. I wanted to listen to this podcast. And that seems to be a pretty common answer I think with podcasts but with this specific one

when I looked forward to and it wasn't there I didn't feel as though I could just you know chill out for a couple years and wait for someone to do it I don't think anyone was going to do this because it is a big old scary idea. And most of the people who would feel confident enough to take it on are probably not in the age bracket to really be thinking in terms of podcasts, you know? And I mean, everyone,

everyone in this conversation knows that if you're not thinking in terms of podcasts, you might as well not be thinking because this is this is the only thing that's happening right now that's right um so i don't know i guess that answers your question probably yeah well and also and i was just curious to know if there is any sort of like um i don't know um production wise this uh sort of decision that's made you know you started the season off with uh earnestest tubb and then you ended it on um i can't remember his name the still the still pedal still player correct

ralph mooney yeah ralph mooney so is there any is there any sort of like um larger story arc that you're trying to get across or are these like just certain stories that appeal to you in the moment as you make them and you're just um yeah uh creativity is sort of a crazy thing for me i'll go through a long time where i just don't have a lot of ideas and then i'll if i have one it's a lot more is coming after it so this was all very much just a big bang moment where as soon as I realized this podcast didn't exist as soon as I realized someone wasn't going to make it I had to do it I knew what stories I was going to start with and you know from there there's this little rest stop where I needed to find out if I could do this, if I was going to be, you know, decent at it. Uh, cause if not, then nothing else matters, you know? Oh, well that was a shitty

idea. Go back home. Uh, but it turns out that people like it. Uh, so get back on the interstate and yeah, I've got a pretty solid map i mean i know exactly what's going down in season two i've got a very clear idea of what's going to happen in season three and i know exactly what's going to happen in season four and a decent idea of what's going to happen in season five uh i don't i don't want to like get real specific especially with like artists that i'll be talking about and stuff like that, just in case I fail. If I don't say what I was trying to do, then no one will like it happy and feel like it's not just the same thing over and over again and sort of take it in like cycles as well as sort of um dilating

the magnification on a scene or a time period or something like that and sort of like scaling up scaling down getting close getting far away yeah things like that just to keep it uh from getting stale because that's the problem that i have with or had with podcasts when i had the time to listen to them was that they a lot of them seem very like formulaic you know right after you've listened to like 30 episodes you're just like i know exactly what this is going to be as soon as I hit play. Right. So I really want to, I really want to stay away from that as much as possible. Yeah. We try to do that. We try to, uh, you never know what you're going to get from week to week. Um, so yeah, you said you, uh, have pissed some people off. Um, I've been interested,

So, yeah, you said you have pissed some people off. I've been interested to know about that because, you know, I would imagine, like, an episode that I listened to recently I really enjoyed was the episode about Oki from Muskogee, Merle Haggard's song. And so I guess I imagine that maybe one of the ways, you know, and I could be totally wrong, but does some of it have to do with politics does it have to do with the sort of like political interpretation of various songs like oki from muskogi yeah i would say that of the people who are mad at me 98 of them are mad at me about things i said about merle haggard and probably half of that is just knee-jerk political reaction uh i'm not i first of all i don't know what the hell I'm talking about when it comes to politics just in general. I will freely admit that. I'm not sure that anyone does.

I would go so far as to say that. Neither do we, and we do politics. Yeah. the I don't know current state of political discourse in America if you say anything even tangentially related to a political issue everyone thinks they know exactly who you are exactly what you think exactly how you would vote and they want to shake your hand or spit in your face accordingly you know you're 100 with me or you're 100 against me and if i can't categorize you as one or the other i don't know what you are and you're probably 100 against me you know uh so there's just a lot

of there's a lot of that yeah we want to do, part of what we kind of do is try to translate sketch comedy to the podcast format. So inspired by your Merle Haggard episode, we came up with a new sketch called Woke-lahoma. Where we sing, we're Wokeys from Muskogee. Wokeys from Muskogee. Yeah. we sing uh we're wokies from muskogee from muskogee and we do smoke weed and this this muskogee um well yeah so like sort of in your style sort of like in your style can like can we zoom in on

this song particularly like uh because i kind of want to i kind of do want to talk about okie from muskogee and you know i mean, the episode itself is pretty long, so we're not going to be able to cover all of it. But, like, maybe if you could just sort of, like, you know, to sort of tee you up here, you say that, like, a lot of people, they hear the song, and for the longest time, conservatives thought it was a conservative song, and liberals thought it was also a conservative song.

But really, what you're saying is that it is an exercise in satire, correct? I would say unquestionably yes. in the episode uh just for future discussion which i feel are important are a discussion on satire itself i'm not sure that i know what exact purpose satire serves uh as far as you know trying to communicate a message or whatever, I'm not positive that I really understand why satire would be more necessary than just stating your position. Right. Unless it's that you can entertain while doing it,

sort of a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down kind of thing. But unquestionably, I would say that you're not actually making good satire. A, if people who are intelligent cannot experience the work itself and understand that it's meant to be satirical. And B, if people who are too stupid to understand it don't think you're serious right you know i don't think that it's i think it's probably not good satire if both of those things don't happen right uh so does that kind of answer what you're yeah and i guess i kind of wanted to get even more into the specifics of the the song itself and the message is trying to say or i mean i don't even know if he has a message,

but sort of, yes, sum up what you said on the episode about what Merle's probable objective was in writing this song, and the sort of political climate of why it was interpreted the way it was. Well, as far as objective for writing any song, this gets into art versus commercialism or the intersection of art and commercialism. When we're talking about someone like Merle Haggard, is he writing a song to express an idea or some part of himself or something he thinks is interesting?

100% yes. Is he also writing something to make a ton of money? 100% yes. yes is he also writing something to make a ton of money a hundred percent yes you know and in that episode i discussed the response that his very first performance of that song god was from a difficult audience these people jumping out of their seats you know rushing the stage at first he thinks they're coming up there to kick his ass you know he because he's kind of making fun of them a little bit right uh but turns out they only heard you know eight words in the song and thought that was the most badass shit they ever heard and they want to like you know

give him the handshake and say we're glad that you 100 agree with me right uh and you have to be stupid to not put that out you know even if you know that people are going to misunderstand it and i also talk about in the episode i believe he had good reason to expect that there would be a lot of people smart enough to look at everything you know about merle haggard up to this point in the timeline and think, well, this would be weird if he just meant this, you know? Right. Sure would be strange. Sure would be strange if he thinks this. Right.

And he never did think that. We have interviews from him right after the song came out saying that it was originally meant as a joke. Throughout history, throughout the rest of his life, he continues to say that it was originally meant as a joke throughout history uh throughout the rest of his life he continues to say that it was originally written as a joke but then it also gets lumped into with this other song that is very anti-war protesters and he meant that like he very clearly meant that song right but these two songs sort of get lumped in together, and he generally responds with an answer about the song that he did mean, which further adds to the confusion that maybe he did mean the things that he said in Okie from Muskogee. And as far as some specifics there, I mean, the first line that everyone knows is, we don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee. We don't take our trips on LSD.

I mean, right away, we know for a fact that Merle Haggard smoked weed. So this isn't a journal entry. This isn't Merle Haggard's diary that we're reading here. He's creating a character. He's telling us a story, which is another way of saying lying, by the way, us a story uh and that's not an accident um and it's that's fine that's what we want him to do that's what we want actors to do this is what entertainment is for you know uh so he starts talking about how they don't smoke weed and he starts he he paints this little picture of this little town that has they still got the american flag flying to the courthouse you know which relates the ideas of patriotism with law and order right you know other otherwise

why isn't the we fly our american flags outside our school houses and relate patriotism to get a good education he could have done that just as well. He's relating patriotism to law and order. And in the same song, he talks about how they don't smoke weed. You know, that fits with law and order, but they like themselves a little bit of moonshine. And that's not legal in Oklahoma. I don't think that's legal now. It definitely, you know, as I say in the episode,

certainly was not legal then to make or possess moonshine. So there's a conflict in logic there. And I talk about in the episode, this is something you will find in satire. If I were to talk about why satire may be necessary, I think one of the things that happens in satire 99% of the time is it chooses its subject, has an understanding of the logic of that subject, finds an inconsistency, and just blows it way up. Right. Let's scale this shit up and see how ridiculous it gets if we play it out. Run the simulation and see how weird it gets if we play it out right run the simulation and see how weird it gets and i

believe that's what's happening in uh oki from muskogee right yeah no that um that episode was uh pretty interesting um also because i it gave me a lot of information i did not know about herbert hoover um i did know about his role during world war one in uh supplying food and pissing some people off but uh and the hoovervilles and all that kind of right right but i did not know about the flood um when which was that 1927 is that what year it was um i would not want to say the specific year off memory uh it was it was somewhere in there right it's 30 somewhere right but uh it was it was somewhere in there right 30s somewhere right but uh it would have been the 20s i think but yeah this is sort of this is totally tangential

it's just for our history fans our history well i think i i did not know any of that stuff uh about herbert hoover like so when i say i'm not formally educated i don't know what i'm talking about when it comes to politics. I don't know a lot about general history. I know a lot about the history of country music. I'm super comfortable talking about that. But all this other stuff is, I have to look into it.

I sort of had to give myself a crash course on it. And what really freaked me out in that and I kept noticing parallels to modern life when I was working on the first season of this podcast and what really freaked me out about that episode is how much of what happened to bring Herbert Hoover to the Oval Office and you know what like the sort of backwards deals the people who got promises made to them and those promises were not kept uh his experience uh just all of this stuff i'm just like he was oh shit so we're just gonna do this over and over again right right yeah i i kind of got that feeling yeah he is kind of a trump character because he was like a multimillionaire by the time he got to office.

It's pretty crazy. So, yeah. So there's that song. But, you know, I really love the song episodes. You know, you do some episodes where, I mean, I love them both. But, you know, so like for our listeners, like I would say there's probably two kinds of episodes. You've got an episode that sort of tells a story arc about a individual an episode like the lubin brothers or something and then you've got like a specific song episode um and one that uh obviously tom and i wanted to talk about a lot was um about loretta lynn's the pill and um and i think you know that kind of is – what can you tell us about Loretta Elizabeth?

Why was it so controversial when it came out? And had there been other people before that that were singing about birth control, things of that nature? Yes, there totally were other songs about birth control uh there were also other songs about abortion and there were country songs about abortion that not only were not banned but were moderately popular uh did did pretty well on radio you know yeah and this is in country music by women and then loretta lynn's the pill comes out we cannot have this uh this is this is a no-go uh from all areas you know mostly all areas except for she had a fan base she had a big enough fan base built up before this happened where they they were just

buying this like crazy right and the back the basically the episode is about how the backlash against this song pushed it to an even higher level of daily awareness you know just your average person became far more likely to know that this song even existed because of how mad it made everyone and how big of a deal they made about it. And I think the reason why it made people mad, and the reason why I say in the episode that I think it made people mad is because her attitude about contraception, what it brings to her life,

the fact that it allows her to have control over her body. It's not a celebration of how God decides what she does with her body. It's not a celebration of how the government decides what she does with her body. It's a celebration of how she decides what she does with her body. Now, a lot of people may hear me just say that if they haven't heard the song and think, oh, well, this sounds like a real slutty song. This sounds like she's just singing a song about how she gets to fuck whoever she wants to

and it's not going to make her pregnant. And so who cares? She might as well just cheat on her husband, whatever. That is not at all what happens in this song. The song is actually about how her not wanting to get pregnant again has kind of been a problem in her sex life in her marriage. Right.

I think we can assume she's married. And if she doesn't say it explicitly in the song, I don't remember offhand. It's been a few months since I was deep into this and I've gone deep into a lot of other stuff to mess my head up since then. But I think we can assume she's married, if not long-term relationship with a lot of children, pretty sure she's married. So not wanting to add another mouth to feed to this whole situation

is being a problem with their sex life. So the husband, totally socially acceptable, goes out on the town. He's partying, drinking, you know, probably screwing around. And the pill, the song, is about how now that the wife has the pill, he doesn't need to go do that anymore because they can go have fun together, you know, and come home and screw and not have to worry about making another baby unacceptable. It's like, how is this unacceptable? Yeah. I mean, I mean, again, unless we're all Roman Catholics and all contraception is forbidden no matter what, but again,

we've already had songs in this genre of music about abortion. And the key difference here is that the specific song I'm thinking of is a cover of, what is it, having Paul Inca's She's Having My Baby. Yeah. If you haven't heard that. Oh, yeah. Widely considered the worst song of all time. It is really bad. It's so bad that it's good.

It's one of those situations. There's a country music cover of it, and this song references the fact that abortion exists. And then another country song is, what is it called? It's called Hide My Shame by Lorene Mann. It's called Hide My Shame, and then man it's called hide my shame and then in parentheses the words abortion new york are spelled out because the narrator of the song has to go to new york to get this abortion it's not a country song about like that abortion exists it's

about someone who had an abortion right singing about how she had an abortion so if that's okay someone's singing about having a birth control prescription ought to be acceptable, I would think. But the difference is that the narrator in the abortion song regrets the abortion and considers it sinful and is remorseful. And she's ready to come back to the fold and let other people decide how her reproductive system should work yeah um it's something else you also talk about and not exclusively abortion in that episode it's just women's sexual autonomy in general what are some of the other songs that you came across that sort of deal with that i remember the one and i and I forget, it escapes me now who sang it, but it was about an older woman who has her eye on younger men.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah, I think that's Younger Men by KT Oslund. KT Oslund. And that one, yeah, it's pretty interesting. Also, her, she was, I haven't gotten to talk to her, talk about her as an artist at length on the show yet, but she really brought some stuff to country music that I am probably going to argue was imitated a lot.

This is not some nobody artist. This is someone who came to town, got lot of attention except this one song we're not gonna give that any attention and then she does more stuff and that gets a lot of attention and then later she re-releases that same song because she's like okay surely i'm famous enough now this is a great song i'm gonna put this out again let's just not do that you know again let's just ignore that and then yeah um and it's a song about an older woman with a younger man. And not only that, but she's saying that she wants to get with the younger man because older men – well, I think it's a pretty widely held belief that your average male and your average female peak sexually at different ages in life.

So about the time dudes start having problems getting boners, women are ready to rock and roll around the same age. So it's sort of unfortunate. It's sort of a little cruel joke. But we've got pills for that now. But this was before they had pills for that right and so she's she's gonna check out a 19 year old from the library and see how that goes and uh in that episode i argue that a lot of the reason why this was seen as a problem a lot of the

reason why no one wanted no one in charge of what gets played on the radio wanted to have this played on the radio is these are dudes right in that age bracket that would have a Viagra subscription now that didn't exist then. So, you know, they got a little hurt. Their feelings got a little bit hurt. Yeah, and it's very scary. I think that, like, the sort of moral panic of it at that time, the sort of political climate as well.

I mean, shit, it's even like that today. It's awful. But the whole idea of just women's mean, shit, it's even like that today. It's awful. But the whole idea of just women's autonomy, whether it's birth control or anything like that. I guess what I'm saying is that when Loretta Lynn and KT Oslund, they were singing songs like this, it really freaked the industry out because it was women singing them it was you know i'm saying it was and it was and it was empowering they were they were singing about being empowered and and i think that like one of the the themes of that episode is that is there is this double standard

like if a if a man had written the pill like i think you say like it would not have been received the same way as it was when Loretta Lynn did. Correct. The song The Pill is a woman celebrating how great birth control has made the sex life in her marriage, and it was banned. I think that if a man had sang that song exactly the same, a celebration of how great The Pill is. My wife wants to fuck me again, you know, like, are you serious? Of course, that's going to be a hit. It's not going to

get played on the radio. It's going to be a fucking hit. You could, I mean, if radio had the fuck word on it, you could say my wife wants to fuck me again. That's the name of the song. Boom, hit. Someone tell Wheeler Walker about this. He'll do it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Someone tell Wheeler Walker about this. He'll do it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, yeah.

So, no, another, you know, another artist that you talk about who had a pretty big impact on a lot of different genres was Bobby Gentry. And I like Bobby Gentry because her last name is my middle name not a not a name you see very often it's a I mean it's not it was her stage name obviously but yeah she's something else uh I'm really glad that well that episode was pretty scary to put out for several reasons uh I feel like it made a lot of challenges to my audience. I think that's the fourth episode that came out. Right. So I didn't really know who my audience was. And I had an idea about who my audience was,

and I didn't think that they would want to hear a Kanye West clip in the middle of an episode. And that happens in that episode. And there's also, I think, I don't know how long it is, but the intro to that episode is basically a solid 10 minutes of me just talking about my ideas about being famous. And that's a, you know, if you're just a Bobby Gentry fan and you're like oh cool someone did an episode about Bobby Gentry this dude is talking for a long time about not Bobby Gentry uh

so I was pretty nervous about putting that out into the world actually but that has been one of the most well-received episodes and I think think that is largely a testament, as with the entire podcast, I think it's largely a testament to just how great my source material is. lot of people have talked about them ever uh and i don't think anyone has you know compiled this group of people together in a podcast or anything like that so it's really um i've got a strong tailwind at my back you know with a lot of this stuff and it makes it a lot easier than it might look like it is. I don't know. But the, but the Bobby Jeter thing, she, I mean, she's just a fascinating figure. There's just, there's not a lot of information out there on her.

And this is another reason why it made me pretty nervous is because I knew that there's sort of this cult of people who, you know, want to know where she's been. I guess we haven't said for any of the listeners who don't know, this is a woman artist who basically just decided, fuck all this, I'm out. And for a long time, people have been wondering where she is, why she did that. Then there have been other theories about her career, you know, as to like how it happened. A lot of trying to, I would say trying to take credit away from her.

And the people who've done that are probably higher on the list of people you think you can respect than you would expect them to be. And one of the guys you mentioned that tried to do that was our guy Jim Ford. Oh, yeah. A fellow Eastern Kentucky boy. Yeah, you like Jim Ford? Yeah. Who, oh, I loved you playing Harlan County in the middle of that. Yeah, he's great. My thing with Jim is that I think that he's sort of a chameleon.

He's a very talented chameleon, and I think that really doesn't gel well with the idea that a lot of other people have about him, which is that he's this hardcore, authentic-to-the-bone Kentucky country boy and everything. The baddest white man to ever live, right? According to Sly Stump. Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, he is great. You cannot deny the music that he made, but you also can't deny that he made other music at what would seem to be very opportune times to make these specific types of music, almost as if he was chasing something, rather than trying to adhere to some hardcore sound that he felt from the beginning and had to bring to the world in its purest form or anything like that,

which is this sort of fetishized idea that I feel like you might have if you were from, I don't know, England and named Nick Lowe and then be extremely inclined to believe that this Jim Ford guy who is your hero is the real author of this fantastic song written by a young woman who is the real author of the song. Right. Right. Wasn't, just as an aside to all that, wasn't Jim Ford supposed to perform with Nick Lowe

the night he died? Is that right? I do not know that. I don't know that. Let's look that up. I think that's true. I'll look that up in the- That was interesting you put him in there because I think I read that somewhere once.

And so, yeah. Did you have someone in your room to look stuff up in the... That was interesting you put him in there because I think I read that somewhere once. And so, yeah. Do you have someone in your room to look stuff up for you? Yeah, we have... We have team of interns back here. Shit. I gotta get some of that. You need my man.

We're not that... We're not that... We're not there yet. We're like... I would say we're like the Lubin brothers going to the wrong guy at the Grand Ole Opry for two years. That's where me and Tom have been. But so, yeah, for our fans,

or for the people to listen to the podcast, you may not be as familiar with what we're talking about here. The attempts to erase her contributions are the sort of, like, the conspiracy theory here is that Jim Ford wrote Ode to Billy Joe, which is Bobby Gentry's big song from, what, 1967, I believe, is off of her first album. It was her first, like, big hit single i think um well it's kind of murky but we won't get into that but the point is it's a really great song it's a really

um you know as you say it it sort of even changed the parameters of what you could do with narrative fiction in some ways um And she was brilliant. I mean, I'm comfortable saying, like, I think that song is an incredible song. And, yeah, there have been attempts by some to sort of write off her talents or whatever to the people around her, mostly men, you know. Well, yeah, I think I say in the episode too there was uh

Jimmy Haskell is the string arranger on that song and in my opinion is the only one who even came close to contributing as much to that song as Bobby Gentry herself and I loved that there were several interviews with him for me to look at and draw from as a source because he's like the only dude who came within five miles of this song before it was released who wasn't straight up like oh yeah I mean I was like right there I was on top of it you know I was you know handling handling that, making this happen. This dude was like, oh, no, it was a pretty incredible song. They just told me to put some strings on it, so I did. She's a genius.

So, yeah. And everyone else you have is like someone who had this demo deal worked out with her to trade for studio time. Or someone who happened to be dating her, Jim Ford. time or you know someone who happened to be dating hers jim ford uh just all these all these different things where if someone just wants to be they want to write themselves in to the story you know yeah yeah and um you know one of the one of the reasons i do like the song so much and then we can sort of move on forever but i mean it's like it is uh it's just a really good song about um how it's impossible to um how sometimes it can be impossible to make others um see the pain that you're in i don't know if that's the right way to put it but how pain is

this really complicated and difficult thing to communicate with others and how isolating that can be when no one understands that and that just like that just cuts it like the heart of what makes a really great song i hate to sound cheesy but i mean it's just good songwriting yeah i mean i think i think i say about the same thing in the episode uh that's that's what i think it is actually about you know we haven't even like addressed what all this other stuff that people think the song is about and like where uh an uncalled for amount of attention has been paid to you know specific parts of the song is what i and i believe bobby gentry herself would say about the song uh has said about the song in fact yeah but yeah i mean yeah it is a masterful song you know and then also and also it's not like this is the only time she ever did this you know there's some people who want to say she didn't

really write it also say well how come she didn't just do it over and over again you know a i would argue how come jim ford who you know clearly had a lot of reasons to want money uh didn't do it over and over again if he's the one who really wrote it and b she kind of did yeah it's just it's just you stop paying attention you know like it's audience the mainstream audiences stop paying attention but that is a result of just how monumental of a crossover hit this song was. And I think country music audiences hear a term like crossover and they think, oh, trying to sound pop. That's not the true pure definition of a crossover hit.

The pure definition of a crossover hit is a song that is housed in this genre and appeals to, for whatever reason, fans of this genre. And Ode to Billy Joe was a hit on every genre of radio that played it. Every single one. Like, just the crossover hit of crossover hits. And, yeah, like, you're not going to do that twice, let alone over and over again. Right. Yeah.

Well, yeah, so yeah, just sort of like pivoting just slightly. important it is for and sometimes it's even more important for an artist to have a story rather than the actual facts of their life itself um and sometimes there the gap between who a person is in the story that they sort of project as part of their career sometimes that can lead to really disastrous things um perhaps well there's there is a little subtlety here i i would say i would say i don't think it is important for a person to have that story i think what we can say that's more accurate is that people think you need to have that story right is what i would say but go ahead sorry no no no i think you're right and right. And sometimes that can sort of,

in tragic places, though, well, I don't know. Maybe that's not the correct word. But I do kind of think that what happened to Wynonna Judd is a weird tragedy, but she's kind of like, I don't know, it's a very complicated thing there. But I'm thinking also of the Leuven brothers

and sort of like they're, you know, being billed as a sort of gospel singing group. But there was always this constant struggle within them, or at least within Ira Leuven, you know, to actually live up to that standard and then sometimes it just it erupted in some of the worst ways possible yeah and again this is sort of when you started talking i thought we were about to get into the whole authenticity like an artist comes out they need to have a fabricated bio sort of thing because this is the argument that i will probably be having for the rest of my life which is that i think that's just all a bunch of bullshit. But this specific issue of Ira Luvin's complicated relationship with God really is what we're talking about. I don't know how much of this was played out on the public stage. I don't know if he felt like he had an obligation to any sort of audience because for much of their career, they really didn't have an audience.

And specifically when they were working in gospel music, the story here for your listeners who don't know is the Leuven brothers had a long, hard climb to the top. And they had nobody more to thank for that than themselves. They, you know, fucked it up a lot of times. And, I mean, glorious fuck-ups, just like the best. And they got there, you know. Like, spoiler alert, they get there there obviously, or else it wouldn't be worth talking about. So I don't feel like it's that big of a spoiler, but, uh, and then once they get there, they've got more problems because how they got there was by largely focusing on

performing gospel music and they got their, you you know their real record deal that pushed them into quote-unquote making it was as a gospel act and then they had this problem of being put on tours of non-gospel acts in bars essentially and that that doesn't work you can't put a gospel act on stage in a set of a bunch of people singing how great it is to get drunk and screw a stranger right and uh it bombs people the fuck out and uh so they want to they switch to not like a non-exclusive relationship with gospel music, and boom, hit song. Now they're making money, and then because of some other stuff that happens that would make this ramble much longer, Ira's got a very serious drinking problem. And now this is another complicated relationship that he has. And honestly, this isn't something I've ever talked about in any interview or even really on like any sort of public forum.

But a theme that I'm really excited to get into with country music because it's – I see it all over the place. In my own personal life, I have seen it just rampant is this, and I know you're familiar with it too. This Bible or the bottle thing, you know, you know, everyone knows a person who it's, you see him on one day,

they've got a Bible in their hand. You see him on the next day, they've got a bottle in their hand and it's like 160 miles an hour in whichever direction they're taking it that day. And, uh, and yeah, and I and i mean i'm not you know i'm not gonna like malcolm gladwell this and propose to have some sort of solution to the theory or whatever but it is a fascinating duality that you will find a lot in country music so this is embodied in no one more perfectly than Ira Luvin he's got this drinking problem and you know at certain points he's calling his mom to say he's realized the reason why he feels the need to drink all the time is because all the touring that he's doing so

he wants to get off the road and get back to his true calling which is to be a preacher you know and then that doesn't happen but uh it there is a lot there and and to get back to the original thing you said that brought us here i'm still not sure how much of this played out publicly i don't know i don't know that people were very aware of any of these struggles before the book started being written. influential to country music also happened to have a story worthy of you know study in any sort of greek mythology class this like the two brothers it's it's larger than life and but i'm not sure how many people realized it was that at the time right other than uh other than you know acts who they would have been touring with backstage who would have seen you know the fistfights the drinking the arguing and smashing instruments yeah exactly right yeah um i guess charlie leuven came to whitesburg one time yeah there's a you

know i was gonna make that point that i think like the leuven brothers are kind of like marvin gay in the sense that they like were successfully married the sacred and the profane. And it's illustrated in this anecdote my buddy Willie tells, which could be complete bullshit, but we have this little festival at our radio station, WMMT, here called Seed Time Festival. And Charlie Leuven, just maybe two or three years before he died, came and played this thing

and he came to Eastern Kentucky thinking this was gonna be like a church type audience and so he gets up on the stage and in between songs he's talking about all this like pro-life stuff and you know, what you might think you would hear from a preacher and it's kinda like just talking to all these like second wave feminists and hippies and all this kind of stuff and so uh my buddy willie says that you know that that didn't go

over so well but later on in the night charlie redeemed himself when he tried to fuck his wife is a true godly man yeah i uh in charlie Lubin's autobiography and in a lot of the literature around them, one would almost certainly get the idea that this is sort of a Cain and Abel story. You've got the good brother and the bad brother. From what I understand, that is not exactly the truth. People are multitudes, you know? They're just fractals. They're fractals. Life is complicated.

Yeah. There's something I was going to say. Oh, you know, one of the things about the Leuven Brothers, and you mention it in this episode, but I think also in the Spade Coley episode but about knoxville girl like like that song is so insane like in and it's even it's even more insane when you have the leuven brothers like heavenly angelic voices singing it it's very intense it is something that uh you know it's one of those things things that make you go hmm uh like how the hell did this happen and i think i mean i

i do a lot of things on the podcast where i set something up and talk about it a little bit and maybe, maybe not give the impression that I'm done talking about that thing and like it's over now. A lot of the times I have plans to come back and pick up a thread that I left laying there. But specifically like murder ballads, the beginning of the Spade Cooley episode talks about the Latin root of the word ballad sharing the same Latin root as ballet. And these songs sort of performing the function of storytelling. You know, it's musical storytelling. I think that a great reference point, a great analogy to make would be to modern day cinema.

I'm pretty sure I make that analogy in that episode. And so if you think about it like that, then it makes a little bit more sense of if you think about this song as like a movie. So in ballads, you've got love songs and this would be a movie like the notebook you know and you well hopefully a better movie than the notebook but then or you've got like murder ballads are uh you know we've got murder movies and the the creepy uh purity of their sound of the luvan brothers where it's just it's yeah um juxtaposed with like the macabre lyrics it's crazy so this would be this would be i don't know sort of similar to um uh a murder a movie about you know a sociopathic murderer who has no, there's no intensity to his,

there's no anger, there's no emotion. It's just like a clean murder for the sake of the murder. And in the song, there is no motive given. We can track the history of the ballad, which is based on a true story, to the true crime and find the motive. And Charlie Leuven also proposes that you can discern a motive in the lyrics of the song. A, I would disagree with that as sort of an objective interpretation you could subjectively uh infer that meaning into the song where he says that uh the narrator kills her because she was cheating on him if but if you trace the roots of that song back to the crime that's not why that that wasn't

the motive for the murder so that's not in the song you know if you if you're if you're reading that into the song that's happening in your mind that's not happening in the song because that's not where it came from right so it really the the leuven brothers version of this murder ballad really does not have a motive it is a senseless brutal crime crime, and then I go, in the podcast, I go on to tell you about another senseless, brutal crime. Yeah. God damn, do you. Yeah, that was...

I thought when you set that one up, I thought, okay, I've got a pretty high threshold, but you were right, that did fuck me up for a couple days, talking about the Spade Cooley episode, of course. Yeah, real bad. Yeah. No good. And for our purposes, and we won't get into it too much,

that's not to waste too much of Tyler's time, but if you want to hate Ronald Reagan even fucking more, go listen to the Spade Cooley episode all the way through. Yeah, that's one thing our listeners can find accessible about this story, is that that motherfucker Reagan was talked into releasing him from prison. But it was kind of poetic justice in the sense that they were going to tell him. Spoilers, spoilers. Yeah, this is a spoiler.

I'm sorry. I apologize. But they were going to tell him that he was going to be released from prison and he died before anybody could tell him. That was one of the only things of justice I could take away from that story. Like, you motherfucker, you thought he died thinking he would spend the rest of his life in jail. Yeah, I don't mind that spoiler either, because to me, the more powerful tag is the little piece of information that I disclosed right after that,

which I would rather not say since we said the first thing. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Um, so yeah,

um, I gotta clear this. Um, Tyler, we, um, we won't take any more of your time, but I just wanted to ask, uh, when are you planning on releasing season two?

As soon as it's ready. That's the big question right now. I'm trying some new stuff. I'm getting a little above my raisin, I guess you would say, with it. I have a pretty ambitious idea, and in order to execute it properly, I need to change some of my approach to the entire season. In other words, making the first season, I was able to say, okay, the Luven Brothers, read everything about the Luven Brothers, write this episode, get it done, and put that out. Move on to the next subject.

With this, the way that I'm doing the second season, I can't do that. I have to read everything I'm going to read for every single episode and then write it so to me i don't know how it feels for people who are you know waiting impatiently or patiently for it to come out to me it feels like the process of reading is taking a lot longer but it's because i'm doing it for the entire season and not one episode at a time right i expect and hope this could be wishful thinking that when I get to the point of output writing this that it's just going to come really fast because I've got it all in there already

which is generally what happened in the first season when I got to the point of writing that shit was just done and everything else had to happen to get the episode out but I really don't know how to predict when it will come out. I can't expect that it will be sooner than several months. Again, I'm doing this all by myself.

I don't have an intern in my room like you guys do. I don't have an intern in my room like you guys do. Well, before we cut you loose, two things I wanted to ask Tyler real quick. One, obviously as we talked about, you've put tons and tons of hours into research and reading books and all this stuff, YouTube clips, all this old archival stuff. Could you talk maybe just a little bit, maybe the top three texts you would recommend to people interested in these lives and these stories and maybe some of the things they could even YouTube

as soon as they hear this that they got to hear? The really essential? Okay. Let me do the books first because I started thinking about that while you were talking. Absolutely, you just have to buy – I don't care who you are or what you like or what you're interested in. You have got to buy the book Satan is Real by Charlie Leuven, and it was written with Benjamin Whitmer.

Even and especially if you've heard my podcast episode on the Lein Brothers, because in my episode on the Lubin Brothers, I have to do a little bit of debunking of this autobiography. That does not at all detract from its power for what it is, which is a book about one man's perspective in this world that I guarantee you, you don't know anyone who lived in this world. And it's madness. There's some stuff. There's a lot of stuff in there that I'm going to have to get into later in the podcast. I didn't want to come out of the gate talking about certain things. But there's so much more in there than what I put into the episode, and it is a very easy book to read. I'd be surprised if most people don't read it in one sitting. It's written very

plainly, just based on interviews with his co-author on the book, and oh god, it's just fantastic. It's really, truly great. It's probably my favorite country artist autobiography. Another book I would recommend is – I'm nearly certain that it's written by Colin Scott. And it's called Roadkill on the Three Chord Highway. And it's sort of a – I don't know what it's called, maybe an anthology, just a collection of essays on lesser known figures. Not necessarily hardcore country acts,

more rockabilly-ish acts. Yeah. But people who are on the fringe and I think that that's something that's really important to me with this podcast. I'm not really interested in just hitting all the biggest names that everyone knows. That's not the full history. That's not the whole story.

And I think that his book is – I mean certainly if you like what I'm doing, I think you should read his book. And if you have never heard what I'm doing and you like books more than you like podcasts which is weird because you're listening to this go get that book and if you like that I hope that you would like what I'm doing as far as

YouTube clips oh man there's a lot the YouTube clips that I make the biggest deal out of in the first season, I think could let you know whether or not you may be interested in this stuff. One that sticks with me a lot, and it's probably because I had it on repeat for hours, if not days, was this specific clip of Buck Owens and Don Rich playing guitar together

on the Buck Owens show. They're playing this song called Sam's Place. I get into it in the episode with sort of this forensic breakdown of not only what I think is happening in that video clip, but that I think you can clearly see is happening in that video clip. Unless you're just an asshole and want to say I'm wrong. But also what I think Buck Owens and Don Richwood both have told you was happening in that video clip. And we have words from them and other people in their lives to back this uh seemingly weird some might say impossible thing that i think you can see happening in that video do you have something you look like you're excited about that oh yeah no i just uh they're incredible um i mean i'm a

musician and uh yeah i totally i totally know the look you're talking about, just that connection with another person when you're playing music with them. And they had a really interesting relationship. But yeah, no, they're just incredible guitar players. And Don Rich was a great fiddle player as well. I think that's actually what he started on. It is what he started on. It is what he started on. Another clip I would suggest everyone see is Jeannie C. Reilly performing Backside of Dallas. I don't know what the TV show is that she's on.

if you just want to get an idea of how one of the sexiest people to ever live could just roll into country music in the late 60s and get everybody talking uh you should watch that video clip because there's a lot going on there and uh it's pretty, I mean, the song is fantastic. I talk about that a lot in this episode. The song, and specifically that performance of the song is great. And I talk about why in the episode. But, I mean, also, you can just see what she represented, which to some people was a dollar sign, to some people was sin,

to some people, you know, was feminism. She was the picture of all these things and more to different people depending upon what you wanted her to be or what you needed her to be in order to love her or in order to hate her. And then the reality of what she really was may or may not be extremely different from your idea of who she was. And that was – I'm honestly surprised that that episode hasn't had more of the focus placed on it. It seems like most of the media attention to the podcast has been on the pill, which I think is fantastic. I love that that's what they're focusing on. And I think the reason why they're focusing on that is because there are so many parallels in the pill to what's happening in society today, specifically in country music today. But also, i was surprised that people didn't draw that parallel from the genie c riley

episode to the me too movement or the times up movements uh which part of that conversation has now become why isn't this happening in the music industry and in country music and in nashville specifically there have been a lot of people who have said the reason why we're not seeing that happen in the music industry is because it's just not there. You know, why would it happen here? And in that episode of that podcast, I,

you know, talk about why that is not true. Yeah. And then, and then the last thing is, and because we are new patrons of Cocaine and Rhinestones and everybody out there should be too, and while we have a little FaceTime with you,

I want to cast my vote for two things, two episodes I think you should do. One I think would be really good is on Johnsonson county kentucky and like it you you could do this in like a very malcolm gladwellian fashion don't i'm joking about but how johnson county kentucky punches well above its weight in musical talent when you're talking about jim ford loretta lynn chris stapleton now tyler childers now who's sort of making a buzz uh i think that would be interesting and then the second one is our

electric county boy gary stewart oh yeah yeah and if you wanted to tackle that one we would volunteer our interns yeah back here to uh help you do the heavy lifting with yeah gary stewart is one i mean i feel comfortable in saying i am for a fact going to do an episode on gary stewart i've talked about all over the place i'm in this for the long haul you know like i'm not uh i don't have a certain number of stories that i know i can tell and i'm gonna tell them and then i'm gonna get out before everyone figures out that i don't know anything else. I mean, in the first season of the podcast, I've already told stories that I had no clue they were there. So I feel very comfortable in just moving forward and learning about this stuff and sharing in the podcast

because that's already what I've been doing. You know, specifically what we were just talking about the GDC Riley episode, I had no clue of any of those things that had happened to her. So like when you listen to that, you're listening to me learning about it and then telling everyone about it. So I do feel comfortable doing that for as long as people will listen to me do it. So I'm in this for the long haul. It's safe to say if there is a famous story or a legend or something that anyone has heard, I'm going to get to it eventually. Gary Stewart specifically is one that I am almost impatient at myself to get to. But I hope that he does make sense in the third season of the podcast.

But even if not, I know I'm going to get to him. One of the things that was sort of scary to me about – like maybe I wouldn't have said this a few months ago – is there's really not that much out there on him and i think that's such a shame uh there there's never been a book written about gary stewart uh there are a few great magazine articles i'm aware of the i know anyone who hears this is gonna send me everything i probably have i probably have the magazine articles that you know about um but one thing that's happened is since season one ended is that and this blew me away the country music hall of fame actually reached out to me and invited me to use their archives for research no shit that's badass yeah it is uh i i almost cried a few times when i went in there for a lot of different reasons.

But it's pretty crazy, the stuff that's in there. And I sort of – I picked a relatively obscure female country artist from the 1960s as my sort of guinea pig when I went in there to see what they had, you know, see if they've got something I can't find anywhere else. Yeah. And I was extremely pleasantly surprised to find what they had on this artist. So I know that there's going to be more there on people like Gary Stewart, who were, I mean, just huge, just a huge character, a huge figure. He meant so much to the genre, I would say. And he also, you can tell how much he matters to the people who like his music.

You know, like his fans are just die hard. And, uh, I mean, I can also say this spread to Texas. I don't know if you guys are aware of this, uh, being Kentucky boys,

but he sort of, um, like the state of Texas fell in love with him. This is really how I came to understand how big of a figure Gary Stewart is in country music, is from touring in Texas. And, you know, that is where I would hear Gary Stewart more. It was in venues in Texas. They would play him in the honky tonks. People would talk about him.

You know, we were hanging out. People would talk about Gary Stewart. Stewart, when he died in Texas was where, you know, people, my friends that I made on tour were the most bummed out about it in Texas, you know. So he's a local boy who made good. I would say that you should be proud of Gary Stewart. Oh, we are very, very exceedingly proud of Gary. There's a good, just to, I mean, you know, we're not offering you anything that you don't have access to, but there's a very good, if you go to YouTube and go to Apple Shop TV and type in Gary Stewart and Jack Wright,

there's a really great interview that we go back to from time to time. Is it the one in the wood-paneled room? Yeah, that's the one. That's the one. It is a good interview, and if you if you use it that was right here right here in whitesburg baby yeah i'm sure i'm sure that i would i saw too that at one point they were trying to make a documentary on gary stewart but i believe they couldn't get it funded which is probably what happens a lot with documentaries you know it's like how is this going to turn a profit right also because specifically with

musicians it's difficult I've I've come to find out it's difficult because of the music licensing issue they can't use all those songs unless they pay almost always It's the record company who owns it. And we all know the state that the recording industry is in right now is not good. So anywhere they can try to squeeze money from someone, they're going to. They're going to ask for way more than makes – that even makes sense for any sort of song to be used in a documentary. So that's why a lot of music documentaries don't get made, and I think that's probably why the Gary Stewart documentary sadly did not come to fruition. Right, right.

That's a damn shame. But I'm going to do what I can. I am going to do what I can. We'll be on pins and needles until it comes out, but we're definitely excited for that. Well, it'll be a while. Well, Tyler, thank you for joining us.

If you have anything you'd like to plug other than subscribe... I was going to say earlier, the only reason I was asking when the second season was going to come out just if you're trying to plug it, but it's like a good... As someone who runs a podcast, I can't attest. It's good to subscribe to it on iTunes.

That way you know when the next episode drops. Well, yeah. I mean you should just for your own ease of use. If you subscribe to the podcast, you don't have to check it every week and get depressed when there's not a new episode of it. Right, right. There are quite a few weeks ahead of us where that is going to be the case. As far as plugging things, not really. I mean, yeah, I hope that if you haven't listened to the podcast, I hope you give it a shot.

If you do, I think I even added this to the iTunes description. The first three, I had no idea what I was doing. So if you hit play on one of those and you're like, I don't know if I can listen to this, uh, try listening to one of the later episodes, the Wynonna episode or the Kershaw's episode. Those are good standalone examples. Uh, if you do end up liking that, I would recommend going back through and listening to all of them because it does all eventually you'll see how it sort of all comes together. And I'm going to continue tying these things together. So anyone who is sort of skipping around

or missing episodes is definitely not going to get the whole picture because a lot of podcasts that write their episodes out and it's not conversational like this, they do a lot of recapping. and I don't like that bullshit. Like when I listen to a podcast, I remember guy,

uh, yeah, you don't have to tell me again. Yeah. So I don't do a lot of that. So, uh, you,

you, if you miss it, you're going to miss it, you know? Um, and then I hope if you like it and you've more than like it, think it's important, which I think it is

extremely important I hope you consider supporting it on the patreon there are so I I don't have a lot I could do right now as far as incentives for doing that but one thing I can do is give sort of behind-the-scenes updates on the patreon as far as like where I'm at in the process of you know making this season in the future I'll continue doing it on whatever where I'm at in the process of, you know, making this season in the future. I'll continue doing it on whatever season I'm doing. There's also, you'll be able to vote at certain levels. It's different. I don't remember what it is, but at certain levels, you can vote in a poll to decide the subject of at least one episode per season, you know,

stuff like that. Eventually I would to offer uh patreon supporters at a certain level uh at least a discount on merchandise things like that um you know this is i'm just getting started you know uh this is gonna get pretty crazy i think before it's all said and done uh um well you there yeah i think we cut out for just a second Sorry about that But anyways, yeah Definitely look up Cocaine and Rhinestones on Patreon You can find it on iTunes, obviously

And Stitcher as well The website, CocaineandRhinestones.com Which I highly recommend, it's great You can get all the extras there And the episodes are written out, right? You've transcribed all the episodes there. Yeah, I got a lot of hearing loss bullshit that's going on in my life, and it makes some podcasts pretty unlistenable for me.

And also, I'm just sort of aware of the age demographic of people who may be interested in this stuff. Maybe they're not going to be able to figure out a podcast. So I do have transcripts of every story on the website. Also a full list of all the songs that are used. Something else I do that's different is I talk about all the books that I use as a source and the articles and stuff like that. I don't think I've ever heard another podcast that really does that uh well I really appreciate that I think that's really cool I think it's important to do because there's so much he said she she said in any sort of historical

uh endeavor and I think people are kind of sick of someone telling them, this is the truth. I know this is the truth. You don't need to question where I got this information from. I'm the expert. You shut up and you listen to me. I don't like that. I think other people probably don't like that. So I definitely, you know, here's what this was and here's what that was.

They don't make sense together. You make up your own mind. I read all the books. You read these books if you want to figure it out on your own. Yeah, there is a lot on the website. So thanks for bringing that up. Awesome. Awesome.

Well, Tyler, thank you so much. The podcast is Cocaine and Rhinestones. This is True Billy Workers Party. And we appreciate your time, man. It was fun. Yeah, it was a good time. See ya. See ya. Lord knows it's been too long since I've seen my friends. If I don't make that long, they call me out.

Open my mouth and pour something down. Stay with me a few more days I feel it coming round I'm so sick of this cold I'm so sick of this town I wish I could find a better place For you and me to be And until then we'll meet again

And hope for winter's end Should've known that our plans wouldn't work out right Then I'm with a man who said, I guess you never will. Stay with me a few more days. I feel it coming round. So sick of this cold north. So sick of this town. I wish you'd find a better place For you and me to be Until then, meet again

Hope for winter is here Until then, meet again is in and until then meet again and hope for winters is in