"I need a little 'Twang'!"

early this morning I was walking down Murfreesboro Rd. here in Music City and powder snowflakes were falling all around me. Shortly they fell harder and began to weave a blanket of white on the Nashville ground.

Meanwhile, I passed a Chevy dealership just a couple blocks from my residence. Filling the air audibly as the snowflakes filled it visually was the country music that the car dealership always has blaring out from its P.A. system. I've heard some good tunes whenever I've passed it since it opened. The song of the moment was "Twang".

My wife says she hates "Twang", and yes, it's not one of the Strait man's best efforts. Indeed, the arrangement would sound better fitted for a voice like, say, the other, older George or Chesney or Lawrence. On the other hand, the Strait man could release a recording of himself snoring and I'd buy it!

On the other hand, too, whoever would be singing it, "Twang" is my anthem of the moment! You see, as a boy growing up in Boise -- and during pre-teen years living a mile away from radio station that was to Idaho what WSM is to the Southeast, i.e. strong wattage & strong country music -- I absolutely loathed country music. I dissed it as "that twangy stuff on the radio!"

Then going to University of Idaho and joining Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity I had half my brothers there being farm-boys from Whitman Co. WA, and that was their music. Had to learn to tolerate it. From there it's been a step-by-step progression to where I love country (& Western) music most of all. The traditional type country music became my favorite sub-genre. You know, with fiddle and/or steel guitar. I love that steel guitar! ! !

Back in the Nineties I was reminiscing about the development of my love for country music and realized that the steel guitar had become my favorite instrument in that genre. AND that this was the "twang" in the music I had loathed as a boy! So-o-o-o. . .

" I need a little twang! A little hillbilly bendin' on some guitar strings!
" Some pedal steel whinin' like the whistle of an old freight train!
" To get that foot stompin' honky-tonkin' feelin' going thru my veins!
" I need a little twang, twang, twa-a-a-anggg! "

Hey, somebody show me to the Station Inn!