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My love-hate relationship with country music began in the seventh grade when I walked by a honky-tonk in my hometown of Philomath, Oregon, with my friend Katy who was already smoking cigarettes by age ten. As we walked through the gravel parking lot I could hear the strains of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson's "Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" coming from the open bar doors and filling the night air. I looked at Katy with a sort of "would you listen to that hick music crap" glance and she stopped in the middle of the lot and said, "You know, we're hicks too."

I may be a hick just by virtue of where I grew up, but I have always fought the trappings of country life and have tried to be a cosmopolitan lady by emulating what I think city people do. You know, listening to opera, wearing black slacks with pointy-toed shoes, buying designer this and that, reading the Times on Sundays with a bagel and coffee. It takes a lot of money and energy to live as a true New Yorker, and after a long while, I figured out that I could take the parts I love about the city—good bagels and the Times—and incorporate them with the other, less urban, aspects of me.

That went double for country music. I didn't have to love it all (I curse God for Garth Brooks) but I gave myself permission to listen to country music I deeply loved, starting with Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. This conversion from uptight city girl-wannabe to a kinder and gentler version of myself, I'm sure had everything to do with my growing up.

At some point you just listen to what really moves you, and as a kid, what moved me was Michael Jackson and Wham. This is why I believe country music is not for teenagers. It was never cool to listen to the old time country singers, even if at home I knew all of the words to all the songs. The language of country is not hip and young, it is music for grown-ups dealing with heartache, infidelity, divorce, alcoholism, and the myriad of forces that make life so rugged. As a rule, country music shuns the newfangled in favor of the old and traditional, the patriarchal over anything feminist, the south over the north, the poor over the wealthy, the rural over the urban. These fundamentally conservative values have always defined country music—but I am a bleeding heart liberal! For me, I like the conflict of ideals. Does everything I do and listen to have to line up with my strict dogma? I'd like to think I can appreciate the human struggles that the music lays bare versus the conservative values so integral to the music.

These days my CD player is permanently playing George Jones. I remember that he vaguely scared me as a kid due to the extraordinary amounts of polyester he wore. Then I heard Jones sing, "She Thinks I Still Care" on the Swingers soundtrack—Jon Favreau (as depressed Mike Peters) is as country as it gets when he shuts himself up in his apartment with nothing but a blanket and pictures of his ex-girlfriend. The lyrics, "Just because I haunt the same old places/where the memory of her lingers everywhere/Just because I'm not the happy guy I used to be/She thinks I still care," are pathetic (Snap out of it! Get over her already!) but infused with incredible vulnerability when sung by Jones. We can't fault the guy for being in love, he just wants to love one good woman, is that so wrong? But what we know is that he is a drunk (or a loser, or a gambler, or a rambler) and that "she" is better off without him.

The essential George Jones album, the one that captures the sadness caused by alcoholic and romantic delusions, is 1980's I Am What I Am. With songs like, "If Drinking Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)" and "His Lovin' Her Is Gettin' In My Way," finds that the woman he loves is gone and yet he can't (or won't) see that it is all his doing. This is pure lying on the bar room floor, sad sack, alcoholic misery that nonetheless glimmers with hope and redemption.

Jones' combination of sadness, longing, and denial—a drink in one hand and a microphone in another—has me listening to George every night. As writer Jeffrey Puckett wrote, "There are moments in a George Jones song when you think to yourself, ‘My Lord, I truly think I am going to die of sadness. Right here in the middle of the third verse. Dead. Heart stopped, drowned in my own tears.'"

Of course it is hard to be a country music fan in urbane New York City and it doesn't help that there isn't a country music radio station here. My musical isolation reminds me of an Irish girl I once knew who came to New York from Dublin for college and soon found herself clutching her radio late at night listening to the Celtic hour on public radio. She confessed she never used to like that kind of music—the traditional penny whistle music that her mother preferred—but now the music was the closest she could feel to home.

I know I am guilty of romanticizing country music and the way of life it represents. It is the soundtrack to a more simple world that I dream about, one where I am sitting on the porch of an old white farm house, drinking a whiskey and Coke while crickets battle for my attention with the radio playing Hank Williams. Listening to country music in New York City is the perfect antidote for my big city blues. So call me a hick—I guess I'd take it as a compliment.

MY ESSENTIAL COUNTRY MUSIC:
George Jones, I Am What I Am, (Sony) I drink a whiskey to you, my wonderful Mr. Jones.

Gillian Welch, Revival, (Acony) Ms. Welch is no relation to me, but I wish she were my backwater auntie so we could eat fried chicken together.

Johnny Cash, At Folsom Prison, (Sony) Johnny's 1968 concert for the inmates of California's Folsom Prison is remarkable. This album has been reissued as an unedited version of the concert in its entirety, right down to the announcements from the warden when an inmate has a visitor.

Johnny Cash, At San Quentin (The Complete 1969 Concert), (Sony) A more rounded set list then Cash played at Folsom, the songs at San Quentin go from country to gospel and back. When Cash yells, "My Name is Sue! How do you do! Now yer gonna die!" I get shivers.

Patsy Cline, Greatest Hits (Original Recording Remastered), (MCA) All of her greatest hits and a good starter set for any new fan.

k.d. lang and The Reclines, Absolute Torch and Twang, (Warner Bros.) k.d. lang started out as a country singer and this album is her finest. A yeehaw worthy showcase for her awesome voice with a wink to the lesbian contingent that makes up a large part of country music's fan base.

Randy Travis, Always and Forever, (Warner Bros.) I don't hold it against Mr. Travis that he once guest starred on Matlock, even though his character had no reason to be there but to sing with Andy Griffith.

Dolly Parton, Ultimate Dolly Parton, (RCA) From "Jolene" to "9 to 5" this one has all of Dolly's hits.

Don't Get Above Your Raisin'; Country Music and the Southern Working Class, Bill C. Malone (University of Illinois Press, 2002, $34.95) A dense, academic tome. Bill C. Malone hosts a weekly radio show of obscure country recording, and if you don't have an extensive country record collection, you will probably get bored fast.

Vinyl Hayride: Country Music Album Covers, 1947-1989, Paul Kingsbury & The Country Music Music Hall of Fame (Chronicle, 2003, $24.95) Makes you yearn for the days of giant album sleeves and Liberace.

The Rough Guide Country Music, Kurt Wolff, et al (Rough Guides, 2000, $24.95) Clear and concise biographies of all major country musicians. Go ahead, quiz your friends.

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, Mark Zwonitzer, Charles Hirshberg (Simon & Schuster, 2002, $25.00) This family is dropping like flies. Coincidence?

This may come as a surprise, but the movies have not always been kind to country music. From 1958 to the 1970s there was a genre of movies called "Hillbilly Hollywood" where the exploits of country bumpkins (like the brilliantly named country music star Ferlin Husky) made city folks laugh and point.

Urban Cowboy (1980) John Travolta and Debra Winger are at their best in this mechanical bull riding drama. Watch for the scene at Gilley's where Travolta stashes his bottle of Bud in the back pocket of his skin-tight jeans—a testament to the powerful pockets of Wranglers. Winger as Sissy is a tiny vision in tight Texas T-shirts.

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980) Sissy Spacek sings exactly like Loretta Lynn which can be at the same time beautiful in its naiveté and grating in its nasal-ness. The story moves along at breakneck speed. (Whoa! Loretta, you just got married five minutes ago and now you are dropping off all four of your kids at your mom's so you can be a country singer?!) But overall it shows the rise of the legendary country singer from the coal mining hills to the Grand Ole Opry.

O, Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) I have always been a fan of the Cohen brothers movies (save for Barton Fink which went completely over my head) and O, Brother doesn't skimp on the lush southern scenery or architecture in the particular Cohen fashion of pitch perfect settings. The soundtrack has proved to have a life of its own by bringing traditional country and spirituals to the NPR masses.

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