If I Had a Lawn, the Grass Would Be Blue

I grew up in Dahlonega, Georgia, perhaps the prettiest town in the world. It's surrounded by mountains, half-covered in beautiful cow pastures and fragrant chicken houses, and probably has the most gracious and down-to-earth citizens in all of the South. The first 18 years of my life, I was surrounded by the rural Appalachian culture of this town, and although I embraced many of its particularities, I rebelled against two of its most prevelant characteristics: I was a staunch liberal in a town replete with Old South conservatism and I committed the sacrilege of hating the country and bluegrass music that formed the soundtrack of Dahlonega life.

I'm still a liberal to the core, and I don't see that ever changing, but my taste in music has evolved. Music has always been a big part of my life. I fell in love with the Beatles as a kid, rocked out to Nirvana in middle school awkwardness, and thought I had the hippest music collection in my graduating class. Music is always playing around me. It's quite a challenge for me to turn down the music in my classroom low enough so as to not distract my students on test days. Six years ago, my iTunes library had almost every genre represented except country and bluegrass. My elitist musical taste wouldn't allow for it. But finally, that stodginess has been dislodged, and I've been rewarded by being able to enjoy some of the catchiest music known to man. My guess is that if you don't find your self tapping your foot to "Chattahoochee" by Alan Jackson or belting out backup to Garth while "Friends in Low Places" plays, you're either not being honest with yourself or you're not human.

Don't worry, I won't subject you to me singing about my huntin' dog, my old woman, and an empty bottle of Jack. Nobody deserves that. Instead, I'm going to try to write some good-old fashioned bluegrass fiddle tunes. I've played guitar, not very well, off and on since I was 13. I've always wanted to be able to write my own music, but I've never really had the time to try. The structure of a fiddle tune is nice and simple and no singing is necessary, so I figure this is a good place to start as a wanna-be song-writer. We'll see what happens.