Nashville Uprising

Bobby Braddock, longtime Nashville songwriter, recently lamented the conservatism of the country music industry that was demonstrated when Natalie Maines become a lightning rod for fury three years ago after saying she was ashamed that her band and President Bush shared the same home state. Braddock says his recent song, "Thou Shalt Not Kill", won't even receive any airplay.

Country music, with it's genre of lonely hearts and highways, lost jobs and blue-collar woes, has become a cultural battleground. Conservatism is widely seen as having the upper hand, a red-state answer to left-leaning Hollywood. “Something political will not get played on country radio unless it’s on the conservative side,” said Braddock. “If you show both sides, it’s not good enough. It’s got to be just on the right.”

Democrats on Music Row become increasingly frustrated with this reputation. A group of record-company executives, talent managers and artists have formed "Music Row Democrats" and released an online compilation of 20 songs that are directly critical of Bush and the Iraq "war". The set is priced at $20 with most proceeds going to support local and national candidates who share its values. While the group has no illusions that the songs will shoot up the charts, they hope to use them as fund-raisers and to change the image of country as strictly Republican music.

Bob Titley, former Brooks & Dunn manager and Music Row Democrats co-founder, hopes the music will be played at campaign rallies and by volunteers when out in the field. "When the volunteers are out on a hot day driving door to door, they can play it in their cars to keep themselves pumped up and in a good mood", he added.

In addition to Mr. Braddock’s “Thou Shalt Not Kill” and “Big Blue Ball of War” by Nanci Griffith, John Scott Sherrill contributed “You Let the Fox Run the Henhouse,” and former Vice President Al Gore speaks a few words at the end of “Al Gore,” which was written by Robert Ellis Orrall and includes the line, “President Gore lives on my street.”

Many of the contributing singers and songwriters are not household names outside Nashville, but their work has been recorded by big stars ranging from Toby Keith to LeAnn Rimes and Travis Tritt.

Darrell Scott contributed “Goodle U.S.A.” Faith Hill had recorded it under a different name and without the line “It’s like Joe McCarthy was our acting president.” Scott recently recorded a new song, “W Cheese,” in a basement studio at Famous Music on Music Row. “I’ve never thought of myself as very political,” he said. “It just seems like in the current environment even I have to write about it.” One verse ends, “They filled our plate with freedom fries, red, black and blue, white lies/And a helping, heaping, hating size of stinkin’ W cheese.”

Though Music Row occupies a small patch of Nashville, it looms large over the city’s culture. When Natalie Maines slammed Bush back in 2003, the reaction was fierce and swift.Country stations stopped playing the group’s songs. Talk-radio hosts urged listeners to complain about Ms. Maines’s remarks. And a Nashville audience of 18,000 booed the host of a music awards show who urged forgiveness.

None of that was lost on Music Row. Democratic songwriters say that it made them hesitate to express political views, for fear of being “Dixie Chicked.” Record company execs feared damage to the artists they represented if they spoke out. Luke Lewis, of Universal Music Group said “As outraged as I was at the whole thing, I couldn’t say anything, because I’d put artists that I’m associated with in jeopardy,”.

At the same time, the Republican Party’s use of country music at political events and the popularity of patriotic songs like Toby Keith’s (A lifelong Democrat, by the way) “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (the Angry American)” and Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten?” rankled industry liberals. Thus began Music Row Democrats, started in late 2003 with a meeting of more than 20 label executives and songwriters. It says it now has 1,200 members from the Nashville music industry and 1,100 others.

When you have a war, people want you to be on one side or the other. Singer and songwriter Chely Wright has felt the heat of crossfire. Her song “Bumper of My S.U.V.,” about a confrontation over a Marine sticker on her vehicle, was praised from conservatives and scorned by liberals. Ms. Wright, a military daughter, says she has no allegiance to Democrats or Republicans.

She recently recorded “I Ain’t Gettin’ Any Younger,” which opens with, “The cost of crude keeps going up/More precious now than gold” and ends by asking “Why it makes somebody mad/That a baby named John Doe/Might get to have two loving dads.”

Ms. Wright said: “When one does say anything less than, ‘Ooh baby, ooh baby, I love you,’ in a song, in my format, out of this town, you really put yourself out there as a bit of a lightning rod. I can’t have those fears.”