Long-awaited

 

I cannot think of a better way to open a podcast than with this challenge:

"Who's ready to learn some stuff?  Let's go!"

But those are the words of Tyler Mahan Coe, who is back today with Season Two of his great podcast, a scattered, non-linear history of real country music called "Cocaine and Rhinestones." He's a little miffed because accidentally, today's launch day for Season Two accidentally coincided with what he calls a "weed holiday."

The title might be a bit off, because some might think that Coe, the son of fabled country singer/songwriter David Allan Coe, is extolling drug use. He's not. He's been down that highway and avoids the on-ramps to it now.  It's not insignificant that he is estranged from his father and states publicly he hopes never to speak with the man who wrote and sang "Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile" and was the writer of Johnny Paycheck's biggest hit "Take This Job And Shove It." The elder Coe is not a fine man by any means. Look at any of his records - his millions of albums and CDs, yeah, but his jail record, his marriage record and his history of tax avoidance don't point to a well-adjusted life.

David Allan Coe

The Washington Post wrote a long long article about Coe and his podcast and his bizarre family history. When you have a father capable of writing tender songs such as his ode to eternity "Would You Lay With Me (In A Field Of Stone") and "She Used To Love Me A Lot" and then turn around and fill concert halls with vile racism and misogyny, you tend to grow up confused. Tyler spent twelve years playing guitar for his father and then ran away from the old man because of how disgusting he is, taking with him an abiding love for what we call real country music - the kind without Luke and Blake and that bunch.

Tyler Mahan Coe, at the card catalog of the Country
Music Association. He does extensive research.

Tyler does painstaking research. Lover of arcane fact that I am, I sat mesmerized as season one played out, detailing the genius of the well-known (Buck Owens) as well as those obscure to all but serious country nuts (steel guitar king Ralph Mooney) and lots of others in between. The first three episodes are devoted to the best country singer of all, George Jones.

And it doesn't matter that most of the people Coe chronicles are no longer living, because he does not do interviews to get his information. He researches painstakingly, which is why it's been several years since he put out the last installment. 

And he flatly turned down the opportunity to become a millionaire by selling the rights to the podcast to some outside party who would then have editorial and distribution control and authority over him. As he says on the website, “If I didn’t make ‘Cocaine & Rhinestones,’ it was never going to exist and I couldn’t bear the thought of it.” He wants the information out there, and he is in charge of sharing it.

He doesn't have a great voice for podcasting, but what he does have is the pedigree, and doggone if he doesn't have the facts to back himself up! The website is here, with all the info about past episodes and links to all, old and new. I'll see you there!