Classic Album Reviews, Pt. 2

Pageant Material

Let Kacey Musgraves take you there

I know that Kacey Musgraves’ second album, Pageant Material, isn’t a classic yet, but it could be one day. And should be.

“Slept in a room with the ghost of Gram Parsons Drank some wine I can’t afford Went to San Antonio to the Riverwalk and the rodeo Seen the white cliffs of Dover from the shore

And I kinda fell in love with a Palm Springs trailer park But those California stars could never steal my heart.”

Those lyrics from “Dime Store Cowgirl” cast Kacey in the spirit/ghost of the shadows of night, or Country-Rock royalty. Is a trailer park in Palm Springs vibrantly the same as one in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Clinton, South Carolina, or Bessemer, Alabama? None of us in those places sports Gram Parsons as a legendary mentor; our heroes are other cowboys.

Kacey says that all she’ll ever be is a “dime store cowgirl,” the “country” being so embedded in here that she’s one with it for good.

Maybe so, and if so, it isn’t all bad.

In grade school music class, we often had to sing the patriotic anthem, “This Is MY Country,” and on the recordings we modeled ourselves after, the tenor voice of someone making a buck on this used to hit that “MY” so hard that I felt a rush of something, but back then I didn’t wonder about who was coming or going, legal or not, though I did know that the Brits were re-invading and haircuts could mean the difference between busted knees or noses; but I didn’t wonder about “the country,” that is, what lay beyond those city limits just a mile or so from my house, past ol Mr. Scott’s store, the viaduct proclaiming Schwabacher’s Goods, and up US Highway 150 toward Shannon.

I also grew up in that small-town world of beauty pageants. Our high school used to host or sponsor at least three annually:

Miss JLHS

Miss Homecoming Queen

and

Miss Queen Merry Christmas.

The beauty queens were also vibrant young girls, and sometimes, as we got to the early/mid 1970’s, one of those queens might even be Black.

I remember the year that Birmingham radio personality Rick Dees (later of “Disco Duck” fame) emceed the Miss JLHS (Jess Lanier High School) pageant, and he so drooled over the 16 and 17 year-old girls as he announced them that he should have been arrested, or at least run out of there, except that that wasn’t what we did to men in those days apparently, which makes what Kacey says in her title song, “Pageant Material,” so…material. And later, another disc jockey from another radio station started dating a high school girl I knew. Who really gave a shit that he was in his late 20’s and she…well I just said she was a high school girl.

“There’s certain things you’re s’posed to know When you’re a girl who grows up in the south I try to use my common sense But my foot always ends up in my mouth And if I had to walk a runway in high heels in front of the whole town I’d fall down And my mama cried When she realized…

I ain’t pageant material.”

I’ve always wished I could have written down all those things I’m supposed to have known, growing up in the South, but then as a boy, those rules were usually reserved for late curfews and holding doors open for all women. What are the things that girls are supposed to know as they don those high heels and “that swimsuit,” as they speak about “world peace” and try to convince someone that they can represent all or some of us somewhere on another distant stage.

“God bless the girls who smile and hug When they’re called out as a runner up on TV I wish I could, but I just can’t Wear a smile when a smile ain’t what I’m feelin’ And who’s to say I’m a 9.5 Or a 4.0 if you don’t even know me Life ain’t always roses and pantyhose And

I ain’t pageant material.”

My other favorite song on the record is “This Town,” which starts off with a couple of women who are either grocery store cashiers or, more likely, beauticians, commenting on a girl:

“We had a girl that came in with a drug overdose the other day And she got real belligerent And she bit one of the nurses (Oh man) And, I mean, she bit (ohhh) — you could see every tooth (nooo! hehe) It took two or three of us to get her off of her It’s a crazy Wednesday…”

Listen to the rest of the song:

Small towns often look like each other, and yes, the gossip sounds like each other as we discus who’s “cheatin,” and who’s trying to climb over someone else. Maybe Country Music has always been trying to get us talking and thinking about who we are, but in the best and worst sense of that,

Who are we?

And what do, must, we stand for in “our’ country?

Kacey mentions the wave of Mexican restaurants (our college town of Clinton, population 9000, has three, though when McDonald’s first came to town, EVERYONE had to go, even my academic colleagues, as if…), how happy everybody got “when the grocery store got beer,” and that a flashing light has finally been set up in town (my daughter and son-in-law’s town of Hot Springs, VA, still doesn’t have a flashing light — county-wide).

I don’t know what all of this means or should mean. I do know how real it all is, and I’m not sure what came first: the small town, or the trailer park.

And then there’s “Good Ol’ Boys Club,” which talks of “favors and friends, cigars and handshakes…”

“Preciate ya, but no thanks.”

Other standouts include “Late to the Party” and the hidden track, a duet with Willie Nelson called “Are You Sure:”

“Look down the bar from you At the faces that you see… At all the local used-to-be’s Are you sure that this is where you want to be?”

Some of us have choices as to that; others do not. But at least most of us can listen somehow to Kacey and think over our lives, our world, and the different, albeit same, parks and towns where we work and play and live. The steel guitar will help us feel it all.

We can’t all be pageant material.

Thank God.

🎸🎸🎸🎸

Thanks for reading and supporting all the fine writers at Plethora of Pop, especially guru Pierce McIntyre, and Randy Runtsch, Paul Combs, Brandy Niremburk, Paul K. Barnes, Chris Zappa, Kathy Copeland Padden, Nicole Brown, Steven Hale, Jessie Waddell, David Acaster, Taylor Moran, Karla Clifton, Jessica Lee McMillan, If Ever You’re Listening, Danielle Loewen, Kevin Alexander, Alexander Briseño, Alex Markham, Jim Mowat, and Zsófia Vera.

Here’s the first in this series: