Country Roads, Take Me Home
- Tracy Grathwohl
- Oct 2
- 4 min read
I love to sing at the top of my lungs while I’m driving. I love to belt out a banger like Queen’s “We Will Rock You” or a ballad like Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence.” It’s therapeutic.
It’s not therapeutic for Mr. Hockey or the hockey pucks because I can’t carry a tune. When they’re in the car, they prefer the sound of silence.
I learned this in high school when I tried out for “Oklahoma!” Instead of making the chorus, I got the job of prompter and whispered forgotten lines to a 15-year-old Curly.
In the words of Celine Dion, I should sing “All by Myself.”
I used to listen to more news than music while driving. But the news has been a bit of a bummer recently. Even the honeyed tones of NPR can’t make it palatable. Bad singing is preferable to, well, you know what’s been in the news.
Instead, I’ve been lending my unmelodious voice to country music.
People are surprised when I tell them I like country. The fact that I live north of the Mason-Dixon Line puts me in the wrong demographic. As does being an upper-middle-aged woman.
Honestly, being an upper-middle-aged woman puts me in the wrong demographic for everything.
You might think country songs are all the same. That they’re about a guy who drives his truck to a neon-signed, dive bar to drink away his recent breakup. In walks a girl who’s beautiful but doesn’t know it. The guy can just tell she loves dancing in the rain. He buys her a shot of whiskey or tequila, he makes her laugh, and they dance.
They fall in love. Or they don’t. Either way, after the bar closes they might hook up in the cab of his pickup or in the truck bed. Under the night sky.
They might get married and live happily ever after. If they do, they’ll live on their farm and sit on the back porch swing watching their grandbabies play as the sun sets. If they don’t, the guy might sit on his boat and think about what could have been with the girl who loved dancing in the rain.
If that’s what you think a country song is, you are correct. Sometimes clichés exist because they’re true.
What isn’t true is that women love dancing in the rain. We don’t. No matter what our demographic is.
I’ve just described some guidelines for country songs, and it’s why I like them. The songwriter has rules to follow but must still be unique. I like rules. This column has rules: it should be 900 words, about a mundane topic, and humorous.
How am I doing? Well, we’re at about 450 words, it’s mundane alright, and meh.
Let’s forge ahead.
I got into country music through its funnier songs.
In Megan Moroney’s “Tennessee Orange,” a girl calls her mother because she met a boy. It’s not what you think, she’s not in trouble. Rather, she’s wearing the University of Tennessee’s orange team colors for the boy. This is a sin for red-garbed Georgia Bull Dog fans like her family.
Apparently, the University of Tennessee and the University of Georgia are rivals. Being a northerner and an upper-middle-aged woman, I had no knowledge of SEC college football conflicts. It’s not in my demographic.
But if you try new things, you learn new things.
In “Nobody Likes Your Girlfriend,” Nate Smith and HARDY humorously and emphatically tell their buddy that no one likes his girlfriend.
By the way, HARDY goes by one name, like Cher, but in all caps. I don’t know why. If anyone’s name should be in all caps, it’s CHER.
All this music has caused a problem: earworms. My mind constantly buzzes with a song, usually the last one I’ve listened to. I hear music while doing chores, playing games on my phone, even when I’m dreaming, which is exhausting. At least my inside voice is better than my outside voice.
It’s weird, but I don’t have earworms in the shower. That’s where I think about what to write in this column. What else should I do while exfoliating? Not all my creativity happens in my writing garret.
If I don’t like a song that’s playing on the radio, I move on. I’m a big station switcher. I’ll rotate through the dial to our local WELJ FM – the East End’s Easy Favorites – then to my satellite radio’s 70s pop, to classic rock, to 80s pop, or to Broadway. I don’t stop until I land on a song I’ve known so long it’s imprinted on my DNA. Like John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” which is one of the best songs to belt out. Ever.
Then I loop back to the country station for something new.
As I said above, the news has been a bit of a bummer. I’m looking joy wherever I can. Sometimes that joy is driving, listening to, and badly singing songs about a world where people drown their sorrows in a honkytonk bar. Where a woman, who doesn’t know she’s beautiful (and doesn’t love dancing in the rain), turns every head when she walks into that bar and steals the heart of a hell-raising man. And where they hook up in the back of a pickup.
Afterward, they let the country roads take them home.
Which is all we really want, isn’t it?
Published in The East Hampton Press on October 2, 2025
Photo by Nick Rickert for Unsplash
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