Forward by Flowerman: From now on, when rural revolutionary (Cousin) Chris Vondracek isn't repelling off of a silo somewhere, pounding the keys with rural disco rockers the Golden Bubbles and the Rock Garden Tour Family Band, or teaching college kids how to write better, he'll be blasting out some serious rock journalism right here at www.rockgardentour.com. So here it is then, the first installment from our garden variety rock writer, Cousin Christopher.
"The Only Tribute Song In South Dakota?"
Most states can claim at least one iconic musical shout-out. The devil didn’t go down to Connecticut, he went to Georgia. Sweet Home New Mexico doesn’t come off the tongue as easy. And find me one veteran of the East Coast/West Coast rap wars of the 1990s who didn’t know exactly what TuPac meant when he welcomed everyone to the “wild, wild west” in “California Love.”
At first glance, South Dakota references in song are less, well, showy. And it’s not like we’re being left out because of geography. To our direct south, Nebraska soaks up ironic mid-American hipness from Springsteen’s acclaimed 1982 album, to the west Montanans can wake up every morning and pat themselves on the back knowing weird rock fiend Frank Zappa has written a song about them where he contemplates marketing a brand of dental floss, and to the east, Minnesota has, well, Prince.
Sure, the Rushmore State has been indirectly referenced in major pop music tunes: beefcake Toby Keith bellows about a two-timing, Sioux Falls soccer mom in “Stays in Mexico,” McCartney with the Beatles yammers on about a bible-thumping Black Hills cowboy pistol-shot by a jealous lover, and doe-eyed indie rocker Bright Eyes sings about driving up to South Dakota so he could bury some cryptic angst in the “callous east.” I’m guessing Oberst probably asked for a pack of cigs at an I-90 gas stop on a busy day during the Rally.
The problem is, all of these songs (and the others out there) more or less avoid the major name-drop. It’s too bad, too, because “South Dakota” phonetically has a lot of potential for a vocalist: nice long vowels and a couple sharp-edged consonants.
This apparent absence of lyrical shout-outs can compel that old Midwestern feeling of resignation to raise its defeatist head, you think, “okay, fine, we’ll just be happy with what we’ve got, wouldn’t want to be self-indulgent like those big-grinning Montanans, anyway.”
But, upon further inspection, I’ve found that in fact South Dakotans have at least two spectacular music name-drops. The songs’ popularity may not be as mercurial as “Jersey Girl” and their prosody not as savvy as “All My Exes Live in Texas,” but you may want to at least burn them off iTunes onto a CD for a little well-deserved gloating at your next inter-state family gathering.
South Dakota Morning, Bee Gees
The ever-reinvented songwriting team of Brothers Gibbs, the Bee Gees, tucked a tender ode to prairie living on their 1973 album, “Life in a Tin Can,” entitled, “South Dakota Morning.” More “I Started a Joke” than “Stayin’ Alive,” Barry Gibb’s unwavering tenor moves over the steady pulse of some cowboy-guitar strumming, describing an “eagle flying on a South Dakota morning” while reminding himself, with both regret and eerie honesty, that he needs to kill his enemy, a “stranger.” Whether this enemy is in a quiet, western town or is someone who has caused him to run away to a prairie hideaway, these tangled allusions give the song a depth not found in your run-of-the-mill state song tribute. As the home-on-the-range harmonica fades out, Gibb sighs with the gentleness of a dandelion that on “South Dakota grass, I’ll lay me down.”
Only Black Man in South Dakota, Andre Williams
This song is without question an unmitigated game-changer for South Dakotans concerned with their state's mojo: Andre Williams’ “Only Black Man in South Dakota.” The Motown Rhythm and Blues man talks tough about being driven about by the “whole damn state” of North Dakota after falling in love with a girl named Margo from Fargo. In a voice that sounds like Tommy Lee Jones two-cups-of-coffee-into-the-morning, Williams accounts with devilish sincerity his venture into a land of “beers, steers, and cheers.” Driven by a Folsom Prison Blues guitar and drum clickety-clack, Williams mans a cherry-colored Cadillac, wearing a three-piece purple suit with “Stacy Adams” shoes while hurtling across the prairie (the police in chase) with an “Indian roadie” and a bodyguard named “Cody.” Throughout, Williams admits without a hint of displaced irony, almost like a hardened criminal under hot-lamp interrogation from the feds, that “I was the only black man in South Dakota.”
The haunting rock-a-billy and odd cinema plays out like the perfect opening sequence to the next Tarantino film. After assessing his hard-fought luck, Williams mutters “South Dakota’s got it going on.” From a MoTown man, there isn’t any higher endorsement.
Of course, for the true rural revolutionary, Williams is only acknowledging what has been more or less been in our back-pockets for a long time.
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