John Rich is part of the country music duo Big & Rich. I listen to some country music but not Big & Rich, although they’ve been around for a while. They actually predate the “Nu Country” movement AND the “Bro Country” movement, I’m pretty sure. Bro Country is the male-dominated country music which is just about getting drunk and shooting things, all wrapped up in a flag. Nu Country is like… country music made by women who support reproductive rights AND drinking. Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to be a half-assed dissertation on country music, but my point is that Big & Rich have been around for something like 25 years. They’ve seen how much the industry has changed. And John Rich apparently does not like the changes. He thinks wokeism has come to Nashville and Johnny Cash would hate all of it! From Rich’s interview with Prager U:

“The wave of wokeism that’s hit this country and especially the entertainment business, that made its way to Nashville. So these artists are being told by their publicists, their managers, the heads of the records labels: ‘Hey, we know you think these things about America, that you’re against this woke stuff that we do (the don’t call themselves woke, of course) but we know you’re not for that, but hey, Don’t even think about putting out a post that pushes against that, don’t say x,y,z on your microphone on stage, no you cannot record that song because it says this.’

“And they completely just control artists and the artists only has two choices: Do they wanna go have a career, it’s been their dream, do they play the game, go forward and just don’t step on these landmines? Or, do they go out and hit the trip wires and light the place up,? And lose their record deal, and not get invited to the awards show, and radio won’t play them, but… basically erase their career. That’s what they’re faced with. Is there freedom in art in Nashville, total freedom? Absolutely not.”

He also went on to say that an artists like Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Loretta Lynn couldn’t exist today: “If you’re wondering why it seems like people are pulling back and not giving you the full deal, there’s no Johnny Cashs, or Waylon Jennings, or Loretta Lynns, there’s a good reason for that… none of those people would have been allowed to exist today.

[From Whiskey Riff]

As Whiskey Riff points out, Johnny Cash is the wrong person to use if you’re complaining about wokeism run amok. Cash was very progressive for his day – he was anti-war, pro-prison reform and he was incredibly supportive of civil rights and Native American rights. Cash really was an OG woke social justice warrior. Loretta Lynn was singing feminist anthems too and she was always a vocal advocate for women’s reproductive rights.

But wokeism in the country music industry is like “maybe you shouldn’t sing a song about lynching people in a small town” or “maybe you shouldn’t step to an actual veteran like Kris Kristofferson.” Is that really wokeism or is it about begging people to act with some kind of common sense?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.