“Try it on me!” ~ Whitney Houston to Mariah Carey, or Mariah Carey to Whitney Houston, at the MTV Video Music Awards circa mid to late 90’s
Never having been a fan of country music, my interest in the country western vibe that has taken over this website and this autumn may seem at odds with who I am, yet if you dig deeper into what makes a cowboy a cowboy – the internal machinations and make-up of the rebellious fringe-dweller who refuses to conform to what society wants – it’s actually a good fit. Still, I understand if this feels like just another pose – as I have lived most of my life as a provocative poseur. It’s too late to change, and too late to apologize. The die of the chameleon has been cast.
Well I don’t wanna be a big star and I don’t need to drive a new car
Well I don’t wanna wear no new clothes and you won’t catch me looking down my nose
Don’t you tell me I don’t belong out here…
I’m a punk rock spy in the house of honky tonk heaven
Yeah I’m a punk rock spy in the house of honky tonk heaven
I got a punk rock heart but the punk and the honky go together
Another mask, another guise, another persona to inhabit for a spell to work out whatever kinks remain, exorcizing demons past and present and possibly future, and if the cowboy is the conduit, I’m more than ready to saddle up. In a way, this is how art operates when used as a vehicle to find something or feel something or process something. Will I be bucking off broncos or herding cattle or stringing barbed-wire fences anytime soon? Of course not. Will I distract and dazzle in cowboy cosplay while buying myself some therapy and creative catharsis? Absolutely. And can I relate to someone who has historically been an outsider, a rebel, a person hellbent on living life on their own terms in defiance of social constraints and mores? Fuck yeah.
The writer and performer of this song – Charlie Overbey – expresses what it’s like to straddle genres – punk, country, honky tonk, blues, and rock – while not being defined or labelled as any single one of them. A standard flummoxed reaction often results when someone falls into uncharted territory, or somewhere in between or in several different categories. Humans want so much to organize things and understand others in the most basic of terms, when we are all too complex and nuanced and different to really conform to any single set of standards or descriptions. There are always exceptions, always footnotes, always asterisks and ‘See also’s and all sorts of annotations.
And those of us who dare to change, or evolve, or become something different from what people assumed us to be – well, we are viewed as suspect, as less than authentic, as a shape-shifting creature of mythology – not to be trusted or counted on or safe as someone they have supposedly figured out. We make others uncomfortable because our certainty is in our evolution. But I digress… This is the fall of the cowboy, not the chameleon – and cowboys are nothing if not sure of themselves.
