The Bird and the Rifle
My wife and I have been lucky to share a lot of music over the course of us knowing each other. While discovering music online we started to slowly discover all the incredible alt-country, Americana, and singer-songwriter stuff being made today. One day while listening to an acoustic playlist, a new song stuck with me. A simple story made up the lyrics, sang over a spare country atmosphere by a unadorned female vocal, a room-for-storytelling speed to the music. That was the beginning of our dive into the music of Lori McKenna, veteran country songwriter with a part-time music career of her own.
That song was The Bird and the Rifle, off of McKenna's 9th full-length release of the same name. As a relative new appreciator of country (the raw under-appreciated stuff of Merle, Willie, Waylon, etc.), I immediately recognized that McKenna's music exemplified everything that great country did well: sincere and disarming lyrics, clear-eyed emotion, and relatable sentimentalism. The opener, "Wreck You", details a restless frustration with a relationship that's lost its spark. The chorus laments "I don't know how to bring you back / don't know how to hold you close / all I know is how to wreck you / Something between us changed / I'm not sure if it's you or me/ but lately, all I do seems to wreck you"
The title track, "Bird and the Rifle" cleverly personifies each element, the bird struggling to break free from the rifle's dead-end way of life. The story has been told a thousand times in this genre, yet McKenna can do it justice by framing it in with unexpected terms.
McKenna also remanences on her slowly changing life. On "Giving up on Your Hometown", she details the fight that her hometown faces in the modern age, with vivid recollections running through the lyrics:
"We never visit your daddy's grave
But we go by the house
He'd be working on a car in the driveway
If he was with us now
And that porch swing you built for your mama
Is all but gone
I guess even when you stay right here
Sometimes you can't go home"
This music at every turn is generational and emotionally detailed. The instruments leave room for McKenna to say the important things that are usually just vaguely hinted at in song lyrics.
Much of the lyrical material seems to profile McKenna's actual life, but there are a few exceptions. "Halfway Home", a raw, pull-no punches accounting of a disrespected love interest's processing of a rough night, stands out as necessary, vulnerable music, and one of the album's biggest triumphs. The verse sets up the character-
"Halfway Home well, you ain't so sure he's the one
4 AM and you drive alone with last night's clothes on
halfway home tell yourself you're still strong
wondering what's so damn wrong with needing someone"
The following chorus reads as timeless and anthemic of a lyric as Merle or Willie could write:
"Calling the lovelorn girls / Of Davidson County
Tired of the games / That the boys up there play
Calling the dreaming girls /Looking for a savior
He ain't gonna save you / That's just what you think his eyes say"
McKenna's success as a writer is most commercially known through artists like Tim McGraw and Little Big Town. She won a Grammy for song of the year twice in a row for respectively penning Humble and Kind and Girl Crush for those artists. A version of the former, Humble and Kind, appears on this record as well, stripped down and with added depth.
One of my personal favorites from this album is the effortless, reminiscent "We Were Cool", a page seemingly straight out of McKenna's life. The set-up of the song loses itself in memory:
"His brother had a Chevy Malibu. / I was sitting in the back seat
On some dead end road / We weren’t supposed to know.
I remember thinking he would break my heart. I was green as an evergreen.
But I fell right in, Never the same again.
Duran Duran on the radio, The Wild Boys and the 'Days Of Gold.'
I was sitting on his right, on his left was a fresh tattoo, And man – we were cool."
McKenna's stories are full of a sense of tenderness and contentment that steer clear of cliche and inauthenticity. Underpinning these stories is on-point production by Dave Cobb. The Nashville veteran brings a one-take, stripped down and sensitive treatment to this album with thin string lines, light electric guitar riffs, McKenna's detuned acoustic strumming, and a tight, sparse rhythm section.
Another standout is the tongue-and-cheek, Old Men Young Women, which starts out with the sardonic lyric- "you can have him / I hope you have fun / I guess wife number three could be the one". McKenna's wit and light sarcasm pair nicely with the usual sincerity. The upbeat, metaphoric All These Things gives way to the melancholy and endlessly hummable Always Want You. The closer If Whiskey Were A Woman rounds out the recording with classic country centerpieces.
There are only a handful of records that hit me like this one does. My wife and I must have collectively listened to this dozens and dozens of times. One of my favorite concerts I've ever attended was seeing McKenna and her band play this record live. We weren't even sitting in seats, just on the floor of the balcony of a small Dallas venue. Sharing music with someone you love is one of the better pleasures in this life.
The meaning of this particular album, individually nuanced as it always is, drills deep for me. Though McKenna demonstrates her penchant for writing a moving, beautiful, honest tune, it's her poetry of the ordinary, of family, love, and history, and her sense of reflection and gratitude that I'm struck by (in a slightly different way) with every listen.
This record led us to into several of McKenna's other excellent records, "Numbered Doors", "Lorraine", and "Massachusetts", all full of more superb story-telling and song-craft . Everyone has their shortlist of records they grow old together as a close friend with, records that set you in a grounded frame of mind and are felt and experienced in a hundred complex ways. Records that build up memories into snowballs and somehow change a bit with every listen. "The Bird and the Rifle" is definitely on mine.