ROBIN WRITES: Country twang

By Editor | June 25, 2025 |

By Robin Garrison Leach

When I hear country music, my sneaker taps in a duet with the heartbeat of the tempo…and I know it’d feel better if that foot wore a cowboy boot.
We didn’t listen to country music when I was growing up—my mother hated it, and she ruled the roost. The music we heard at home was mostly church songs, but we had a tiny collection of scratchy of Bobby Vinton, Vikki Carr, and Johnny Mathis 45’s that spun on bedroom record players.
When I hit my early teens, I discovered Tammy Wynette. She sang about the pain of betrayal and passion, perfect for a girl just learning about love. Her voice seeped through a clenched, tortured jaw that serrated each phrase.
Every song told a story. Beginning to end. I learned how to spell ‘D-I-V-O-R-C-E’ with a twang in my larynx. She told me about poor little Bobby (his parents were splittin’ up!) and my throat ached for the little tyke.
Johnny Cash took my interest in this ‘tell-all music’ to a new, octave-lower level. After ‘A Boy Named Sue’ hit the pop charts, I started listening to his other songs. This was no crooner. The smooth trills of Johnny Mathis seemed operatic compared to the voice I heard on ‘I Walk the Line’.
Cash’s range was limited to just a few, raspy notes. But his rough voice filed away at the bars that held me captive in my ‘Casey Kasem’s Top 20 Countdown’ world. I was mesmerized by the sound and the fury of his songs. They convinced me I had some livin’ and lovin’ and hurtin’ to do.
I snuck into my brother’s room when he left for a date or for work and taught myself four chords on his guitar. That was all I needed: In the blink of a teardrop, I was able to play and sing Loretta Lynn’s spunky tale of catfight chaos, ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man’.
My fingers were sore at first, then callused. I knew about pain now. I could wail about love and loss and cheatin’ and forgivin’ with a wizened grimace.
I grew up and became a mom and a grandma. For the last four decades, lullabies, pop songs and hymns have filled my household. The ‘Eency, Weency Spider’ has climbed that waterspout a million times, and pop music wafted from records to cassettes to 8-tracks to CDs and digital files.
Church songs that I remember singing with Mom keep a constant rhythm in my heart; I’ve tried to cling to the ‘Old Rugged Cross’ with a tenacity even Tammy Wynette would have envied.
But my love of a good ol’ country song will never fade. The music is simple; the beat as predictable as a pulse. When I hear Lee Ann Womack or Trisha Yearwood sing her stories, I smile at the common roads we’ve all boot-scooted down. No other music can hold a candle to those experiences and feelings.
And though I’m not the young filly I once was, I still feel like a ‘Good-Hearted Woman’ when my car radio lands on a country station. My foot may be tapping with less energy now, but I’m still that same twangy, four-chord, guitar-playin’ country girl inside.
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■ Robin is a freelance columnist who lives and writes in Quincy, Illinois. Contact her at [email protected].