Classic Album Reviews, Pt. 2

Pageant Material

Let Kacey Musgraves take you there

Photo by Britta Preusse on Unsplash

I know that Kacey Musgraves’ second album, Pageant Material, isn’t a classic yet, but it could be one day. And should be.

“Slept in a room with the ghost of Gram Parsons
Drank some wine I can’t afford
Went to San Antonio to the Riverwalk and the rodeo
Seen the white cliffs of Dover from the shore

And I kinda fell in love with a Palm Springs trailer park
But those California stars could never steal my heart.”

Those lyrics from “Dime Store Cowgirl” cast Kacey in the spirit/ghost of the shadows of night, or Country-Rock royalty. Is a trailer park in Palm Springs vibrantly the same as one in Fayetteville, Arkansas, Clinton, South Carolina, or Bessemer, Alabama? None of us in those places sports Gram Parsons as a legendary mentor; our heroes are other cowboys.

Kacey says that all she’ll ever be is a “dime store cowgirl,” the “country” being so embedded in here that she’s one with it for good.

Maybe so, and if so, it isn’t all bad.

In grade school music class, we often had to sing the patriotic anthem, “This Is MY Country,” and on the recordings we modeled ourselves after, the tenor voice of someone making a buck on this used to hit that…