The Country Guy
by Will Bailey

Wannabe cowboy.
I’m a cowboy. Or at least I feel like one. Plus, my skin is very sensitive and burns if I haven’t applied sunblock with an SPF of two hundred or higher. So I guess you could say that I am literally a redneck. Oh, fine, I give up. Sure, I’m a pasty Yankee through and through, but that don’t mean I can’t listen to country music all the time and pretend I’m a cowboy with my own farm and paintball course and video game company that makes Factory Simulator Games and Paintball First Person Shooters, does it? I guess it’s sort of a fantasy of mine that one day Wife and I will buy a big farmhouse and acres of land and I’ll chase people off our property on horseback with a paintball gun. But until then, I’ll listen to my “I Go Back” Pandora Radio Station while standing in line at Starbucks as a man with shower curtain rings in his ear lobes yells at the cashier. I find that country music has the transportive power to make you feel like you’re driving through a field in a red pick-up truck shooting fireworks out the window. There also may or may not be a charcoal grille in the trailer bed with a couple of sizzlin’ rib-eyes, a big ol’ rack of ribs and two veggie burgers (for myself and Wife). I also enjoy that most country music songs tell a story that you can easily follow, as opposed to pop, which sounds like a young girl was given a bunch of Red Bull and recorded singing while jumping on a trampoline. Wow. Did I just turn into a grumpy old man?

I heard a great quip by a favorite folk band of mine about today’s music (well, it was popular, ah, a while ago”: “Imagine today’s kids sitting around the piano trying to remember the words to “Love Stinks”….
Haha. Or “Crazy Train.”
I really like your drawings! The cowboy is nice, but especially the bearded man. The mustache is so nonchalant.
Thanks! Drawing beards on my face is a favorite pastime of mine.
I’ve recently bought a pair of leopard print gum boots as Australia finally has some rain and the next Woodford Festival could turn into a Glastonbury-esque event, but with more spittoons. Q: have I misinterpreted the expression ‘hoe-down’?
No, that sounds about right.
Ugh, God, you really struck a chord with me…. the quality of popular music has really hit a new low. I recently heard a song comprised of two lines (max), repeated over and over ad nauseum… by a girl who really couldn’t sing well.
And I thought “How much did they pay the lyricist to write those two lines?! How much was the supposed singer paid to wail them off-key?!” More than we make in a year….
But I’m with you. A house in the country, with acreage for the cats to roam and freely creep out the birds… is a heaven worth aspiring to!
I love imagining these middle-aged lyricists hunched over their laptops writing lyrics about “cute boi’s” and “going up in dat club” and “sippin’ sizzurp.” Makes me smile.
Yup…but we love you anyway
Thank you for accepting me for who I am.