Visiting my hometown of Fayetteville, N.C., this past Christmas may not have been as sentimental as Trisha Yearwood’s trip back to Jasper County, Ga., but it brought its own epiphanies about this year’s country music Grammy nominees. After dinner, my mother and I sat around the oak kitchen table my parents have had for 30 years, stuffing our mouths with Harris Teeter carrot cake, gabbing and drinking 6 oz. bottles of Corona. Don’t ask me how we got on the topic of country music, but during the course of the conversation I mistake Garth Brooks for the guy in Brooks and Dunn. “No. No. No. That’s another Brooks,” my mother said. “I can’t remember his first name right now, but he’s from Shreveport [my mother’s hometown].” “Mom, you listen to that stuff?” “Yeah.” She burps. “Since when?” My mother, 62, is one of those black people who voted for George W. Bush, a subject that my father, 63, has asked her not to bring up around company. She used to be a diehard Democrat, faithfully sending donations to campaigns and voting a straight democratic ticket every year. Then, in the year 2000, she became a fervent Bush supporter almost overnight, and I thought nothing she could do could shock me anymore, except for her telling me between bites of carrot cake that she listens to country radio every single day on her way to and from the office—and that she tunes in the Top 10 video countdown on the satellite-TV country music channel every Sunday night. To me, that certifies her as a sister from another planet. “You know the Top 10 videos aren’t the same thing as the Top 10 songs,” she tells me. “Yeah mom, I know.” “I don’t like to watch music videos that much, though,” she went on, “ ’cause when you listen to a song you make your own imagery. But when they make a video, they supplant your imagery with theirs. And a lot of times you may not have thought that way about the song at all.” I didn’t say my mother is dumb, just weird. She was the 1962 valedictorian at Houston’s Booker T. Washington High School, went to college on a full academic scholarship and finished Howard University Medical School. She was the first black woman to open her own medical practice in Fayetteville. She says she was so busy studying during the ’60s that she didn’t hear any music. “But what about Motown, mom? Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye—remember any of that?” “Nothing really grabbed me.” She also claims she never had an Afro. But I find a 5-by-7 color photograph of her on the living room sofa with a great big curly bush on her head—something my brother had dug out of an old photo album. “That has to be a wig, or it was extremely short-lived,” she says, seemingly amazed. A chameleon, my mom claims her sudden fondness for contemporary country music has nothing to do with her being born into a sharecropping family in Louisiana, where country was the only thing you could hear on the radio. She also insists it has nothing to do with growing up in Houston, or with her recent change in political affiliation from conservative Democrat to moderate Republican, but more to do with country radio nowadays sounding like lite-rock from the ’70s—which she claims is her real favorite type of music. To be fair, my mother’s musical tastes have never fallen along the expected racial divide—or, to put it crudely, my mom likes “white” music. The only R&B record she ever bought was the 45 of Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack,” and that was only because it was one of the few records by a black artist they played on the radio station she listened to—Houston’s “popular” station, where Como was prince and Sinatra was king. When I was growing up in the late ’70s and early ’80s, my mom listened to Willie Nelson’s Greatest Hits And Some That Will Be when in the mood to hear his “nice tenor voice,” and every now and then she liked a little George Strait. Mostly, though, it was Barbra Streisand, John Denver, Barry Manilow, The Carpenters and Simon & Garfunkel. She’s the only person I know who bought Art Garfunkel’s Fate for Breakfast LP. During one period, I remember falling asleep to endless spins of Don McLean’s “American Pie,” which she called “a classic.” My mom’s favorite song right now is Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me”—it’s up for a Grammy in the Best Male Country Vocal Performance category, but to me it sounds just like the song “You Can’t Over Love (Your Underwear)” from the country music video spoof that the Fruit of the Loom guys released last year. “I don’t think she really likes it,” my dad says a day or two later, sipping some sweet tea. “She’s just trying to make herself like it.” Born in Clinton, N.C., my dad’s always been a blues and jazz man, playing upright bass with a few combos while in college at Fayetteville State. “She tell you about the country & western show she snuck off to when we were visiting Madear in Houston last Easter?” Dad asks, peppering his potato salad. Of course, when I ask her about it, my mom denies ever sneaking off to any country & western show. In response, my father mumbles, “I was worried. I didn’t know where she had gotten off to.” I don’t think my mom is forcing herself to like contemporary country as much as my mother is a woman of convention, has a knack for finding the middle of the road, and has become expert at walking that perforated line. She knows, for example, that Brad Paisley’s songwriting is a little off-center, so she calls “Alcohol,” nominated for Best Male Country Vocal Performance and for Country Song of the Year, a “novelty song.” But the song’s more than novel, it’s ingenious. “It’s funny,” she concedes, like his song “Celebrity.” “He’s got funny lyrics,” she goes on, “but his music is so-so.” My mom would pick Trisha Yearwood’s “Georgia Rain” for Best Female Country Vocal Performance because, she says, “it has a melody that’s easy to hum and bittersweet emotive lyrics.” But if I wanted to hear that type of stuff done well, I’d listen to Sheryl Crow. Yearwood’s song sounds like one of those cornball tracks you hear as the credits roll in a made-for-TV movie. So does most of Faith Hill’s Fireflies, an album my mother thinks is the best contender for the Country Album of the Year. “I really didn’t think I was going to like Faith Hill’s album,” she explains. “But she’s got a torch love song on there called ‘Paris,’ then a sweet little childlike song called ‘Wish for You,’ a hand-clapping patriotic song ‘We Got Nothing but Love,’ and a swinging, bouncing lighthearted song called ‘Sunshine Summertime’ which I like much better than ‘Mississippi Girl.’ I don’t know why they nominated that one for best female performance. It’s so pretentious. I can’t stand that song.” I can’t stand “Mississippi Girl” either. Still, I wonder about my mother’s ability to judge country music since she’s had only one man her whole life, my dad, the man she’s been married to the last 38 years. She’s never had an inappropriate romantic relationship or a broken heart, so Gretchen Wilson’s raucous All Jacked Up LP doesn’t appeal to her very much, whereas, for me, a 34-year-old two-time divorcee who’s had an assortment of failed relationships, it speaks volumes. Gretchen Wilson knows what Ray Charles, who recorded numerous country tunes in his career, knew—that country isn’t very far away from the blues. The blues make you wanna holler, country makes you wanna cry, but a lot of contemporary country just makes me wanna yawn. Country music is best at its grittiest, when it thumbs its nose at what we’re “supposed” to say, do or hear, or when it tells a story of gambling, going against the grain, losing or being an outlaw. A true country song must make you “hee-haw” and a true country ballad must make you bawl. And I’m not talking about the little misty drizzle you get listening to “Georgia Rain,” but the deluge of tears I shed every time I hear Lee Ann Womack’s “I May Hate Myself in the Morning.’ ” “Have you seen the video for that one mom?” “Which one?” “Lee Ann Womack: ‘I May Hate Myself in the Morning.’ ” She pops the top off another Corona. My mother only drinks on special occasions, while my father doesn’t drink a drop. She says she likes Corona because it isn’t as bitter as other beers. “Oh yeah. She’s in a bar. She meets a man. When she gets home, she’s thinking about the man. He calls and they’re talking on the phone. She knows they just can’t make it work, but she just wants to let him come over, and try one more time, even though it probably won’t work out.” “Mom,” I say, “that’s OK. You don’t have to describe the video. I’ve heard the song.”