Farm Report

Railroad, PA ? "Skinny models: you can keep those. I like big cornfed Midwestern ho's." With those historic words, Kid Rock in 2001 became the first white man to repudiate skinny women, and thus he redeemed innumerable babes from the clutches of anorexia nervosa. Kid himself seems to have lost cornfed Pam Anderson to his own substance abuse problems. She ditched him after one of his drunken sprees. Then I hear she may have had a change of heart and come back.

If our ho's could just keep us sober, American men would be the greatest the world has ever seen. But a skinny ho cain't keep you sober. Bitch needs to be able to kick your ass. Something tells me Pam will take care of KR.

It seems like Kid Rock's last album, Cocky (Atlantic), mighta stiffed, despite its amazing synthesis of Southern rock and hiphop, and despite his outstanding collaboration with Hank Williams Jr., as represented on Hank's The Almeria Club (Curb). Not to mention the collaboration with Sheryl Crow, who sings a country duet with Kid on Cocky. Now imagine that you've got a choice between Sheryl and Pam? Which way do you go? Well, you see my point.

Personally, I appreciate and deeply respect all ho's, from the anorexic to the elephantine. And here at the Farm Report, we have dedicated ourselves to ho appreciation from the gitgo. That's why this time out we're all about ho's and substance abuse: men who stay fucked up and the women who love them.

In fact, Kid and Pamela remind me a lot of me and Wanda, though I'm better-looking than KR. I'm a sad fucked-up country boy who wishes he was from 'Bama, and she's my Tooltime girl. Damn the bitch has the tits.

At any rate, we will begin this year's ho appreciation with the astounding Heather Myles and her astounding album Sweet Talk & Good Lies (Rounder). Those of you who have been paying attention (don't make me kick your ass) know that I am a bit obsessed with Tammy Wynette. I think she sang with more pathos and reality than any singer I ever heard, even Billie Holiday. And I think she was a brilliant interpreter: among other things a true master of dynamics and phrasing. People hear her now as campy or kitschy I guess. I never will. But Tammy did not live well with fame. She tried to get sophisto, and perhaps we may be forgiven for speculating that she developed various substance abuse problems.

Anyway, Heather Myles doesn't have to worry about the Queen of Country syndrome, much as she deserves the title. She's the best girl singer in the world. But as she laments here in "Nashville's Gone Hollywood," it's too late to be great. There are a number of absolutely perfect country songs here in the Tammy/Loretta tradition, notably "Homewrecker Blues" and "One Man Woman Again." The plot of the latter is too country: he leaves her; she spirals downward and becomes a streetwalker; he buys her and they both pretend she's his one-man woman again. Oh my fucking God.

Highways and Honky Tonks, her last album, was a classic. Impossibly, Sweet Talk & Good Lies is just as good. To keep her going, we've got to make sure she never gets too famous. On the other hand, we've also got to buy her albums. Do.

You know it's harder work to stay fucked up than to get sober. As a man who's tried both, I know. But what I'm saying is recovery is for the lazy. "Let's pour a tall one and chop a line from here to Texas," says KR, and that's the Protestant work ethic in a nutshell.

Meanwhile, seems like maybe the Flatlanders have sobered up. Surely they wouldn't be alive if they hadn't. Let us briefly ponder Now Again (New West). People like me like albums like this. An odd exception to this rule is that people exactly like me don't like albums exactly like this. I admire Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock: all-stars of Texas real country. But I find their recordings uninteresting, both as solo artists and as a group. The songs don't seem that great, and the performances kinda bore me. "Flatlanders" is appropriate as a name for the group.

But Ely, not to mention a host of cool Texans like Asleep-at-the-Wheelies Ray Benson, Floyd Domino, Lucky Oceans and Chris O'Connell, sound amazing on the Don Walser anthology Dare to Dream (Texas Music Group). Don is a big old fat white man from Austin who's country as the day is long. He's kinda the Kid Rock of two generations ago. He yodels like a motherfucker; he yodels more than seems right; more than seems human. The stuff here is so trad that it makes you shiver. You can see him every night in Austin, and Lord knows that makes the capital of Texas a better place to be than where you are.

The Modern Icons' A Truly Big Show (modernicons.net) is as eclectic, convincing, eccentric and absorbing as any music you are ever likely to hear. Modern Icons is a three-piece band from Lancaster, PA, that suggests Marianne Faithfull, the Beatles, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Elvis Costello. Celtic, country, new wave: anything and everything. The instrumentation is odd: no drums for the most part: only fiddle, guitar, upright bass. It works to perfection. There's something actually demonic about the way Robin Chambers hits the violin. The demon bitch of Amish country. Why haven't you heard or heard of these amazing people? Got me, but get after it.

Sheryl Crow, Amy Rigby and Terri Hendrix are skinny white chicks and as fluffy as angelfood cake. We can dismiss Crow's C'mon C'mon (A&M) out of hand. The shit is considerably more boring than the Flatlanders. Still, white men want to see the videos, know what I'm saying? But Rigby is a unique specimen: hilarious and smart as a sweet bitch can be. She has a little classic-rock thing going a la Sheryl, but much better lyrics. "Summertime of '83,/the last time I took LSD/listening to Patsy Cline/and Skeeter Davis really blew my mind." "You've got a lot of balls/you don't even care/wish I could grow a pair."

Anyway, Rigby's 18 Again (Koch), which seems to be a greatest "hits" anthology, is definitely worth obtaining. Terri Hendrix is cute too; too damn cute by half. The Ring (Wilory) is exactly what you'd expect from a thin white ho: thin white music, so sweet and girlish that it's hardly there at all. "Goodbye Charlie Brown"? Fuck it, I say: I like big cornfed Midwestern ho's.

Obviously Dolly Parton, like Wanda, is twice the woman Terri Hendrix?or for that matter Pam Anderson?is, and if I were Kid Rock I'd be ditching Pam and dating Dolly. She's all natural. Well, maybe not natural: she's been singing since the mid-60s, and she seems?in the cover art by Annie Leibovitz?to be in her mid-30s. Anyway, I like where she's taken her career: back to basics, stripped-down acoustic country.

On the other hand I thought her last outing, Little Sparrow (Sugar Hill), was a trifle overwrought and just a tad full of shit. Not so Halos & Horns (Sugar Hill). This is the all-natural crap: it's mostly written by Parton herself, aside from the last song, which is, believe it or not, a cover of "Stairway to Heaven." At last: heavy metal bluegrass. Kid's got to be psyched. Dolly is still a desperately beautiful singer: fragile and perfect as china. Her melodies are still as distinctive as they were in 1972. And she's quite the lyricist. On "Hello God" she mounts a theodicy that would have made Leibniz proud: "Oh the free will you have given/We have made a mockery of/This is no way to be livin/We're in great need of your love."

If I were Kid Rock, I'd be in great need of Dolly's love. But since I'm married to Wanda, I don't need what Dolly's got, long as I can buy the CDs.

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