Formative Albums, Entry 2: At least it wasn't that Chris Gaines thing he did.

Garth Brooks - No Fences

Coming from a largely-Midwest family, it's no surprise that I was raised on country music, a genre (primarily the 80s and 90s tunes; the more modern "pop country" and "hick-hop" grate on my nerves for trying to sound more like club music) I still love to this day. My first ever live concert was an Alabama performance. My dad caught a drumstick the drummer tossed out to the crowd.

Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Brooks & Dunn, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Patty Loveless, Tracy Lawrence, Clint Black...all still take me back to a time in my life where things were...well, less hectic, to say the least.

This was the album that introduced me to country, specifically the song "The Thunder Rolls." Naive little me never realized it was about a guy cheating on his wife and simply liked the rhythm and the guitar.

The whole album covers a range of emotions; "Unanswered Prayers" tells about a married man running into his high school sweetheart and realizing just how lucky he is for his dreams of being with her to not have come true. "Friends in Low Places" is just a fun song, about a guy crashing his ex's wedding drunk off his ass and letting her know that he'll survive the breakup the best way he knows how; partying at his favorite dive bars. "Wild Horses" is a much more melancholy tune about a rodeo rider who is torn between his lover and his love of bronco riding, and realizes that as much as he wants to be with her he just can't quit the game.

No matter how much I've come to love good rock and metal, country music was my first love and has always been a source of peace and happiness for me. The first preset on my car radio may be for 106.5 KWHL, the local rock station, and 4 of the other 5 may be classic rock stations, but I still make space on there for The Moose 96.3.

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