Sweetheart Of The Brodeo, Or Brett Myers' Awful Bro-Country Album

People are still arguing about the soul of country. Much like the endless debates over rockism versus poptimism, or the somehow-still-happening skirmishes over what constitutes "real hip-hop," any critic who's attempted to approach the output of anyone from Toby Keith to Kacey Musgraves has had to land on one side of a trench-warfare line or another. On one side, you've got the alt-demo folks who prefer to engage with twang on the traditionalist terms of the '70s outlaws and their No Depression heirs; on the other you've got the populists who think there's more value in getting to the roots of Brad Paisley's particular peculiarities than there is in an army of Uncles Tupelo. I guess you could enjoy both mainstream Nashville product and deliberately revivalist throwbacks. But that takes nuance, and we are arguing about music on the internet here.

I am one of those poseurs who'd choose Neko Case over Brandy Clark at gunpoint, albeit after some deliberation; I generally judge rock-country crossover by the standards of the Flying Burrito Brothers' first LP. This means pretty much anything recorded in the last dozen years as found on the jukebox of any party bar named "Cowboy [Dudename]'s" is pretty wanting in my book. That's my roundabout, overly-agitated way of revealing that this installation of Sportscore is the first one that came from an outside suggestion rather than my own exploration, and that I am pretty sure David Roth suggested I give a listen to Brett Myers' bro-country album because he is angry at me about something.

Baseball has traditionally been held up as pastoral Americana, and its myth-making is still based to a great degree on the rusticated cornfed whatnot peddled by ham-n-egger Grantland Rice types a century ago. This is despite the fact that, in the rural areas that crank out country music stars, Major League Baseball is a novelty afterthought compared to pro football, college football, high school football, Pop Warner football, and possibly electric football. Still, there's a steady enough stream of country-positive ballplayers that my exposure to Modern Country—the glossy Nashville genre, I mean—coincides one hundred percent with between-innings and at-bat music at Target Field. It stands to reason that, at some point, some ballplayer or another would actually try his hand at recording some of the stuff.

That somebody being Brett Myers is kind of an awkward turn of events. The man came of age as a high school phenom in Jacksonville, pitching for the same school, Englewood High, that boasts Fred Durst as an alumnus. That is a nice reminder that this record could have been worse. How much worse is a good question, though, since what Myers wound up doing was recording a bro-country record, Backwoods Rebel, that

Okay.

Well, see, it's like this:

That song is called "Yoga Pants." I know it says so in the YouTube screencap and the title of the clip itself, but I figured a third mention is probably worth it in a "you can never be too safe" kind of sense. Myers' own website admits that his enthusiasm for rock and country goes back a ways, but his ability to actually contribute to the milieu was hampered by the practice and dedication required to be an adequate-at-best pitcher for the Phillies.

Then, post-semi-retirement, cruel fate intervened: "One day while playing golf, [Myers] shared some ideas with his musician friend and producer Damien Starkey (Puddle of Mudd, Burn Season), who was blown away by his clever concepts." If you've ignored my warnings and hit play on that clip, you will discover that one of those clever concepts is that women rocking Lululemon make former Major League pitcher Brett Myers get all bonerish. "They were made for men to stare/don't think she's wearing underwear" are some of the words he uses to describe this feeling. Somewhere Laura Mulvey just shuddered and she doesn't know why.

The rest of the album is similarly weird in its embrace of the basest elements of bro-country: there's lots of Ray Stevens-caliber redneck schlub comedy, typically based around the pursuit of beer and/or ass, coupled with the worst kind of combatively defensive paeans to country folk jes' bein' better than the rest of us goddamned phonies. The latter category's filled out with stuff like "Freeborn Southern Man," wherein lines like "since I was young I been shootin' guns" are drawled out with a defiance that conflates pride and antagonism; it's made even more blatant by his gripes about "purty boys" in "skinny jeans" corrupting CMT on the tellingly titled "Country Back." This kind of seems like the narcissism of small differences on an album rife with the same drinkin'-on-the-tailgate cliches and buttrockabilly guitars favored by the fancy-lads Myers gripes about.

I guess one of the reasons I'm being so uncharitable towards this record, though, is that I myself am somebody who enjoys drinking beer and appreciates lady-butts in a healthy and consensual way. So hearing the Brett Myers Backwoods Rebel take on these supposedly shared interests is kind of creepy, in that it runs them all through a gross, paternalistic manchild worldview that ensures that all of Myers' entertainment comes at someone else's expense. Myers doesn't know if those yoga pants are actual workout gear or are just being worn "for attention," but it doesn't matter, he's going to gawk anyways. He drinks so much beer his wife's nagging him about it, so he went out and bought a Kegerator in an attempt to put one over on her. There's a song called "Chasing Tail" that's basically a scuzzier take on Albert King's "The Hunter" that takes the whole "love gun" affection thing out of the equation and reduces it to "the thrill of the hunt" and Brett's urge to bag the limit.

Maybe that's unfair, but hell, before Brett Myers the country-rock recording artist, there was Brett Myers the reporter-threatening hothead and domestic-assault case. I halfway want to give him the benefit of the doubt—Backwoods Rebel is too committed to its buttheaded worldview to qualify as a novelty record, and was clearly made in earnest. But it's hard to extend too much credit when Myers' own music shows him to be such a deeply unpleasant-and-proud-of-it man. I'm pretty sure Hank ain't done it this way.