It was a run-of-the-mill country music concert that, for an uncomfortable moment, went political, when Michael Ray, one of the opening acts for headliner Lee Brice last night at the Ting Pavilion in Charlottesville, used Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” to come to the stage.
If you don’t know the politics of “God Bless the USA,” god bless you for not being bogged down by the realities of the world like many of the rest of us, but here goes.
The song was written in 1984, inspired, Greenwood has said, by patriotic fervor following the downing of a Korean Air Lines flight by the Soviet Union, and was featured in a political context for the first time at the Republican National Convention that year, as Ronald Reagan was running for re-election.
Fast forward to the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, and the track was used to bring out Donald Trump at his campaign rallies.
Greenwood was nominated by George W. Bush to a six-year term on the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 2014, when Barack Obama nominated five-time Grammy winner Esperanza Spalding to replace Greenwood, the Republican-majority Senate didn’t take up the nomination, allowing Greenwood to serve through the remainder of the Obama and then the Trump term.
Finally in 2022, Joe Biden was able to replace Greenwood, with Kamilah Forbes, the executive producer at the Apollo Theater, and Greenwood went on “Fox & Friends” to express his dismay at being replaced.
“Hearing now under the Biden administration that he’s cleaned house and finally he’s fired a patriot, I was quite shocked to tell you the truth,” Greenwood said.
At face value, “God Bless the USA” – which Greenwood claimed in that “Fox & Friends” interview is meant for all people, not just for a particular political party” – is a simple song about patriotism, but nothing about Michael Ray, a vocal Trump supporter, using this song as his walkout is about just touting patriotism.
We’re long since past the days when “God Bless the USA” isn’t political, and the decision by Greenwood to make it political has been the basis of his career since.
Anyway, I was there for Lee Brice, not Michael Ray, but now that the night had turned political, I spent a few minutes on the Google machine during Ray’s set to try to learn more.
The first thing that I learned is that Ray and Brice both played a tribute concert for Greenwood last year, along with such luminaries as Kid Rock, Keith Urban and Alabama frontman Randy Owen.
That event was chaired by a former Alabama Republican politician, Perry O. Hooper Jr., who promoted the event by taking a shot at Biden.
“From woke generals running the military to the National Endowment of the Arts, he wants to tear down the America we love. This is disgusting,” Hooper said.
Nothing political about that at all.
Brice was also among several big-name acts playing ancillary gigs around the 2016 Republican National Convention, on a list with Journey, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band Perry and Poison frontman Bret Michaels.
Intrigued at what I was learning through the Googler, I looked a little deeper, and found that the rift that my wife had noticed between the members of our favorite country band, Florida Georgia Line, with Brian Kelly, a Trumper, telling Tyler Hubbard, who backed Biden in the 2020 election, that he wanted to go solo.
I guess we can stop looking for an announcement of the next Florida Georgia Line tour, then.
More to the point, I’m thinking maybe it’s worth researching the political leanings of the acts that I think I want to see before I click purchase on the expensive tickets.
And yeah, it sucks that it comes to this, but, look, these are tough times.
It’s not about being Republican or Democrat; it’s about backing a guy who was the face of an effort to overthrow American government, or thinking that guy is a clear and present danger to American society.
I can sense the responses from people who want to call me a “snowflake,” that everything doesn’t have to be political, that you can let yourself have a good time at a concert with guys on stage who are Trump backers.
Except that those folks get their panties in a bunch every time a woke singer, actor or ballplayer says something that they don’t like politically.
Like they do, I think I have the right to choose who I pay good money to see, and if an act wants to use its shows to push a political agenda that runs counter to mine, I can keep that good money in my pocket to use myriad other ways.
For example, giving money to Planned Parenthood, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, the local Democrat running for Congress.
I don’t know what the politics are of the country music fan base. Instinct tells me that it would likely be strong Republican, but then the new-age country, infused with heavy metal, hip hop and R&B influences, has widened the base to include fans from those genres, and you’d think that bringing more mainstream fans in would by definition bring in more liberals and progressives.
None of this about music, I will say, would have even entered my mind without the Lee Greenwood song bringing Michael Ray out last night.
And now I can’t unknow, which, greater good, is probably a good thing.
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Chris Graham
