Fightin' music

[What, we can't post an arty picture of Alan Jackson? Guest Blogger August Brown begs to differ, snob.]

While Alan Jackson reminsced about lost virginity on the tender ballad "Remember When," two dudes in Stetsons were choking the bejeezus out of each other in the middle of the audience. Girl-possession issues, most likely, but the thuds of fisticuffs definitely broke the spell of lines like "we made love, and then you cried."

But overcoming that little skirmish is exactly what Jackson has done throughout his decades long career of chart-topping country hits. He's an escapist. Jackson's politely rollicking honky-tonk carries specific images (brands of trucks, engine parts, references to his own family) and generic family-values wisdom that adds up to universal nostalgia for a South that probably none of his fans have lived.

Consider this: on "Drive (For Daddy Gene)," Jackson recalls days riding in his father's fishing boat, while in the next verse describing the trail where dad dumped his trash. It's sort of incompatible -- fondly remembering both pristine nature and the spoiling thereof? But so it goes in the New South, where the worst of Wal-Mart-inspired suburban blight is warmly re-invented in the public memory as authentic rural America.

Jackson's devoted following happily accepts this, and not without reason. The consummate Nashville professional, Jackson's confident narratives and stick-to-your ribs choruses like on "Five O'Clock Somewhere" defined a '90s-era purist approach to country that still sells outrageously well. In today's motley musical climate, however, that adds up to a kind of us-versus-them mentality that, unlike Miranda Lambert or Jason Michael Carroll, has little crossover potential and little need for it.

Jackson introduced his backing band, proudly enumerating the tiny towns in the South and Midwest where they all grew up. It was a sly gesture towards an older audience who demands that their country stars have driven rickety Fords and slugged moonshine before becoming millionaires. "There's been a lot of great music here in a state known for silicone," Jackson said from the Mane Stage. Maybe so, but that doesn't make the Nashville machine au naturale by any means.

Photo: Jackson on one of the Mane Stage's big screens.