If you follow pop culture and music, you’ll know of the latest overnight sensation that is Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond.” It’s up to over 12 million views on YouTube already. Now I don’t follow the country music scene at all. As readers know, I go in for esoteric prog rock (or “rock and roll that went to college,” as Jody Bottum describes it when he is ridiculing me), but I gather Anthony’s spontaneous hit is causing another Pauline Kael moment (“I don’t know who these people are!”) among the cultural arbiters of New York, Los Angeles, etc. They are clearly threatened by Anthony’s populist message:
Livin’ in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don’t think you know, but I know that you do
‘Cause your dollar ain’t shit and it’s taxed to no end
‘Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare
As usual, the Babylon Bee cuts to the heart of the matter: “Country Music Industry Confused By Man Actually From Country Making Actual Music.”
A reader in North Carolina writes in with a first-hand account of seeing the Anthony phenomenon, passed along here slightly edited:
We heard that Oliver Anthony was going to give a free concert about 30 miles away at the Morris Farm Market; so we went and boy was it something else.
First, the market is in the middle of nowhere, basically at a cross roads in rural Currtuck County, NC. It is along the principal road that goes from the Norfolk/Hampton Roads, VA area to the North and Central NC outer banks, so it is heavily traveled in the summer with tourists headed down for weekly vacation rentals in Kitty Hawk, Duck, Corolla, etc. It is an authentic NC rural agricultural community. The market has a wagonesque stage with umbrellaed picnic tables around it its free live Sunday music. Until this weekend, I’ve never seen more than maybe twenty people there listening.
The energy at the farm was amazing … it ranged from somewhere between summer tent revival and a summer Luke Bryan concert. Positive, vibrant, earnest, and times a bit edgy.
Despite being in the middle of nowhere by any suburban/elite measure, there was a traffic jam getting on the farm and getting parking in grassy overflow area. I estimated maybe a thousand people. My wife thought possibly 1,200 to 1,500. I talked to one of the cashiers and she said that this has been scheduled for a while and that they didn’t expect many people until Oliver’s video went viral, then they scrambled to order porta potties, get the sheriff on tap to direct traffic, and have the Currituck Co. volunteer fire/EMS to be there too. One unfortunate thing, was they didn’t exponentially scale their beer stock in time, so they ran out of beer part way through. But, they had no idea over a thousand people would show up.
People were singing along (for a song that just hit the web a few days earlier). It was authentic fun with a larger point. Oliver has tapped into the frustration of normal people with the centralized federal government that has reached evermore into their daily lives, with of course, negative consequences. At one point he sang “ … and Republicans and Democrats don’t give a damn … “ and the crowd went absolutely wild (one of many times). There were even shouts of “uniparty” which totally shocked me. I thought that was a wonky term, but apparently not.
We struck up a conversation with Eva, a book keeper for a family owned construction company, who was in the back of the crowd. She had been politically indifferent until about 2009/2010. Now she is engaged and thinks that there is no representation in DC for normal people like her and the people in her orbit. She feel completely disenfranchised and cut out of all the meaningful decisions on the federal level that directly impacts her and her work and community. Broadly summarizing of course, but she articulately bent our ear for a few minutes while we were enjoying the music and the positive energy at the concert.
Then, Jamey Johnson popped up on stage and it was pandemonium — he did a duet of “In Color” with Oliver.
Some other impressions and observations … bunch of funny t-shirts … the best one was a Yelp-style one-star review: “Government” with one filled in star on the 5-star scale, then the comment: “Do not recommend.”. Not much Trump wear though and that surprised me. Very little of that in fact. There were “F**k Biden” shirts of various designs mixed in. Lots of 2A themed hats and shirts too. Jesus shirts and work shirts; button down work shirts with a business name (over right pocket) and employee name (over left pocket); lots of families with kids of all ages; young old, tattooed and not. Some look like they came right after church. And, of course, beards of all types!
I talked to a guy with his wife and two kids, one was 4 or 5 and the baby was maybe 18-months old and in a stroller. He worked on one of the other vegetable farms nearby as a diesel mechanic. I asked him and his wife why he came … “to have fun” and support Oliver. Both of them also identified and agreed with the broad message of disenfranchisement and frustration with Washington. They insisted that they weren’t “political; I took that the mean that it wasn’t a day-to-day focus for them. I asked him if he would vote for any Republican or just someone who would act on the things that Oliver was talking about and they both answered, nearly in unison: “No!” With a twinkle in my eye, I asked if they would vote for Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. No to Mitt, and a “who is that?” to Ryan. One of the many highlights.
It was a fun couple of hours. Real people having fun and commiserating over the direction of politics, but with an edgy hope mixed in. It is a real moment. I just don’t see anyone on the national stage with the clear-eyed vision to really capture all this ex-urban discontent and nascent centrist populism.
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