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Saturday, April 22 • 9:00am - 11:00am
Red, White & You

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This panel will explore the intersection of country music and symbols of American pride and exceptionalism—you know, flags. Over 90 minutes (four 20-minute talks with one or two questions between each followed by a long Q&A), we’ll stretch from 1959, when Johnny Horton’s “The Battle of New Orleans” became a cross-genre number one, to the mid-2000s, after 9/11 produced a surge of patriotic anthems on the country charts, already a notably friendly place for them. One of those hits, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” had been the touchstone song of 1984’s Nashville Fan Fair. The 60s and 70s, meanwhile, marked the beginning of Southern rock and outlaw country’s reclamation of the Confederate flag as a rebel signifier, with Charlie Daniels one of the era’s key figures.

David Cantwell, “‘The Battle of New Orleans,’ ‘Johnny Reb,’ and the Civil Rights Movement”
Stephen Thomas Erlewine, “The South's Gonna Do It Again: Charlie Daniels and the Rise of a Rebellious New South”
Michaelangelo Matos, “Fan Fair, Nashville—June 5-8, 1984”
Keith Harris, “Kenny Chesney Hasn’t Forgotten: Nashville’s Nostalgia for a Pre-9/11 Mentality in the Age of the Angry American”
Moderators
avatar for Alfred Soto

Alfred Soto

TwitterAlfred Soto is an instructor of journalism and media advisor at Florida International University. He is a contributing editor to The Singles Jukebox and was featured editor of Stylus Magazine. His work has appeared in SPIN, The Miami Herald, Rolling Stone, Slate, MTV, NPR, and The Pitc... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for David Cantwell

David Cantwell

TwitterDavid Cantwell lives in Kansas City, MO where he teaches college English, including the course “Literature of American Popular Music.” He is the author of Merle Haggard: The Running Kind, the coauthor of Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s 500 Greatest Singles, and a contrib... Read More →
ST

Stephen Thomas Erlewine

TwitterStephen Thomas Erlewine is a Senior Editor of Pop Music at Tivo, whose database of music information is licensed throughout the internet and can be accessed at Allmusic.com. While at Tivo/Allmusic, he's written thousands of record reviews and biographies. He's also contributed to Rollin... Read More →
avatar for Keith Harris

Keith Harris

Twitter Keith Harris is the current and former music editor of City Pages in Minneapolis. He has written about country music for almost twenty years. He blogs at usefulnoise.wordpress.com and tweets as @usefulnoise.  “Kenny Chesney Hasn’t Forgotten: Nashville’s Nostalgia for a Pre-9/11 Mentality in the Age of the Angry American” The years between September 11, 2001, and the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq are often recalled as a time of bellicose jingoism... Read More →
MM

Michaelangelo Matos

TwitterMichaelangelo Matos is the author of The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Dance Music Conquered America (Dey Street), Rolling Stone’s number-two music book of 2015, and the Off the Record columnist for Thump. He’s currently at work on a book on the pop landscape of 1984. He... Read More →

Saturday April 22, 2017 9:00am - 11:00am PDT
Hyatt House 201 5th Avenue N, Seattle, WA 98109
  Panel