CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Somewhere along the way, mainstream country music songwriting lost its sense of humor.
Gone were the days of songs like George Jones' "Honky Tonk Song'' and its refrain of "She took my keys away / and now she won't drive me to drink.''
In short, the turn of phrase had become a lost art, swapped for the most part for lyrics about trucks, tailgates, Daisy Dukes and beer.
Notice the past tense there.
Brandy Clark is, hands down, the best wordsmith in Nashville right now, and she proves it by using old-school country writing on her new CD, "Big Day in a Small Town.''
Even better, all those songs are delivered with a pure country twang that is reminiscent of Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn and even Patsy Cline.
I "discovered'' Clark when she opened for Jennifer Nettles at a Hard Rock Rocksino show a couple of years ago, right when her single "Pray to Jesus'' hit the airwaves, and my respect and admiration for her has grown with each passing release, largely because of her writing.
"Girl Next Door'' has the great line, "Sorry, I ain't sorry / That I ain't your Marcia Brady'' and the kicker, "So baby if you want the girl next door / Then go next door.''
"Homecoming Queen'' notes that "Yeah, too bad life ain't a local parade / In your uncle's Corvette on a Saturday'' and "A newspaper clipping and a sash in a box / Are the only things that didn't get lost.''
But the best and truest representatives of real country life -- and Clark knows real country life; she grew up on the side of Washington's Mount St. Helen's selling shirts saying "I survived Mount St. Helen's'' -- may be "Broke'' and the title cut.
"Broke'' references being so poor, you have to drink "generic Coke,'' but the best line in it, and one familiar to everybody who's foraged the couch cushions to find enough change for the kids' lunch money, is this: "We dig our own ditches, we roll our own smokes / And we're secretly wishing that Grandma would croak.''
Then there is that title cut. You know what constitutes a "Big Day in a Small Town"?' Getting a call from the school to pick up your daughter because it turns out she wasn't just puttin' on a little weight.
"Momma got a call from the principal's office / Better get down here fast / 'Cause Mindy passed out when her water broke / In the middle of geometry class.''
Crass? Maybe. But honest, the way real country music used to be . . . and can be again as long as Clark is wielding her pen. And that's no joke. Grade: A
Big Day in a Small Town
Warner Bros. Records