podcast
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Every Thursday on The Assignment, host Audie Cornish explores the animating forces of this extraordinary American political moment. It’s not about the horse race, it’s about the larger cultural ideas driving the conversation: the role of online influencers on the electorate, the intersection of pop culture and politics, and discussions with primary voices and thinkers who are shaping the political conversation.
Louder Than Guns
The Assignment with Audie Cornish
Apr 13, 2023
30 mins
Can Country music help lead the U.S. out of the gun debate? There is a long history of famous country musicians using their platforms to comment on social and political issues. But since the lead singer of The Chicks, Natalie Maines, was ostracized after criticizing then President George W. Bush, country music stars have felt safer keeping their political views out of the public eye. Musician Ketch Secor of the band Old Crow Medicine Show is trying to change that. After the shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, Ketch wrote an Op-ed in The New York Times calling for country music stars to let go of the fear of retaliation from their fanbase, and to break their silence on the gun debate. Audie talks with Ketch about what it’s like to be a musician and a parent in Nashville right now and what he thinks country musicians can do to help prevent another mass shooting.
I didn’t think we’d be doing another episode about a mass shooting so soon. But here we are.
Mayor John Cooper
00:00:06
As a community.
This is from a vigil in Nashville.
Mayor John Cooper
00:00:10
Thank you to our artists for sharing the gift of music. You are the custodians of that special gift.
I’ve been to this place, and I don’t mean some kind of memorial after a mass shooting, but Nashville specifically. I lived there for a few years covering the South, and it’s not a big city. It’s dominant industries of music and publishing can make it feel even smaller, like everyone knows everyone. So when First Lady Jill Biden visited the city to attend a vigil for the shooting victims of the Covenant School, it was an absolute given that a country music artist would be there.
Will the circle be unbroken?
By and by, Lord, by and by.
This is Ketch Secor, founding member of the Grammy Award winning band Old Crow Medicine Show. I didn’t even get an introduction at the vigil, but that’s because everyone in the crowd already knows who he is, not just a famous musician, but a member of their community and a parent of two school aged kids. In fact, the school his kids attend in East Nashville, he co-founded it in 2016. It’s called the Episcopal School of Nashville.