Music Review: "Oklahoma Smokeshow" by Zach Bryan
Country gold that just might go platinum...
I’ve never really been at the forefront of things on matters of popular culture, but when I heard Zach Bryan’s first big radio play after Something in the Orange, I thought I was on to something - “Have you heard Zach Bryan’s new song, Oklahoma Smokeshow, yet?,” I asked my wife when I got home. “It’s absolute country GOLD.” As it turns out, I was right, in the sense that the song was actually certified gold by RIAA back on January 24, 2023. So much for getting in at the beginning of a good thing…
Nonetheless, I expect it will continue to be transmitted across the airwaves with frequency for some time to come, not to mention the fact that it’s been recorded for posterity. And that’s a good thing too because it’s simply a fantastic record. Something that had struck me about Something in the Orange was the sheer rawness of the music. I’ll admit, several weeks passed when I mistook Zach Bryan with that Walker fellow on the show Yellowstone (whose name is actually Ryan Bingham). Such was the image painted by those heavy acoustic strums - a cowboy, dirty and disheveled, leaning on a fence, playing and singing while the sun glimmers against the dust getting kicked up in the background. There is no “engineering” here - just some guys and their instruments, and a voice with all its raspy imperfections. Frontier music as it was intended to be.
Alas, Oklahoma Smokeshow does feature electronics and drums, but with the same raw, magical subtlety that is at once basic and brilliant. The opening guitar riff echoes into a violin joinder and then settles into a few low, muted chords. I don’t know what kind of set up they’re working with, but my mind pictures a Gibson ES 335 plugged into a tube amp, reverb up. The rich tonality of the strings as the muted chords strum matches the cool melancholic sentiment of the lyrics… “you always wind up here in a puddle of tears.” Our protagonist is certainly not an unfamiliar one in the realm of country music - a pretty, small town girl trying to find her place in the world, but hamstrung by the realities of her environment, and hopelessly in love with a scoundrel… “He’s an asshole from back home, She’ll never make it out alive.”
The drum beat opens softly at the second verse and starts amping up the drama as we hear about our heroine in all her youthful promise, until things go sideways - “She used to play in the yard and she would dream of one day, 'Til the world came around and took her dreaming away…” It’s a story that’s been told before - think Fancy, think Concrete Angel - but the music is fresh, not banal. A second chorus then repeats twice; it’s a lament of an auxiliary world that could have been but never will be - “I've been up all night, Thinkin' 'bout a life with you and I, One you'll never know,'Cause you're a small town smokeshow…”
The drum beat begins to harden during the repeat of the second chorus and this segues into the song’s glorious climax - a double guitar solo that rings out in anguish and brings the emotion to a head. After the fourth meter, the drum pattern changes and the song is at its most forceful point - as if pangs of pain from a love lost and life wasted are calling out from the speakers. And then, just like that, we are back to the top, with the rich interval guitar strumming and Zach Bryan’s soulful, raspy echo. As the last note fades out we are left with a glimmer of hope - “You’ve got nowhere to go, even though you’re all gussied up.” But, perhaps, one day she will.
One can envision some country purists taking a certain level of affront - concededly, the sound has some progressive rock elements, particularly at the mid-point. But the total product is undeniably country. Think of Betty on Taylor Swift’s pandemic album (whatever it’s called), only more so, since it lacks all the chippy, adolescent overtones. Will this nugget of country gold become Zach Bryan’s third platinum record? Time will tell, but it is certainly a song worthy of the label.