A tale of an underdog

This sort of thing always captures the imagination.

For me, this is a good look as Oliver Anthony quotes Scripture at his first show since he became the Next Big Thing. Photo by Jason Howerton via Breitbart.

A couple weeks or so ago, no one had ever heard of Oliver Anthony - who, we’ve found since, uses that as his stage name. (His real name is Chris Lunsford; the stage name honors his grandfather.) But he has a talent for playing the dobro and writing songs that express the lament of a working man in the flyover country of America, and just as the furor surrounding Jason Aldean’s Try That In A Small Town began to die down a bit, people took to a song the Virginia native Lunsford did called Rich Men North of Richmond. According to a PJ Media article by my fellow Conservative Blogger on Facebook Jeff Reynolds, his song had 3.1 million YouTube views in three days. A guy who would sing out in his back yard now has shows lined up in his home region for people to see him, like the one above where it appears hundreds turned out on short notice.

Now by writing this a week later in this ever-evolving “15 minutes of fame” world, I’m certainly not making this an evergreen post, particularly with all we found out about Lunsford in the last week - including his real name. But the song itself not only has a message but apparently a backstory I wanted to expand on. Just the first three stanzas set the scene:

I’ve been selling my soul, working all day
Overtime hours, bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It’s a damn shame
What the world’s gotten to
People like me, people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is
Oh it is

Livin’ in the new world, with an old soul
The 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
Your dollar ain’t shit, and it’s taxed to no end
Cuz of rich men north of Richmond

Apparently this taste of success came after Lunsford “broke down and surrendered everything to God, and within 30 days he became an overnight sensation with an offer from John Rich to produce his record.” And it’s a good story, as the fame came from when “someone reached out and asked him to come record a song for his Youtube channel.” That song was Rich Men North of Richmond.

(Before I continue, I should remind people that I’m not a fan of the modern country genre, but I have mad respect - thanks to the few years of having a side hustle of reviewing independent records for monoblogue - for the musicianship that comes from the segment of bluegrass and Americana, which I think he fits better into. That’s why his story appealed to me.)

Since then, Lunsford has written: “People in the music industry give me blank stares when I brush off 8 million dollar offers. I don't want 6 tour buses, 15 tractor trailers and a jet. I don't want to play stadium shows, I don't want to be in the spotlight.” To me, that’s a good start.

“I wrote the music I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression… I've spent the last 5 years struggling with mental health and using alcohol to drown it.”

Now, a week or so later, the real story begins with what he does with the opportunity and whether he can maintain that initial sensation and earnestness when the powers that be in Nashville still try to make him a country star. Will he stay just as humble as he appears to be, and will he remain sober? Sadly, people are out there who just want to use him as their vehicle to get richer. Nor would it be surprising to me if Chris didn’t start getting calls from Republican presidential candidates trying to use him to appeal to his audience.

I’m not trying to read the mind of a man I’ve never met, but I hope his idea of success doesn’t eventually become one of the type of person he’s decrying here. (Fortune and fame can be an intoxicating drug unto itself.) It would be good if he could get to the station in life where he could take care of his family’s needs through his music and be able to give back a little to his fellow man. And while it’s likely that staying in his musical lane isn’t going to put him in the Billboard Hot 100 by any means, he’s already become something of an influencer so people are going to start keeping an eye on him. Stay true to your music and your vow to God, my friend. The rest will take care of itself.

God gave all of us a talent. I regularly watch young men who have the athletic ability to hit or throw a little white ball better than 99.99% of the rest of us, and it still may not be good enough to reach the pinnacle of their profession. Yet the best ones share their blessing with young kids who want to see how far they can take their abilities. The man we call Oliver Anthony has talent enough to appeal to people who like his music and message, and now people are sharing it. Me, I’m blessed enough for my writing to be featured in two venues and my other skills make my living.

I often say on this piece of internet real estate that “my job is to turn that rocky, thorny, and trod-upon soil into ground receptive to the missionary's seed, just like in Matthew 13.” Perhaps “Oliver Anthony” is doing the same through his music, and his money quote is an encouragement:

Freedom of speech is such a precious gift. Never in world history has the world had the freedom it currently does. Don't let them take it away from you.

Just like those once wandering in the desert, we have lost our way from God and have let false idols distract us and divide us. It's a damn shame.

I wish him the best of luck since coping with his success will be his new job (he left his old one “a few days ago.”) In a couple weeks we as a society will find some other shiny object to latch on to, but if Chris maintains this mindset and uses the help he’s called upon the Lord to give to repel his demons, he’ll be a success.