In June 2024, my mom and I booked a trip to Dollywood to celebrate New Year’s Eve. This is the ongoing story of my journey from total Dolly-ignorance to…well, I don’t know where this story will end up.
Part 1: Soul
You have to understand where I’m coming from.
The Gods of my childhood were Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. There were none above. They were the pinnacle, and Motown was their Olympus. My hometown Philly had it’s own Olympus, Philadelphia International Records, and it’s own Gods, Gamble & Huff & Bell. My earliest and happiest childhood memories all have Motown and TSOP playing in the background. Sinatra was there too, which, if we’re talking about lush arrangements and the finest session players in the world, it’s really not much of a departure.
When I was 5, my mom married a musician. He played drums, and while they were married, he went back to college, ultimately becoming an orchestral percussionist. There was a lot of jazz, and a lot of percussion-heavy classical music in the house. In my soul, these genres – Jazz, Classical, R&B, Soul, and even Disco – blend seamlessly.
I didn’t – I do not – listen to country music.
It makes my skin crawl.
There. I said it.
For one thing: I can not stand the violin, or fiddle, or whatever you want to call it. As part of a full arrangement: fine, okay, I’ll allow it. On it’s own, it’s shrill, whiny, and likely to trigger a migraine. But not all country music features the fiddle, so that can’t be the whole story.
I lean too heavily on the quote, attributed to Duke Ellington, “There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind.” In my mind, “the other kind” is a lot of jam bands, people who can’t play their instruments, and country. All country. Occasionally I would hear someone absolutely tear it up on the banjo, and think, “Hm. That’s not bad!” but never enough for me to actually run to the record store.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to be less judgy.
I don’t yuck other’s yums. And I have learned to identify my own biases.
Part 2: Ignorance
Honestly, I think I made it to the age of 50 without knowing more than one Dolly Parton song. I knew “9 to 5” and that was it. Okay, yes, I knew Whitney’s version of, “I Will Always Love You” but I didn’t know that it was a Dolly Parton song for at least another 20 years.
Now, looking back, I’m curious how this is possible. How could I have lived through the entire decade of the 1970s and not know anything about Dolly Parton except for boob jokes?
My ignorance of all things Dolly has something to do with where America finds itself, politically, today. I find great significance in the fact that I was born in 1971, exactly one year and twenty-one days before Roe v. Wade was decided. I was born into a culture war. Trying to explain why I grew up believing that “country music” = “right-wing” sounds very second-wave and reductive now, but until recently I believed that if you listened to country music, you must agree with Phyllis Schlafly, Ronald Regan, and Jessie Helms. Now I know this isn’t true and has never been true. Still, I’m not pulling this association from thin air. How many photos have you see of Regan on a horse dressed like a cowboy? Politicians and activists on the right claimed country culture as their own. So even if, as a child, I had been curious about the music itself, it carried the taint of regressive politics, hate mongering, and willful ignorance.
I guess I have Lil Naz X and Beyoncé to thank for opening my eyes. The same way that country music is not (and never was) all white, it isn’t and wasn’t always the exclusive property of right-wing politicians.
So, with a spirit of open-minded curiosity, I’m going to East Tennessee.
A Smoky Mountain New Year

Well. That went about as well as could be expected.
The theme park – actual Dollywood – was meh. It isn’t fair to compare it to any Disney park, but if not that, what? Six Flags? By any measure, the park was a little run down, not laid out in any way that made sense, and just generally difficult to navigate. Also, to be fair, it was cold AF, so we may have enjoyed getting lost and enjoying the sights more if it had been a lovely autumn day.
Anyway, I wasn’t there for the rides, I was there for “The Dolly Parton Experience” of which there was not nearly enough. The “The Dolly Parton Experience” is a small section of the park that functions as a mini museum. As far as I’m concerned, they can raze the entire property and rebuild as a giant museum, because the tiny bit we saw only made me want more. I could look at the tailoring of her costumes for a year. There should be classes. The bust darts alone!
There is Dolly as songwriter, and Dolly as performer, and Dolly as an actor, and especially Dolly the philanthropist-slash-saint. But all of her creative work exists now under Dolly, the brand. The thing is, I believe it is ALL under her design and direction. Certainly she has a small army, bringing her vision to life, but it’s all HER vision. I wish that I had learned more about Dolly Parton, both the brand and also the intellect under the wigs.






East Tennessee

Guns, God, and really big trucks. I’m not saying it was *exactly* what I expected, but…I wasn’t surprised by what I found. Lots of guns, lots of churches.
My exercise in cultural immersion started at the rental car counter, when the agent cheerfully handed over the keys to a brand-new Ram quad cab. No photo adequately conveys the enormity of this truck. Both my mom and I are short, so climbing into the cab required a combination of one-armed pull-up, with a box jump and mid-air twist. It was a lot. Without a bit of humor, my mom’s friend who lives in Texas told her that she should buy a step-stool to keep in the truck, but I didn’t understand how, once we got into the truck, we were supposed to reach the step-stool still on the ground. Maybe reel it in using a piece of string?


