Southern Accents

I've decided to stick with the "song title" theme for a while here, mainly because it's fun to write about and I find it refreshing to write about things I have a lot of feeling about. Music has long been a huge part of my life - a timeline if you will - chronicling the years and where I was at various points in my life. While I have never played an instrument, and I have no singing voice at all (note here that in the one and only musical I performed in back in high school, I was asked to speak my lines and only sing when it added to the comedic aspects of the play), but I have been a life-long listener and student of music that interested me.

About the time I graduated from high school Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers hit the scene and a major part of my life's musical score was established. In those early years, Petty's tunes spoke to the trials and tribulations of love, lust and the angst of young adulthood; a perfect soundtrack for that period of my life. But its one of his lesser known tunes from one of his lesser revered albums that has spoken loud and clear to me in the later years of my life.

In 1985 Tom and the Heartbreakers released the album "Southern Accents". While this was supposed to be a "concept album" relating to the group's life growing up in the deep south, a series of events and collaborations diluted the album's original concept and what was finally put out was not what most band members hoped for nor was it as successful as many of the band's other efforts. The record did produce a couple Petty "standards" with "Rebels" and "Don't Come Around Here No More", but it was the title track, "Southern Accents", that touched me like very few songs have ever touched me.

I had heard the song many times as the album was a regular on my turntable in the late 80's, but it was right after my mom passed away in 1986 and I had spent a little time in my hometown of Joplin, Missouri (pronounced "Mizzurra" when you're from there) that the words in this piece really began to hit home with me.

The song starts off straight forward enough:

There's a southern accent, where I come from
The young'uns call it country
The yankees call it dumb
I got my own way of talkin'
But everything is done, with a southern accent
Where I come from


The line about "The yankees call it dumb" conjures up some fun memories; in 1973 I moved from Joplin to live with my dad and stepmom in Forest Lake, Minnesota. While being in fairly close proximity to the Twin Cities, Forest Lake was a small town more influenced by the rural surroundings than the metropolis just down the highway. I never considered that I had any sort of an accent back then, until classmates constantly asked me to repeat myself. Eventually I figured out they just wanted to hear me talk because to them I sounded funny (and the girls seemed to think it was "cute"). Years of living north of the Mason-Dixon Line and a year in Broadcasting school have stripped the accent but I still say "Mizzurra" and I still "warsh" my cloths from time to time.


Now that drunk tank in Atlanta's
Just a motel room to me
Think I might go work Orlando
If them orange groves don't freeze
I got my own way of workin'
But everything is run, with a southern accent
Where I come from

As many of you are aware and I have written about before,  my past includes a period of years where alcohol and drugs were ... well let's just say they were "influential" in my life (he says sarcastically). So while this stanza in the song really didn't relate to my life directly, I could relate to the feeling it speaks to. 

For just a minute there I was dreaming
For just a minute it was all so real
For just a minute she was standing there, with me

There's a dream I keep having
Where my mama comes to me
And kneels down over by the window
And says a prayer for me
I got my own way of prayin'
But everyone's begun
With a southern accent
Where I come from

This is the part of the song that really hit home when I listened to it following my mom's passing. Mom was a "southern girl" right down to her bones. She had that enviable talent of speaking like trailer trash in a country club crowd, do it with a smile on her face, a sense of charm and a "Bless yur heart ..." that left others defenseless. My "inner southern accent" comes directly from my mom.

I got my own way of livin'
But everything gets done
With a southern accent
Where I come from

For any of you that have lived in the northern states, and then spent time in the south, one of the first things you come away with is the fact that things move at a different pace down south. I think I have become somewhat of a hybrid over time ... working and living with an energy level more relaxed than many around me, but with a bit more vigor and urgency than is typical of my "southern" roots ... and still everything gets done in its own time. 

If there were ever a song that I'd want sung at my memorial service, this one would be in the running. At one time I even went so far as to rewrite part of the song lyrics to make it more specific to me and my life (sorry Tom but its my funeral and I'll want it sung my way):

Now that clinic in Dakota
Taught me how to live drug free
And words will be my labor
As I write on what suits me
I got my own way of workin'
But everything is run, with a southern accent
Where I come from

I'm very excited about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers coming to Summerfest in Milwaukee this summer, and I already have my tickets purchased - center stage. I hope "Southern Accents" will be part of the playlist that night, but I won't be disappointed if its not. I'll enjoy the show regardless, and I'll do so with a southern accent, cuz that's where I come from.