Those NASCAR Country Music Videos… and Then Some

WARNING:  This is a bit longer than most.  Hopefully, you’ll find it worth your time.  If time doesn’t permit, at least click on the videos and enjoy some good music, memories and fun times from “back in the day.”  Thanks!   DAN

I was flipping through channels on the TV the other night and surfed into the CMA’s.  Brooks & Dunn featuring Jelly Roll performing “Believe” had just started.  I stopped to take in what was one powerful performance.  

As the words “… finding more and more Truth in the Words written in red” faded, I couldn’t help but drift back to the original, Jelly Roll-less rendition that I still can’t get through without the hair on my arms raising and my eyes moistening.

Maybe it’s the song.  Maybe it’s the message.  Or maybe it’s the overwhelming memories of all those old man Wrigleys who helped me, grew me and blessed me along the way.

After all these years it’s still a good but tough listen…

“Yeah, this can’t be… no, this can’t be,

No, this can’t be all there is…”

I can never see a Brooks & Dunn video though without flashing back to “Honky Tonk Truth” a peppy creative piece that interchanged Dale Earnhardt and Kix Brooks throughout. 

I remember seeing it for the first time before I knew what was going on thinking, “Was that who I thought it was?” then there would be a shot of Brooks and they looked just close enough you’d talk yourself out of it… “Naw it wasn’t”, then you’d think you saw him again!  Back and forth they wove The Intimidator into the video like he would weave through Talladega traffic, all the while drawing you in closer just to make sure it really was him.

It’s still a fun piece back from a time when County Music demographics heavily overlapped NASCAR’s and blending the two benefitted both. 

Good times.

Fun times.

Another creative piece from BITD (Back In The Day) was Blake Shelton’s “Ol’ Red”, which featured Shelton, imprisoned for murder of his wife’s lover along with a cameo performance by the Wood Brothers’ Elliott Sadler playing Shelton’s cousin.  

The song tells the tale of the “innovative” means used by the two to not only successfully spring Shelton from prison, but to escape Ol’ Red’s previously flawless escapee tracking record.  

“Now there’s red haired blue ticks all in the South

Love got me in here and love got me out”

It was Shelton’s third single from his debut debut album and put the young voice on his award winning career path we know today, but Shelton and Sadler’s celebration for outfoxing the warden was as almost good as a Cup win.

Alan Jackson’s 1997 hit, “Whose  Cheating Who?” was the unabashed, over-the-top blend of Country Music and NASCAR and the most fun video of that era. 

Filmed at Concord Motor Speedway, the video opens with Arnold Schwarzenegger riding in on a motorcycle a la Cole Trickle and was chock full of most everything NASCAR including a fleet of Ford Cup cars driven by the likes of John Andretti, Jeremy Mayfield, Dale Jarrett, Bill Elliott, Ernie Irwin and Mark Martin.  Add in Jarrett’s crew doing a pit stop, Jackson hot lapping Kenny Irwin’s Ford F-150 Craftsman truck before taking the field on in the Monster Truck, Bigfoot.  Close with a giant poker game featuring all the drivers showcasing their cheating card tricks and a Rusty Wallace guitar solo for good measure and you have the makings of Jackson’s fun video.  

The song peaked at #2 on the Charts and I was never sure if it went that high because of the song or its use of NASCAR and all the drivers and elements in the video.  Looking back I can’t imagine how much fun it was to make and you know the bloopers and outtakes had to be a scream.  

Three good songs that used NASCAR to make for some great videos that recognized maybe this NASCAR thing BITD was pretty cool.

Fun times.

There are three more videos, popular hits of that time that didn’t include NASCAR in them, but have application to today’s NASCAR.  Let’s take a look at them and see if you don’t agree.

“That Don’t Impress Me Much”   Shania Twain’s catchy 1998 tune made it clear that it was going to take more than smarts, looks and a nice car to impress the Canadian Queen of Crossover music.  The song was Twain’s 10th Top 10 single.  Although it had critics on both the Country and Pop side, it went Platinum and is still one of Twain’s most popular (and maybe memorable?) songs, so it’s hard to argue with success.

What’s all that got to do with NASCAR?  On the surface, not much although the video did have some impressive sights… that 1957 Chevy Bel Air being one.

I think the song in many ways reflects the attitude of the seasoned fans who have been with the sport through thick and thin and are still here,  After growing up with the sport and watch it explode from an early 1970’s regional sport into a national sport that rivaled the NFL when these videos were popular it’s hard to find sights today that come close in comparison, no matter what NASCAR and it’s current narrative says.  

Today, everything is the greatest ever.  Greatest race, greatest season, a car that that’s the panacea that cured all that ails the sport.  And if you don’t believe that what you saw, was, there is a steady stream of satellite radio and social media to convince you otherwise.  

Because these fans have seen more, their frame of reference is different.  After you have waited for years to get tickets to a race that would sellout at 160K fans twice a year, year after year, today’s gushing  over a 101k Daytona sellout… well… sorry, but that don’t impress them much.  

After being at the initial “unoffical” Brickyard tire test with 27K of your closest friends… it’s just hard to get excited over this year’s Iowa Cup sellout.  

Don’t get me wrong, yeah I think it’s alright-I’m happy for Iowa.  The fact they finally got their chance at “The Bigs” and the fans did what they did to pack it out, congratulations!  And those who think it’s a big deal, enjoy, just don’t get upset if not everyone is as easily impressed.  Remember, they’ve seen tracks that sold out with more fans closed and races moved elsewhere.  Likewise for tracks that used to see sellout twice a year with more seats than they have now who have shipped one date to a smaller track in hopes that compressing everything there into a single date will result in a sellout. Those “compression” sellouts are great, but are hardly as impressive as those old double sellouts from BITD.

The racing, they’ve been around long enough and been lucky enough to see close finishes that were the result of the extended green flag racing, not just two lap shoot outs.  And they were in races that routinely had more cars show up to try to make the race than had slots in the race and routinely saw cars sent home.  It was fun to see double the makes of cars, at the peak of performance and engineering  excellence for their day compete at the highest level, cars that didn’t require a tow truck to get them back to the pits when they got a flat and the only time raced at 40% throttle was maybe, just maybe entering the pits.  

Don’t hate them because they’ve been fortunate to have been around and been blessed enough to have seen a lot.  Sorry, you missed it.  Enjoy your time in the sport and maybe if you hang around it a while and are as fortunate, you’ll understand why…

“That don’t impress me much”

You Say It Best, When You Say Nothing at All by Keith Whitley & Allison Krauss is our next video.

So what does a country love song, especially this version have to do with NASCAR?  Let’s talk about this version first.  The song was originally recorded by Keith Whitley in 1988 and went to #1 by the end of that year.  Five months after topping the Charts, Keith would tragically die from alcohol poisoning.  

Fast forward to January of 1995, when Allison Krauss & Union Station covered the hit for a tribute album to Whitley.  It went on to be the group’s first Number one hit.

Both versions are outstanding and being unable to choose which version to use, I went with Milwaukee’s WMIL-FM’s then production director Mike Cromwell’s solution, this “virtual duet” he created from blending elements from each artists’ versions.  Cromwell’s version was never officially released for radio play but it became quite the social media sensation melding the best of both into the rendition all had hoped for but had been denied in life. 

Now it’s NASCAR connection comes from a conversation with a former NASCAR official who shared “If you really want to know what’s going on in the sport you not only listen to  what NASCAR says  but what they don’t say.  Often times, it’s what they don’t say, what’s not shown that really tells the whole story, that says it best.”

Puzzled, I asked what he meant.  He answered my question with a question.

“When FOX shows you a battle for P18 what is what they aren’t showing telling you about the race?”  

I didn’t get it at all and my lengthy silence told him I had no idea, so he continued, “What’s being shown is the best of what’s going on.  What’s not being shown or said, the silence tells you there is no racing toward the front, otherwise they would be showing that.”

The light bulb flickered.

“Oh like race stats?  If they brag about the race’s Green Flag Passes that means since they were silent on the Lead Changes and Quality Passes they weren’t there?”

“You got it.  Just look at what they aren’t saying to get the full picture.”

Essentially, they…

“… say it best, when they say nothing at all.”

That one little piece of information changed the way I look at races and listen to the “speak”  around it. 

A good example was in the recent State of the Sport (SOS) address.  When it came down to attendance and sellouts, Steve Phelps ended with 

“If you think about ’25, we have a race at Bowman Gray, which will be a sell-out. You have a race in Mexico City, which I believe will be a sell-out, and you have a race at Richmond on Saturday night in August that I also believe will be a sell-out to add to the double-digit sell-outs that we had this year.”

Phelps said-“double-digit sellouts, but was silent on the exact number of sellouts and no one in the media wanted to waste their single allotted question asking for it.  

Knowing that If the 2024 sellouts had  exceeded 2023, Phelps and company would have shouted that from the rooftops, but they… 

“…said nothing at all.”

In doing so, they said without saying 2024 had fewer sellouts than 2023 which makes a tough case for the growth they want to project

That’s a different picture than what you were initially left with, the SOS wasn’t it?

That’s just the most recent example, but the season is chock full of instances of…

“… You say it best, when you say nothing at all.”

Try listening to what’s not said this season.  You might be surprised.

The final video in our NASCAR Hit Parade again comes from North of the Border with Canada’s Terri Clark and her debut single “Better Things To Do”.  The up-tempo song about coming to the realization that after things don’t work out there is more to life and “better things to do” than just sit around and cry about it.  Woven in is the pompous other half who reaches out, not to patch things up but because they think the other’s life can’t go on without them.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

This video has scary similarities of where NASCAR is today with a lot of its fanbase.  I know too many people who were once immersed in the sport either as fans or industry members who now “wash their cars in the rain” and “change their new guitar strings” while  saying…

“Maybe when I don’t have so much going

Or quite so many irons in the fire

I’ll take the time to miss you like you’re hoping

But now, I can’t put forth the effort it requires”

It makes me sad, knowing they are at this point after all the life-blood they’ve poured into a sport.  And it’s not that they’re “not true fans”, “just boomers” who “can’t accept change” or “bots” as they’ve been labeled by the deniers.  It’s a good try, but the truth is these have seen and endured more change than today’s fans will ever see.  

No, it’s more like when University of Kentucky’s  Coach Bill Curry, tired of fans criticism of his program challenged fans on his weekly radio show to “either get in the canoe or get out” to which a frustrated fan called into the show and retorted, “Coach, I was in the canoe and never left but it’s taken on so much water, I floated away.”

That’s where I think a sizable number of fans are today.  They have been in the canoe for a lifetime and never left but it has taken on so much water they are in danger of floating off or  have already floated off and have now 

“… got better things to do.”

The 2024 season may have been called fantastic, some say the greatest season ever, but the post-season outcry, frustration and backlash has risen to a level I’ve not seen in a long, long while.

We’ve now entered into an important off-season, maybe the most important in recent memory.  Playoff displeasure, anti-trust litigation, Charter turmoil, a new TV deal that’s left many fans concerned as to what it’s going to take to watch the races and which ones they may have to miss are combining to create a potentially toxic mix.  

Although the off-season often settles the displeasure and Daytona’s hope chills the frustration, NASCAR has a tricky mine field of issues ahead to navigate.  How well they do it will determine whether their product is not a “Better Thing To Do” as our song says, but THE BEST thing to do to keep as many fans as possible from floating off as they go forward.

How it turns out?  Better watch and see.

It would sure be a shame though to get beat out by car soap, lawn mowers and guitar strangs.

One can hope.

Thunder On… and Stay Safe!

David Nance