They say that country music is the world's ‘drinkinest' music.
That is, that more booze is consumed on this planet to the sounds of country music than to any other aural accompaniment.

And it could be true. Each type of music comes with attendant baggage, be it clothes, hairstyles or boots, and one thing that history shows is that many musical genres seem to come accompanied by a drug of choice.
The 60s even came with a form of music – psychedelic – which shared a name with the drug group most commonly employed to enhance the experience. Raves and dance parties today emerged at exactly the same time as the first widespread availability of ecstasy, and after the heavy-handed legal approach to it in New Zealand – resulting in prices over 20 times more expensive here than in the UK – there developed a flourishing legal industry in party pills.
Going way back, marijuana was a favourite amongst early jazz players, as attested to by its popularity in songs of the era and the many slang terms such as 'viper”, referencing dope smokers. Louis Armstrong was a famous pothead and apparently loved New Zealand. Stories still circulate in jazz circles about his 60th birthday party, which was held in Auckland, where he jammed with local musicians and enjoyed serious quantities of the local herb.
Perhaps it was that predilection in the jazz genre that led to country music becoming more associated with alcoholic beverages. The two musics were never friends, what with coming from opposite sides of the racial divide in the segregated American South. Then the goddamn hippies came along and went around smoking weed, burning their draft cards and wearing their hair all long and the divide widened.
'We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee” sang Merle Haggard and – Willie Nelson's sterling efforts notwithstanding – the image has stuck.
'So”, I thought, as I headed to last weekend's biggest gathering of Kiwi musicians, 'a thousand country roadhouses in Texas can't be wrong, the Bay of Islands Country Rock Festival will be a beer drinking extravaganza with wall-to-wall bourbon shots.”
Although I have been to more than a few rock, jazz, blues, folk and other varieties of festival too warped to remember, this was my first country festival. I am a fan of several areas of the genre, from Jimmy Rodgers to Guy Clarke to many an alt country band, and am always partial to a hit of bluegrass. But the thought of massed line-dancing has always sent chills up my spine. One of my best friends was a line-dancer, but it didn't help.
At least I'd be hanging with a bunch of hard livin', hard drinkin' cowboys, kickin' back that bourbon ‘n' beer.
How wrong can one be.
There were something like 50 acts over the three days and hardly a beer or bourbon in sight. I have often looked at Jazz Festivals and wondered if the general aging nature of their audience might at some point prove a problem. Well, the crowd at the Country Rock Festival was on average a good 10 years older than any jazz fest I've been to. They sat in rows and listened intently and gave dirty looks to anyone who talked. They were serious.
And, unlike jazz festival audiences, they didn't spend any money. Most of them were staying in campervans – it was like a Kea convention – and most of them ate in their vans and drank water at gigs. I spoke to the manager of a cool little restaurant called Alfresco's (dunno what the apostrophe signifies) who said they noticed no appreciable increase in business despite the mass of people in town.
The music itself was a lot of fun. Eddie Low was there, and Dennis Marsh and James Ray and Reg McTaggart and Bruce Greaves and The Pirongia Mountain Men; Marian Burns played the fiddle, Brendon Ham released his new album; Donella Waters and Steve Henderson and Stephen Cheney came over from Australia, and Joni Harms came over from Oregon and sang like a true country sweetheart (she also played mean guitar).
But the vibe wasn't quite what I expected. Tell you what, if more kids liked country music in New Zealand I don't reckon there'd be a problem with that binge drinking thing.