A week ago today, I traveled to St. Vincent’s College to witness one of the best shows I’ve… A week ago today, I traveled to St. Vincent’s College to witness one of the best shows I’ve been to in a while. What kind of music did the band play? Country. Yes, I said it: The band played country music.

“What’s going on here?” you might be asking yourself. “This dude just admitted to enjoying country music. Should I beat him up?”

Well, the answer is no, and here’s why: Much of the music so many of us call “country” nowadays is complete garbage and the farthest thing from the musical brilliance I was privy to last Friday.

Unfortunately, country music today is probably the most misunderstood and worst represented genre in the entire music world. Allow me to explain.

The faces that most associate with country music today are those of pop musicians – and shoddy ones at that. The first who comes to mind is Toby Keith. The man is a smart redneck who has made countless millions of dollars off of dumb rednecks by singing about feeding horses beer and sticking boots up terrorists’ behinds.

After Keith, any number of familiar faces come to mind – Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Big and Rich, Gretchen Wilson, heck, even Uncle Cracker and Kid Rock.

These guys are just radio-friendly pop artists who wear 10 gallon hats and boots and get played in cheap steak restaurant chains. Let’s be real – Kid Rock is in no way a cow-boy bay-bee. The kid grew up outside of Detroit.

And so, because of these folks – among the most visible “country” stars in the musical mainstream – I can’t blame all the students with “Anything but country” listed as their favorite music on Facebook, or my friends who scrunched their noses in disgust when the word “country” came up as I described last Friday’s show.

But, here and now, I want to set things straight: Believe it or not, there exists country music that – gasp – is not bad. In fact, it’s pretty fantastic.

Let us now put aside (for good) the realm of pop-country to see what we’ve got left. On one end, there’s traditionalist country. Here is music based in bluegrass and folk, all hot-pickin’ and no honky tonk. On the other end, there is alt-country, where bands gloriously mix the swagger and emotion of country with a more textured, rock ‘n’ roll edge.

With that groundwork laid out, I present to you The 5 Reasons Why Country Music Does Not Suck:

5) Ryan Adams. This sparkplug of an artist began as a part of Whiskeytown, an alt-country band with a penchant for gorgeous male-female harmonies and acoustic rock arrangements. Adams’ solo work, however, is the stuff of genius. His first album, Heartbreaker, is just that – a collection of lyrically driven gems about being young and heartbroken.

“Shakedown on 9th Street” could be the soundtrack to a smoky bar fight, with sharp guitars, handclaps and more than a few “Woo-who”s. “Come Pick Me Up” is a classic harmonica-guitar-piano ballad with a perfectly bitter chorus: “Come pick me up/Take me out/F–k me up/Steal my records/Screw all my friends/They’re all full of s–t/With a smile on your face/Then you’ll do it again.”

All eight – yes, eight – of his albums since his 2000 debut, with the exception of 2003’s garage rock experiment, Rock and Roll, have been full of beautiful, powerful even spiritual alt-country.

4) Wrinkle Neck Mules. This band sounds like a hot Sunday afternoon in the Deep South – “laid back” is an understatement. The Mules write slow-roving, twangy guitar, plucked banjo and lazy, bass-driven tunes with titles like “Failure of Liver,” “Whiskey Jars” and “17 Miles of Bourbon.” Starting to get the picture? These Southern gents like to have a good time, and their bluegrass-inspired country music shows it.

These guys are true blue country – no gimmicks and no faux-cowboy image: They drink beer themselves (they’d never waste it on horses) and are more trucker hats and goatees than cowboy hats and mullets.

3) Wilco. This band, which formed out of alt-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo, is the infamous act I saw last Friday; but, let me tell you – the musicians’ brand of tripped out, multi-layered country rock is musical dynamite more at home on college radio than at a rodeo.

Wilco has been embraced by the indie rock community for its intense lyrics and near-psychedelic live show. Check out the band’s recent live CD, Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, and be prepared to amend your notion of country completely: The 12-minute “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” will melt your face right off.

2) Female Vocalists. I know this is cheating, but there is a crop of female traditionalist country singers who take the breath right out of that Shania Twain’s mouth. Truly, there are few things more beautiful than a heartbroken country ballad sung by a clear-voiced woman. To name a few – Alison Krauss, Loretta Lynn, Emmylou Harris. And luckily for you, all three have released stellar albums within the last two years!

1) Johnny Cash. You saw the movie, now check out the records. You owe it to yourself to know more than “That girl from ‘Cruel Intentions’ played his wife.”

So there you have it. Of course, you might check out one of these acts and realize what you’ve been missing out on, or you might continue to think country sucks and that I’m an idiot. No matter; as long as you don’t think Toby Keith is “a true artist,” I’ll be happy.

If you think Justin deserves a good whomping in a smoky bar fight, e-mail him the time and place at [email protected].