{"id":7261,"date":"2016-03-01T07:00:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/?p=7261"},"modified":"2016-02-29T15:24:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T21:24:27","slug":"back-to-the-beginning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/countrymusic\/2016\/03\/01\/back-to-the-beginning\/","title":{"rendered":"Back to the Beginning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1917829_1199599942455_8288245_n<\/a>Although country music is a big part of my life now, I wasn\u2019t always the big fan that I am today. When I was growing up, neither of my parents liked country music. My Mom was raised in Texas, but found the genre to be rather irritating and my Dad is from Israel so he had no concept of this type of music. The people who really introduced me to the genre and sparked my love of country music are my maternal grandparents. Although they lived in Massachusetts for most of their lives, they still loved listening to artists like Johnny Cash<\/a>, George Strait<\/a> and Alan Jackson<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>I remember my first encounter with the king of country music, George Strait, when I was about 8 years old.\u00a0<\/span>I was in the back seat of my Nana\u2019s car with my little brother Micah. Nana always played the album\u00a0<\/span>George Strait: Live from the Astrodome<\/i><\/a><\/span>\u00a0anywhere we drove. Even though I didn\u2019t know any of the words to the songs at the time, I wanted to trick my brother into thinking I\u00a0did; so I pretended to sing along.\u00a0<\/span>Write\u00a0This Down<\/i><\/span>\u00a0was actually the song playing when I decided I knew all the words and has became one of my favorite songs on the album. This led to Micah wanting to know the songs since his cool older sister knew all the words. My Nana heard us trying to sing along in\u00a0the backseat and ended up giving us our own CD to take home. <\/span><\/p>\n