On July 1, 2010, I wrote a post for Big Hollywood that demonstrated how Sheryl Crow was both reaching out to Country Music fans and insulting them at the same time. She was reaching out to them through her work with Kid Rock, her cameo appearance at the Country Music Awards, and the home she purchased in Nashville. She was insulting them by railing against “giant cars” (like the 4×4 pickups and Hummers country artists love to drive), and calling Tea Partiers “ignorant” and “angry.”
Suffice it to say, Crow couldn’t have insulted Country Music fans more without calling them by name. She apparently doesn’t know (or doesn’t care to know) that Country Music fans put the heart in heartland America: that they are loyal to those whom they see as being loyal to American ideals but couldn’t care less about those who go against them.
These things not withstanding, as Crow undertakes the American leg of her latest tour, her backstage rider for venue owners reads more like the musings of a speech writer for Al Gore than a would-be country artist. For instance, the rider contains an “environmental portion” which clearly states that Crow wishes to “minimize the overall environmental impact of the tour.” And while there’s nothing wrong with this on the surface, the problems arise when her to-do list for achieving this lowered environmental impact is fleshed out.
For instance, she asks venue owners to “utilize…non-petroleum cups” and other “alternatives to Styrofoam” for backstage drinks. She requests they reduce their reliance on fossil fuels by using “renewable sources and/or to [buying] sustainable energy credits where possible.” She actually asked them to check with their local utility companies to see if there’s a “green power” option they can switch to during her concert. She asks for “eco-friendly cleaning and bathroom products [and] post-consumer recycled toilet paper and paper [towels].”
Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something kind of weird about the thought of using “post-consumer recycled toilet paper” (and I’ll bet you there a lot of guys on tractors in heartland America who concur with my point).
Crow also describes how every food item, from snacks to dinners, should be prepared and packaged, and is explicit in her demand that everything be organic. From the “good quality, dark, organic chocolate bars” that are supposed to be placed in her backstage hospitality room, to the “organic coconut water” she’s going to use to wash those bars down, everything is painstakingly detailed in echo-friendly terms.
The arrogance of all this is magnified by the fact that Crow is a c-player in the music industry at best (and it’s always aggravating to watch somebody pretend to be more famous than they really are). Yet as bad as her arrogance is, her duplicity is worse. She proved this in her rider when she asked venue owners to use the same type of “ride-sharing program” she uses in order to cut down on pollution while she’s there. This is quite a request coming from a woman who’s touring the country in two buses (each 45 feet long) complimented by 2 full-size tractor-trailer rigs.
Unless those buses and trucks are running off solar panels, Crow needs to hush. And she need not be surprised that when heartland Americans look at her, they see what they saw in John Kerry during 2004: A snooty leftist who doubles as a control freak.
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