Once the first defenses were down, I had access to the indie-rock sensibilities of a Ryan Adams or the Adderal-fueled bipolarity of retro-bluegrass outfits like Old Crow Medicine Show. And then there were zeitgeist-approved classic country artists like Johnny Cash, George Jones, and Marty Robbins.

Another common blow to easy prejudices: the discovery that family members are a part of it. Not only into it, I had family members who actually were a country music outfit, who played with Garry Talent of the E Street Band and even got Emmylou Harris to sing on one of their very cool Everly-Brothers-meets-the-shit-kickers records. A visit to them in Nashville in turn exposed me to the regulars at the Station Inn, musicians with Berklee-school training like Sierra Hull and grind-it-out Gospel acts like David Parmely and Continental Divide.

But there’s more to it than simple exposure. At the same time that I’ve grown older and more conventional, mainstream rock seems determined to abandon so much emotional territory to the omnivorous Nashville machine. I might have taken middle-aged refuge in Bruce Springsteen records if I were middle-aged in the 1980s. There is no Springsteen act for now. And I’ve just lost any shame about enjoying a form of pop music that occasionally affirms the major projects of adulthood: getting and staying married, working to provide, building a family.