Wait, who thinks they’re just fishing? Is this another one of those Rashomon country songs?

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Alex Ostroff: Sweetly nostalgic ode to building memories with your children, just in time for father’s day. Unfortunately, I can’t help but hear “Just Fishin’” through the whole weird thing about father-daughter relationships in our culture: the presumed desire of men to keep their daughters children as long as possible — as if the only way to have an ideal or healthy relationship with your daughter is one where she’s de- (or pre-) sexualized and not yet a mature adult in charge of her own shit. (See: purity rings, father-daughter dances, etc.) But the only line that really sets off that alarm is the one about driving boys crazy and giving daddy fits, and otherwise this type of song could easily be written about Adkins’ hypothetical son. Plus, the line about “drowning worms and killing time/nothing too ambitious” makes me giggle.
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Michaela Drapes: A song like this should be touching, maybe. Instead it reads as possibly divorced (that line about the little girl being “pretty like her momma” makes me think momma ain’t in his life anymore) or long-haul trucker or oil rig foreman or traveling musician dad trying to make it up to his daughter by taking her fishing every few months when he blows through town. He does seem genuinely glad to be spending time with her, I guess — but the whole recordkeeping of important memories thing is weirdly manipulative. And really, who pronounces ‘big ’un” like that anyway?
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Anthony Easton: I like Adkins better when he leads with his cock.
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Pete Baran: Hey Trace, maybe she thinks you’re fishin’, cos you come home smelling of fish? Actually working the plot to death works well for Trace here, he manages a very likeable adultery song which in the final thirty seconds gets downright hilarious when Trace explains not once but twice, that that a) he isn’t just fishing, and b) the song ISN’T ABOUT FISHING AT ALL! Plus two for knowing irony there.
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Alfred Soto: Listeners think this is a cheating song? It’s pretty damn literal to me: from the acoustic chug to the lines about Adkins not knowin’ whether to laugh or die or cry to the rapt baritone with which he projects his irrepressible delight, this is a father-daughter song through and through. If you want to argue that the genre boasts sexual undertones, fine. I’ll admit it’s easier to make the argument when Adkins can toss asides like “Nuthin’ too ambitious” through a grin as wide as the Mississippi. It’s no “I’m Tryin’,” one of the best country songs of the decade, but he’s made easy look easy almost as long.
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Josh Langhoff: Since “You’re Gonna Miss This” proved that Adkins can do smart poker-faced tearjerkers better than almost anybody, and since my boy’s getting a fishing pole for his birthday, AND since Adkins’s vision of fishing isn’t just a boy’s club, I was all set to hand “Just Fishin’” my still-beating heart — even despite the word “big ’un’” — until the ad-libs at the end. Really, Trace?? “This ain’t about fishin’”??? You don’t have to treat your audience like we’re your six-year-old daughter.
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Isabel Cole: I feel like if I had ever followed through on my vague wish to learn more, meaning anything, about country music, I would like this better. That’s not a dig at country; some things are just better understood with background knowledge of the traditions in which they operate. Without that, I’m left listening to a pretty, sweet, slightly dull song, by a man with a pretty, sweet, slightly dull voice, with lyrics that…. The Jukebox is not a therapist’s office (the decor is less chintzy, for a start), but I cried at that stupid-ass episode of Lost where we’re supposed to give sideways-Jack a cookie for being all “whoa, maybe I should stop being a shitty dad???” and I love working with children, so you can maybe imagine how someone who seems like an actual decent father poignantly capturing the restless exuberance of a little kid whose thoughts flit from ballet shoes to training wheels give this an extra point in my book.
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Katherine St Asaph: I have to be imagining this, right? When Trace goes off on how his can’t-be-older-then-eight daughter is all pretty, will make the boys crazy, just like her mom, time’s ticking away, etc. It isn’t even just the “well, what if she doesn’t much attract the guys, or doesn’t want to, where’s her say?” rejoinder you can always make; it’s that now none of the other lines sound anything but dodgy, lost in her holding that pink rod and whatnot, and UGH WHY.
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