"Homes & Honky Tonks"

The Valley County Pioneer Museum will be hosting a Humanities Montana Speakers Bureau program “Homes & Honky Tonks: Post WWII Women in Country Music” with Almeda Bradshaw on Saturday, Sept. 15, at 7 p.m.

For working class country folk, honky tonk music became their voice of loneliness and alienation as men and women coped with the stress and adjustments of life after the atomic bomb. The 1950s suburban conformity, meant to help normalize the family unit, only contributed to feelings of victimization of both sexes. The program will examine how PTSD, then unrecognized, contributed to the dysfunction of families while audience members will learn how Kitty Wells, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and others responded in their songs to the social changes of post-World War II America.

Funding for the Montana Conversations program is provided by the Humanities Montana through grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Montana’s Cultural Trust and private donations. For more information call the Valley County Pioneer Museum at 406-228-8692.