Tennessee’s Trae Crowder ‘Loves You like Chicken’

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Photo by Chris Line Photography - Facebook

Trae Crowder

Trae Crowder is a liberal-leaning comedian formerly of East Tennessee, relocated with his family, in recent years, to southern California. Crowder’s rich rural southern accent makes his conversation charming, and his whip-smart, well-informed humor is both provocative and entertaining. His front-seat car rants, when he pretends to talk to folks on both sides of the political aisle, are a refreshingly simple twist on over-produced talking heads spewing dubious points of view. 

Nashville is a little blue dot in a big wide red state, but it still affords a perspective on the South not evident from elsewhere. Having first discovered Trae while I was living there, his perceptive rants on what appeared to be the back porch of his rural home skewed the southern “hillbilly” stereotype. The results of the “War of Northern Aggression” still figure into contemporary Southern culture. 

Crowder’s personal appearances run more to the human condition and observations on his upbringing and subsequent observations. This “liberal redneck” declares with wry amusement, “I come from old no money.” 

A characteristic, hypothetical conversation between two conservatives about gerrymandering concludes with the triumphant observation, by one of the men, “Well, I was thinking … you know how in a democracy, the voters are supposed to choose the politicians? What if, instead, we let the politicians choose the voters?” 

Now on the brink of 40, Crowder wraps political and social observations inside the context of his rural childhood. His Memaw figures prominently in his perspective. She loves his most off-color comments. 

Trae Crowder appears 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7 at Turner Hall Ballroom.