In 1971, with these lines – sung over a backdrop of traffic sounds, police whistles, and sirens – country music legend and “Hee Haw”star Buck Owens characterized Nashville’s feelings about the Big Apple in his song “I Wouldn’t Live in New York City (If They Gave Me the Whole Dang Town)”:

It ain’t nothin’ but a concrete jungle with people packed like sardines
Where everybody’s tryin’ to live beyond their means
Where all the natives hurry and scurry to and fro
And like fleas on a puppy dog they got no place to go.

Country music may still not want to live in New York City, but it seems like a nice enough place to visit. The Country Music Association has taken up residence in the City for the past year, and is in the midst of its “Country Takes New York City” week of concerts, cultural programs, and events leading up to the annual CMA Awards, which will be held in New York for the first time this Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.

To hear the CMA tell it, it’s not an instance of musical carpet bagging so much as a return to familiar territory. The first country single, “Sallie Gooden,” was recorded in New York City in 1922, as was the first million-selling country single, “The Wreck of the Old ’97 / The Prisoner’s Song,” in 1923. As the CMA press materials grimly point out, New York City is also where yodeling country-music great Jimmie Rodgers made his last recordings, collapsed, and died. The more recent history is spottier, however. The CMA is grasping at straws when it notes that CBGB’s (Country Bluegrass and Blues) opened here in 1973. As most New Yorkers could tell you, CBGB’s was never a country venue; it instead became the birthplace of punk.

New York City ranks as the nation’s second-biggest market for country music (after L.A.) but still “tends to be a little bit weaker than other areas of the country in terms of per capita record sales,” said Rick Murray, vice president of strategic marketing for the Country Music Association. New York City is especially tough on traditional-sounding acts like Alan Jackson and Blake Shelton. New Yorkers’ tastes tend to run to extremes: They prefer the slicked-up country pop of stars like Shania Twain, Faith Hill, and the Dixie Chicks, or the classics. With “Walk the Line” posters wallpapering the city, we’re reminded of New York’s reverence for outlaw songsters like Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson, who seem to transcend whatever it is the City finds distasteful about the genre.

It’s been especially hard to make a case for mainstream country in the last few years without a full-time country station. (The last one, WYNY, switched formats in May 2002.) But for the week leading up to the CMA Awards, country has again returned to the City’s airwaves during select hours on WNYE 91.5 FM. Call it a trial balloon. With more than 2,000 stations nationwide, country is the most popular radio format, and the CMA hopes to see it rise again in New York. “We’d love to see a full-time country station here,” Murray said. “I think the market would support it.”

Mainstream country will get a big stage tonight as the Grand Ole Opry, currently celebrating its 80th year, comes to Carnegie Hall. When the Opry first played the venue in 1947, Ernest Tubbs quipped from the stage, “Boy, this place could hold a lot of hay!” Expect no such hayseed humor from this year’s star-studded lineup, which includes Trace Adkins, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Alan Jackson, Martina McBride, Brad Paisley, Charley Pride, Ricky Skaggs, and Trisha Yearwood.

It may be a taste of things to come. One of the upsides to spending the year in New York City, Murray said, is the discovery of “a lot of great clubs not on the radar for country artists to play.” For this week anyway, New York will be teeming with country acts. In anticipation of the awards show tomorrow night, there will be country music at Irving Plaza, Birdland, and the Nokia Theater tonight.

This past weekend, Charlie Daniels headlined a Veteran’s Day celebration at Roseland Ballroom that was far more flag-waving than your typical New York fare; this too is an aspect of country music today. Before the first act there was a posting of the colors, an invocation by an Army chaplain, and a video montage featuring Bush (“huah!”) and post-spider-hole Saddam Hussein (“boo!”). In a concession to blue-state values, the program included Al Franken, but it also featured a USO troupe – perhaps an admission that country is on foreign soil.

Like any other genre, country music has its trends, the latest of which is a return to its hard-partying, red-state roots, beginning last year with Gretchen Wilson’s breakout hit “Redneck Woman.” “I’m a redneck woman / I ain’t no high-class broad,” she sings, “I’m just a product of my raising / I say ‘hey y’all’ and ‘yee haw.'” The song has had a ripple effect on the industry, producing tracks like Jason Aldean’s “Hicktown” and Faith Hill’s “Mississippi Girl,” which reads like a rural version of J.Lo’s infamous “Jenny From the Block” attempt at street cred. “A Mississippi girl don’t change her ways / just ’cause everybody knows her name,” Hill sings, “Ain’t big-headed from a little bit of fame.”

This would seem to put country music even more at odds with New York listeners, but, paradoxically, the people driving this push are also the mavericks promoting a new brand of “country music without prejudice” that may hold more appeal for urban audiences.

Wilson’s songwriting partner for “Redneck Woman” is Jim Rich, one half of the acclaimed upstart duo Big & Rich (they and Wilson are both up for numerous CMA Awards). Their anthem, “Rollin’ (The Ballad of Big & Rich),” opens with an introduction by a black preacher (or someone mimicking one) and features a drop by a black rapper named Cowboy Troy. “You looking at me crazy ’cause you think I’m loco / the big black cowboy with the crazy vocal,”he raps,” …so let go of all your preconceived notions / get up on your feet and put your body in motion.” As rap, it’s hardly revolutionary, but as country music it surely is.

On their new album, the aptly titled “Comin’ to Your City” (due out Tuesday), Big & Rich quote the rapper Nelly and lay out their plans for conquering the city. “We’re coming to your city to play our guitars and sing you a country song,” they sing. And they’re coming to take the whole dang thing.

Grand Old Opry at Carnegie Hall (881 Seventh Avenue at 57th Street, 212-247-7800). Keith Urban at Irving Plaza (17 Irving Place at 15th Street, 212-777-1224). Victoria Shaw, Bob DiPiero, and Gary Burr at Birdland (315 W. 44th Street, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, 212-581-3080). Pat Green, Dierks Bentley, and Cross Canadian Ragweed at the Nokia Theater (1515 Broadway at 44th Street, 212-930-1959).