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HARD JAMS: Rehab – The Bartender Song (aka Sittin’ at a Bar) (2008)

5 May

I’m sittin at a bar on the inside
Waiting for my ride on the outside
She broke my heart, in the trailer park
So I jacked the keys to her fuckin’ car
Crashed that piece of shit and then stepped away

– Rehab, “The Bartender Song”

Outlaw country is a genre that produces some of the HARDEST music ever, and doesn’t get nearly enough respect. Blending the tried and true country dogma of sad songs about sad times with a kick of popular culture and hard drugs and alcohol, the music as well as the musicians responsible for it dominated popular music in the 1970s and 1980s. However, along the way, money and the American mainstream swept into country music, and took the teeth away from the outlaw sound, opting to turn its purveyors like Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Kenny Rogers into rugged “Marlboro Man” movie icons and rendering other acts like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson into grizzled, worn identifiers of the unrestrained American spirit. But there’s one man who’s always remained a scratchin’, kickin’ and clawin’ redneck rebel. Hank Williams, Jr. In 1981, he had a #1 hit with “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down,” lamenting the crossover of ALL of the aforementioned hitmakers. However, Hank only had to wait about 20 years for a new generation of hard partying friends.

Today’s hard jam is easily my favorite of the next generation of outlaw artist hits, Rehab’s 2008 minor hit and international bar anthem, “The Bartender Song.”

The band, from Warner Robbins, GA, has been around in various incarnations since 1998. Blending country, blues, reggae, rock and hip hop breaks, the band was initially signed in the wake of hype surrounding the macho nu metal/redneck hip hop craze of Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and Uncle Kracker. Given that their first album involves a skit of them breaking out of well, rehab, they come off like Rock and Kracker before them did, as the twisted sons of outlaw country.

“The Bartender Song” takes familiar country staples and slams them together with an updated tale of woe about a guy mad at his pill popping wife getting agitated about unpaid debts then unwisely deciding to engage in fisticuffs. Upon realizing the error of his ways, he steals her father’s car, promptly crashes it, walks away, and into the nearest bar. Of course, he violated his parole regulations in doing all of this, so, he’s on the lam, getting drunk, confiding in who else, the bartender. Hard edged real talk and a fantastic hook that leaves the listener enthralled, entertained and if inebriated, shouting along and overjoyed.


Carjacking from trailer parks. A country remix with Hank Williams, Jr.? There’s not much harder than that.

TGRI GOES COUNTRY: An Appreciation of Hank Williams, Jr.

13 Jan

This story doesn’t involve this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/oBG98ksQAg4&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

I don’t know about that man. I know about what it took to get that man there.

If your father was the absolute most beloved and iconic voice of country music, and you were expected to follow in his footsteps after his tragic unsolved mystery of a death at age 29, you just might develop an affinity for alcohol, drugs and pills and drive your car off the side of a cliff as well. This is the nature of the life and times of Hank Williams, Jr.

Hank Williams to most anyone you ask, IS country music. Hank Jr., in becoming one of the highest selling artists in country music history had to kick, claw, scratch, poke and scrape his way away from being his father’s son. And, in doing so and becoming an iconic figure of the outlaw movement, created a legacy of country music advancement that one could be quite sure that his father would approve and be more than proud of.

Hank Williams Jr. is a worthy of appreciation because he’s likely one of the only artists in music history to do so well in celebrating doing so poorly. In creating high culture out of all of his low points, he created his legacy, a double fistin’, coke snortin’, doobie hittin’, pill poppin’, skirt chasin’, rompin’ and stompin’ madman of a country star who was straight out of central casting in his stereotypical cowboy behavior, and in being that way, is a folk hero of music to the nth degree. This is the man who slapped country music in the face with two hands filled with frank lyrics and loud, angry rock music. In breaking out of his father’s shadow, Hank Williams Jr. stepped into the halls of antiquity.

There’s 11 #1 singles in his discography. It all starts with 1972’s “Eleven Roses,” a love song’s love song, “as “if you take those eleven roses and stare in a mirror, you’ll see that the twelfth one is staring back at you” is one of the finer approximations at Hank Jr.’s daddy’s level of songwriting. And from there, it all goes downhill. Quickly. By 1975, he’s charting at #19 on the country charts with “Stoned at the Jukebox,” and by 1978, he was at a place where “I Fought the Law (And the Law Won).” However, by 1979, he was the ONLY outlaw left, and his “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound” hit number one, and so the chart topping began.

http://www.youtube.com/v/I4s0nzsU1Wg&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01

It’s a testament to the sheer will of the human spirit that Hank Williams, Jr. is a star. He certainly worked diligently at his craft, and suffered for his art. But in being the last of the outlaws by the 1980s, he succeeded, well, in spite of himself. There’s a certain honor there, a certain pained pride there that creates an anti-heroic nature for the man for sure. “Country Boy Can Surivive” may be a song about a country boy gone to the big city trying to make it big. But even deeper there in what makes it one of his signature songs is the nature of the restrained aggression in his voice that lets you know the story is all about him. When he sings the chorus on “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down,” you know that he’s wistful and amazed he’s even there to tell the tale. Impressed, no. A survivor, yes.

Hank Williams, Jr. is THE outlaw. Hellbent on creating his own direction and steadfastly maintaining his own style, he succeeded. Hank Williams, Jr. is the answer if you ever want to ask the question does pressure create diamonds out of coal. That’s why he’s appreciated.

“If you don’t like Hank Williams, kiss my ass!” – Hank Williams, Jr.

http://www.youtube.com/v/ZMnOu3kMNFM&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01