PUT THE 'O' BACK IN COUNTRY
This is the last song we did for the record. The
producer and I felt like we needed to start the record
with a song that emphasized what the whole thing was
about. My girlfriend actually had that title for a long
time. It’s based on the Neil Young song that my dad did a
long time ago. It just came out to be this raucous way of
saying that country music is cool but right now it needs
a little boost because there’s something missing from
it. It’s not an anti-Nashville song; it’s more of a
challenge.
4TH OF JULY
I wrote this a year ago on the Fourth of July. My
girlfriend and I rented an RV and took a trip down to
Texas for Willie Nelson’s 4th of July picnic. When I
came back there was a point where we were having some
problems, so I wrote this song that reflected back on
that time. It took on a life of its own. I was trying to
put some rock and some country in there and at the same
time tell the story of this RV trip, which is about as
white trash as you can get. My producer and I had the
idea of putting that Byrds-like, 12-string sound in
there to kind of ‘seventies’ it up. And it’s all a true
story.
LONESOME BLUES
My guitar player Leroy Powell wrote this song a long
time ago. He was playing it one night with a lot of
distortion. The lyrics really spoke to me because
they’re a real testament to a moment that anybody can
relate to. There’s a point where you’ve hit every wrong
turn you can. We ended up stripping it down and giving
it almost a somber tone.
SOLID COUNTRY GOLD
This is my favorite song on the album because it sounds
the most like my dad. I wrote it on a plane from L.A. to
New York. I’d been listening to a video that my dad put
out a while ago from a concert at the Ryman in 1979. He
did a song called “A Long Time Ago,” which inspired me
to write these lyrics; they kind of popped out. It sums
up in another way about how I feel about country music
and me being a country artist having traveled to see
Nashville and all that. The machine churns out a lot of
these guys in Wrangler shirts and cowboy hats; they
have a hit and all of a sudden Nashville throws them
aside before they get a real chance to be artists. There
hasn’t been a lot of authentic country music out there,
and this is my way of saying that I’m looking for it.
BUSTED IN BAYLOR COUNTY
This is a true story, word for word. Leroy Powell and I
wrote this song right after we got busted for pot. We
played our first show ever as a group in L.A. and our
second show in Lubbock, and on the way to Wichita Falls
for our third show we got cuffed and thrown in jail for
less than an eighth of an ounce of pot. By the end of
the day they were asking for autographs. We made it to
the gig on time that night. We stepped onstage and
opened with “Ain’t No Good Chain Gang,” which Dad did
back in the day. I couldn’t have made this song up so I
guess there was a blessing in getting busted.
