Brown Liquor and Pork Rinds

My friend BJ was working as a second engineer at a studio here in Nashville a few years back. They were recording a southern rock record for low rent version of Molly Hatchet and I had heard so many tales of their musical Redneckery I swung by the studio to see for myself.

BJ met me at the door with an impish smile and lead me to a vocal booth that smelled like cigarette butts and whiskey mixed together in someone’s armpit. The band had left for the day and he laughed pointing to a music stand. There were wrinkled lyric sheets penned by a semi-literate hand, a hip flask of Jack Daniels that was 1/3 full (I’m an optimist) and a small Tupperware filled with cigarette ashes. The container was sealed with clear boxing tape; an impractical choice for an ad hoc studio ashtray.

BJ picked up the little tub, laughed and tossed it to me saying, “This is the lead singer’s father!” It took me a second to digest what he meant. I looked at the dust in the container, back to my friend and then back to the Tupperware.

I was holding the cremated remains of this man’s dead father.

Apparently, the lead singer was a family man. When the time came for him to make a real record-album in Nashville, he cracked open the Maxwell House can which held the leftovers of his Dad, grabbed himself a scoop and toted it all the way to Nashville. His father had now been played as a shaker on just about every track on that record. Yes. A shaker. I swear.

You don’t see this particular breed of redneck very often. I grew up in Jacksonville, FL, the home of Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special and Molly Hatchet. We bred them special down there. So, I know rednecks and these boys were pedigreed southern dirt-rockers. I hadn’t heard a note, but I knew anyone that used a deceased relative as a musical instrument pumped out musical brown liquor and lyrical pork rinds.

I have a soft spot for guys like this. Maybe it’s that I still take a morbid pride in the fact that my hometown’s chief export was southern rock, but there is something more, I think. Guys like that are authentic. They embrace who they are and for better or worse everything they do is an expression of that. Sure, they are capable of posturing, but there aren’t that many posers in that kind of music. Their extravagances are generally rooted in some truth about themselves.

Don’t believe me?

Then ask yourself, how many people you know that want to be perceived as a dead daddy shaking redneck? The answer is none. These people are a curiosity. Something you don’t set out to become. You have to be born into it. Like royalty or NASCAR. It is some inverted toothless Darwinism. BUT, if you combine that with musical talent you have a story worth telling. A character piece. Something worth listening to.

I’m not arguing that in order to be seen as authentic you need a homemade tattoo. And I’m also not saying that authenticity will make you a good musician/songwriter/artist. But I am saying that you can’t create truly great art without being authentic.

Don’t get me wrong…there is a place for Christina and Britney – but ultimately, we desire the kind of music that is a reflection of something real.

It’s easy to become a pure imitator of what we think is great and how we’d like to be perceived rather than who we really are. Most of us have spent too many hours thinking about how we wish people would think of us as artists (and people), rather than trusting who we really were. Artistic greatness occurs when you can keep the power of influence and imitation in its proper perspective.

The greats are “The Greats” because they succeeded despite the status quo, not because of it. What Willie, Cash, Waylon, Bono, Cobain, Vedder, Presley, Stills, Taylor and Garcia all had in common was they did what they did when nobody else was doing it. And the reason that nobody else was doing it was because these people’s music grew out of their unique experiences, limitations and talents. Tapping into that is the only way to really believe what you do as an artist…and I don’t care if you are a redneck or playing the hand bells at the First Baptist Tabernacle of Shekinah Glory, if you don’t believe it, nobody else will.


(this blog also appears on www.briteentertainment.com. Also, be sure to check out my music on www.briterevolution.com)