Taxicab Depressions

Don’t get mad, just a quick and easy post of something I saw on night three of the RNC. Before things really got going, the band was playing and people were milling around and dancing in the aisles. The camera cut to the band, and a young man onstage was playing the harmonica, and he was really killin’ it… a very good player. He started singing, and it was sort of a fast-paced rhyme, almost like a country-rap hybrid. As I watched, I distinctly heard him sing the phrase, “a little bit of doobie, ain’t talkin’ ’bout the brothers“, and the camera cut back to middle-aged delegates, dancing awkwardly in the aisles and wearing stupid hats, oblivious to that lyric.

I said to my wife, “Did you see that?” and I rewound the TV, and yep, that’s exactly what he said, and it flew right over the heads of the people on camera (I think). The chorus of the song was “back in my drinkin’ days”, so I Googled up that phrase and discovered Chris Janson. Never heard of him, not a big fan of country, but this young man is fun to listen to. Not complex music by any measure… hell, I could play this, three or four chords, and I know this guy Oscar that I’m confident could send me the tablature or a video of the lead guitar part in 10 minutes or less… but it has a “catchy” and fun quality I like.

And, I can relate… while I’m still in my drinkin’ days, I’m not anything like I was twenty or thirty years ago. Some might say I’m lucky to still be here.

So here’s Chris Janson’s Back In My Drinkin’ Days… a fun listen, and it makes me wonder if he was mildly trolling the RNC, or just playing a danceable tune…

“Thank God I lived to tell about the stupid things that I used to do…”

Here’s another one I like… from these two songs, I get the feeling this guy is a reformed drinker. For some people, that’s just the way it’s gotta be. But again, I can relate. There was this one instance in the parking lot outside of a Cult concert I could write about, and then there was the incident where I was shithammered in a bar near Nassau and I wasn’t sure if I was about to become an American in a foreign jail that I could tell you about, but it’s probably better I don’t…

[EDIT] I listened to several other of Chris Janson’s songs, and then I came upon this… I wish I had the talent to give my wife and daughter a tribute like this…