The Snakehandlers
Country Rock Is Neither
By Dimitri
(SugarBuzz USA)
SugarBuzz Magazine
THE COWBOY WAY.... Speaking as a native son of what Hunter S. Thompson used to call, "that dark and bloodied ground", I can tell you that whenever rural white folks experience times of pain and strife and tribulation-unemployment, and loss, and broken homes, we take comfort in our country music roots.
Particularly when the business of the government has become war, and it's the poor folk who have to suffer, and sacrifice, and die, and pay for it. 'Kinda the same way we all get touched and misty-eyed by jail-house religion, whenever the jobs all dry up, cos the multi-national corporations can squeeze more labor outta unfortunates over-seas, and it's coal-mine, moonshine, or down the line.
All the jobs that pay a living wage are gone, so unless you can support your family making seven bucks an hour, you're gonna become a migrant worker. Hell, I make less in 2008 than I did in 1988, and that record store job I used to bitch about ain't coming back!
In times like these, only Jason Ringenberg, Steve Earle, and Hank The Third seem to comprehend the pain we're in, aside from old-time rebels like Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson.
Everyone we used to call community have either sold their integrity, and higher ideals, and sense of right and wrong, for a false-pride paycheck in the sell-out service of the globalist-elite, or they're just drowning in hopelessness, and fucking up.
Evictions and convictions. Probation and alienation. A broken spirit dries up the bone, so addictions, depression, and other related health problems, are common side effects of narrowing opportunity, and the resulting fall-out that's a result of grinding poverty.
If you're a fan of reckless country soul, you're certain to appreciate the Snakehandlers whiskey-bent and hellbound cover of Jim Carroll's perennial drugstore cowboy's lament, "People Who Died". One presumes it was desperado lead vocalist, Bryson Jones, who penned the outstandingly poignant and world-weary lyrics to "Music Made A Man Out Of Me", and "Jackson County Methamphetamine Blues", which are both almost Dylanesque in their vividly detailed, descriptive-rich, glitter on a stripper-shiny, narratives.
I know more gameshow-watching, haggard, pimped-out, trailer trash, tweaker chicks, and pissed-off, pill crushing, gas-siphoning alcoholic Hank Junior fans than I really ever cared to. They'd all love this music, but few, if any of 'em will ever hear it. This is exactly the kinda bleeding badass, outlaw hillbilly rock they're all yearning to hear out here in Deadend, U.S.A.
Commercial country makes everyone sick with its Disney-slick formulas, and trite, chubby, middle-aged boy-bands, and jailbait puppet ingénues. You got Toby Keith with his shit-kicker nationalist pro-war propaganda. Kenney Chesney, who only exists to make Sammy Hagar look cool, and Jimmy Buffet into some important elder statesmen, with his awful vacation-resort jingles. I can easily imagine whole towns full of people singin' along to the Snakehandler's song, "Cowboy Jesus", but instead, they're stuck listening to more cheap and nauseating, Xeroxed rewrites of classic Bob Seger songs, vandalized by relentlessly unoriginal hacks like Kid Rock. For Shame. Not to mention all that jiveass, stale, overplayed shit on State-Radio. They won't play Willie Nelson's anti-war, protest songs like, "Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth" on CMT or the big media monopolies. No wonder everybody's so fuckin' miserable.
Bryson's got a good downhome holler that's appropriate for this kinda stuff-somewhere in between Shooter Jennings, and Dwight Yoakam. I love the freight-train drums, and dueling, James Burton/Billy Gibbons on crack style of spit-fire, spurs and bullets guitar wrangling of Easy Pickens, Bryson Jones, Reeve Downes, and Brian "Damage" Forsythe.
I dunno if the song "Music Reduxe" is a cover, or an original, but it's funny as hell, and sure to appeal to David Allen Coe Fans. Who among us doesn't dig a lil' moonshine crazy, Exile On Main Street, and Gram Parsons-influenced country honkin' from time to time? If you're partial to bathtub gin in Mason jars, black hats, Nudie suits, pole dancers, and mash whiskey, you'll surely like the Snakehandlers a lot more than all those lousy hairband clowns and Marlboro Man wannabes like Bon Jovi, Brett Michaels, and Sebastian Bach, all competing to be Nashville's Next Gutless Wonders....
(-DIMITRI SUGARBUZZ USA)
