5045017

How do you feel about Nashville?Let me tell you a little about Honky-Tonk Revival...We're a band based here in Pasadena in the heart of the Great State of Texas. What is Pasadena? It's the home of the gone-but-not-forgotten Gilley's nightclub. A city that has been dedicated to "Hard-hat days and honky-tonk nights" for years and years and will be for years to come, if I have anything to say about it.Our motto is "It's about two-fisted beer-drinkin' hell-raisin' fun" and that's just what we stand behind. Everything in life is worth a song and anyone can write it. It's just a matter of whether you're willing to "dummy-down" and accept the fact that it doesn't have to be deep to be meaningful. To quote Ferris Bueller, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop to look around, it just might pass you by." In short, don't take it all too seriously. Have a good time and don't stand in the way of anyone else's.So, Nashville sucks. Let's talk about it... There aren't a lot of things in life you can trust. Years ago, Paul Stuckey of Peter Paul & Mary said, "There is nothing in life more honest than a song. You can lie all day long but it's impossible to sing a lie." I believe that very deeply. Unfortunately, over the last 50-or-so years someone has come in and dilluted our ability to tell the truth from the product. But if you really look close you can still see a glimmer of honesty out there and it rarely comes out of that god-forsaken city. We have been force-fed pre-packaged cubicle-country for so long that we forgot about Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. All we can hear now it songs about sexy tractors, saving a horse and riding a cowboy and that motherfucking honky tonk badonkadonk. Honesty? I think not. It's all a bad joke and I ain't laughing.But hey, do I let it get me down? Well, sometimes. But on the bright side, there is some really great music out there and I sure am glad it hasn't all disappeared. It's gone from the airwaves here in Houston but it lives on in the cd players of real country music lovers all over. So give a listen to some Robert Earl Keen or some Cross Canadian Ragweed. Check out Bleu Edmondson, Stoney LaRue and Wade Bowen. Hell, even give Pat Green, Cory Morrow and Kevin Fowler a day in court. They've made it pretty big but they are staying pretty true to the music. And keep an eye out for Hayes Carll, Ryan Turner, Matt Deaton and of course, Honky-Tonk Revival.The point is, we love music and you can't put a price on a well-written song. Someone somewhere along the line decided that wasn't true and now we're paying the price for not realizing what was happening while it was happening. It's about time to raise the big middle finger to Nashville and tell them that we're done with that single-serving TV dinner, bland, heartless, presented on a silver platter hunk of shit they call country. Just because it looks pretty doesn't mean it's real. As a matter of fact, the opposite is usually true.But then there's Old Crow Medicine Show waiting to make me believe again...