Day 78: I fell in love with Country music about 7-8 years ago and my love is now an obsession. Pretty much any live music I go to see is associated to the genre or British equivalent. Tim McGraw, Little Big Town, Kacey Musgraves, Old Dominion, Brothers Osborne, Lauren Alaina, Eve Sellis and Kelsea Ballerini are just a few of the Nashville contingent I’ve seen in recent years.
Much to the amusement of my mates who see Country music as nothing more than dressing like a cowboy, line dancing and singing about Country roads (they are not entirely wrong) I at least have a comrade on my Country musical journey in my wife. We both hope to visit Nashville in the future – maybe with our little girls if they grow up with a fondness for our preferred sound.
I listen to Country Music in my deepest depressions and in my happiest moods. It was previously company for me when I drank my whiskies late at night. The idea of enjoying whisky and Nashville together was better in thought than practice as I developed a deeper dependency on alcohol once my mental health nosedived in 2020. I still pretty much associate Country music and Nashville with the drinking of booze to inspire song writing, to build up confidence to perform, to drown your sorrows and to party the night away.
‘Whisky Lullaby’ is a song recorded by American Country Music Heavyweights Alison Krauss & Brad Paisley who have a whopping 30 Grammy Awards between them. Alison slightly more than Brad though with 27 of them! The song is one of my favourites – and whilst I can’t relate to the entirety of the lyrics (about love and loss. As soon as the guy came home from war, he found his wife sleeping with another man. He tried to hide his pain by drinking himself to death. His wife, through her pain started over drinking and also ended up passing away) – I can at least relate to trying to hide pain by using drink…
“He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away her memory
Life is short, but this time it was bigger
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees
We found him with his face down in the pillow
With a note that said, “I’ll love her till I die”
And when we buried him beneath the willow
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby
The rumors flew but nobody knew how much she blamed herself
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath
She finally drank her pain away a little at a time
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind
Until the night
She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger
And finally drank away his memory
Life is short, but this time it was bigger
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees
We found her with her face down in the pillow
Clinging to his picture for dear life
We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby”
Thankfully my story isn’t the Whisky Lullaby but without accepting I was unwell and seeking help who knows which direction my life could have taken.
Happy Daddy 