I was watching Austin City Limits last week, and Chris Stapleton was on it. I’d seen him for the first time a year or two ago on Saturday Night Live, when he performed with another critic’s darling whose music I didn’t know, Sturgill Simpson. I loved their essentially Southern Rock revival they constructed that night, and I wanted to see if this Stapleton guy would still work for me on ACL. He did! He and his band were great. I don’t think country-ish songs about drinking and being down to one’s last time will ever be my kind of music, but I love how open this guy is with his voice, his guitar playing, his band’s arrangements.
One song that stood out for me was a standard, a song in that vein that even I knew for some reason. Maybe I know it through one of the band’s my close personal friend chickenfrank plays in. Maybe I know it from being at a party with people who are into Bonnie Raitt. I don’t know, but “Tennessee Whiskey” is a song I normally wouldn’t have any interest in that works for me. Stapleton’s version impressed me so much that I got out my guitar, played along with it, and then spent the wee hours of last Saturday night writing my own song that was inspired by some of the moves he used. Check this out.
That brings me back to David Allen Coe‘s hairdo, in the first clip I posted. I wanted to see who wrote that song, and I was taken to this video. Coe didn’t write it, that would be two songwriters I’d never heard of, Dean Dillon and Linda Hargrove. They’re probably in the Country Music Songwriters Hall of Fame. What do I know? Good stuff, though!
But Coe’s hair…what was he going for, a Chaka on Land of the Lost Look? It’s amazing. Amazingly bad! Yet oddly beautiful.
Here’s one of those Stapleton-Simpson performances from SNL that first interested me on a primal level.
Hair inspiration; My Pretty Pony?
Here’s an interesting article by the boss of chickenfrank’s aforementioned band that tells the story of David Allan Coe. While it doesn’t specifically explain that ‘do, it certainly provides some inkling of how intensely weird someone with that hairstyle might have to be.
I love seeing that picture of Coe’s stupid hair. Now when I think of his racist songs, I can also think of everyone that ever met him laughing at that stupid hair.
@geo, I think you forgot to include the link. I’d like to see how that informs my interest in his hair. Thank you.
Do I ever finish a comment before I hit send? I don’t think so.
Here’s the link.
https://www.trainarmy.com/post/wire-from-the-bunker-meet-david-allan-coe
Thanks, geo. Jon is such a good writer – and such a good frontman for John Train! It kind of sucks, but more importantly it’s great how jealous I can get of his special talents.
I think that’s a wig. At least the top part. I did a Google image search on his name, and there are a variety of unconvincing hairdos, leading up to more recent photos where he wears a hat or a bandana.
That may be worse.
DAC is such a fucking try-hard. If you have to keep telling everyone what a badass you are, you’re not really a badass, are you? Even when chickenfrank’s band-boss made me listen to DAC’s “dirty album”, it just sounded like stuff that even Wheeler Walker Jr would have considered crass and not subtle enough.
I hadn’t heard Stapelton’s version Tennessee Whiskey until last week when one of my brothers played it and pointed out that it’s essentially I’d Rather Go Blind with different lyrics. Nonetheless, I like his version, although it sounds like a different song than DAC’s version.
NOTE TO SELF: Stop telling everyone what a badass I am. 🙂
“it’s essentially I’d Rather Go Blind with different lyrics.”
And the lyrics aren’t as good. At least Otis Redding’s “Pain in My Heart” is a little less clunky than “Ruler of My Heart.”