High Cost of Living - Jamey Johnson
Last night I was ready to announce "last call" when I put on Letterman to check out the music guest. There loomed Jamey Johnson, this truck-driving fella with a rich, burly voice. He recounted a conversation with his WWII-vet granddaddy ... and I nearly had to wipe a manly tear from my eye. Titled "In Color," the song is moving without being maudlin, and Johnson, who co-wrote the number, delivers the touching lyric with old-school, outlaw authority -- and charm. Fatherly charm. Big brother charm. Two old pals with lots of battle scars sharing a bear-hug charm.
But "In Color" is not the most gripping song on Johnson's breakthrough disc That Lonesome Song. That honor goes to the nearly six-minute long "High Cost of Living (Ain't Nothing Like the Cost of Living High)," another original. Here's this mainstream country singer -- Johnson's on Mercury -- candidly singing about his past struggles with cocaine. The lived-in lyrics and the shackled-but-ever-present demons in his voice place the song on par with the best by fellow and former Nashville rebels Waylon, Willie, Hag and Cash.
"As soon as Jesus turned his back, I'd find my way across the track," Johnson intones over steel guitar and churchy organ. "Lookin' just to score, another deal, with my back against that damn eight ball, I didn't have to think or talk, or feel." Johnson also knows how to have good, clean, fun. Check out his bittersweet, smile-inducing, ditty "Women." Music City needs more realists, throwbacks like Johnson. He's right up there with Miranda Lambert on my very short list of Nashville acts that matter.
Jamey Johnson performs Fri., Dec. 19 at Dallas Bull.
Jamey Johnson: "High Cost of Living (live)"
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