J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown – November ’10 #12: “That Lonesome Song” by Jamey Johnson

We try to give the kids organic milk since they are all daughters and I don’t want them to grow giant chests before puberty due to steroid bovine injections. But I always suspected it was the same shit the Horizon extra dollar a half-gallon jug as the generic Food Lion/Giant/Kroger Nature’s Nature brand. I worked at a charcoal factory very briefly with black guys called Dance and Toots and strange southside Virginia country things like that, and all the different charcoal brands came off the exact same line. Well, one time the ol’ lady and the kids had to use the bathroom, so I was standing around suspiciously by the dairy cooler for ten minutes. The organic milks were right there so I scoped them out. Sure enough, the Food Lion organic milk and the Horizon organic milk (which was a dollar more) had the exact same factory number and factory lot stamped on them in digital black numbers at the top. Exact same manufactured launch spot, different labels, different brands, different prices.
Luckily for us we found a grocery store that sells milk bottles from an actual creamery from just over the mountain headed towards Harrisonburg. Being organic is not the wonderful Mother Earth News mom-and-pop procedure anymore. Government regulations and big agribusiness have made it so organic is more of a brand than a health choice. In order for milk (or meat or anything) to be labeled organic, any sick cows are left to stay sick, because they can’t be given any outside drugs. Thus, you might think you are getting something supremely healthy for yourself and family (and it’s probably better than the steroids, no doubt), but it’s still fucked up. I have always wanted there to be a website where it had pictures of food or drink with a picture of the factory it came from right beside it. Because factories are always gross industrial complexes, smelling of bleach and Mexican lunches, and that’s where all our shit we eat comes from, regardless of organic or natural or generic. This is how organic is now available at Wal-Mart, because organic does not mean healthy at all.
Anyways, the creamery milk is so fucking good, has chunks of cream floating in it to where you’re like, “Oh shit, it’s gone bad,” but it hasn’t, it’s just actual cream, and it dissolves in your cup of tea or coffee, and it’s good as fuck. It will never be at a Wal-Mart because I doubt they even produce enough of it. I would bet the reason it’s only at one chain of grocery stores around here is because that’s about all they can produce. I actually can tell the different shipments from the expiration date (which is always way faster than any other milk because it’s not super-pasteurized), but knowing it’s a small creamery, I still buy it if it’s about to go out, mostly because it’ll be half-priced and if we don’t drink it all, I’ll let it sit on the counter overnight and give it to the pigs as a dope ass treat.
“That Lonesome Song” is the song that put Jamey Johnson on the Nashville map as their resident outlaw redemption story. The thing is, for me, it’s sort of like there being organic milk at Wal-Mart – would it be there if it was really deep down healthy for you. How outlaw is someone being pushed to the moon by the Nashville media machine as an outlaw there to dirty up Nashville’s overly polished squeaky clean image? It seems to me the true outlaw is not even going to be there, or allowed into those hallowed record company halls, and would have to scratch and claw for a cult following by playing shit ass clubs and bars for years and years. And there are plenty of dudes in Nashville who regard themselves as that, but they also are hoping that they can write a song that Carrie Underwood or Tim McGraw blow the fuck up, so that they can cash royalty checks for the next ten years.
I really like Jamey Johnson at times, and at other times he’s like every other musical offering that comes out of Nashville – boring as fuck and easily predictable. He has had enough good songs to make me think there’s something inside of there that could be that outlaw, but the simple fact he is part of that Nashville machine makes me distrust the whole process. I can see going sober, as he has done according to his PR biography, and feeling like you have to follow the status quo with your own story and get your songs out there. As I struggle with my own newfound sobriety, I find it compelling to not follow that path, not chop off my beard and try to be more regular. In fact, I find it more important to be fucked up and contrarian. Fuck this government and fuck this financial system and fuck these shady record companies and shady agribusinesses and $60,000 sedans as status symbol and fuck it all. Real organic outlaws don’t consider themselves either “organic” or “outlaw”. They just fucking are. It seems we love labels in this today world because it helps us think we are something when deep down inside for most all of us, we are not. We just are not.
My goal for this next arbitrary Gregorian calendar year is to be Are as fuck, and stop Not Being so damn much.
STEAL “That Lonesome Song”
NEXT UP: Lost rap classic!