Outlaw country singer Johnny Paycheck, CB’ing truckers for a cocaine hookup. From Tales from the Tour Bus.

I’ve been amazed, learning all sorts of insane lore about various outlaw country artists.

I found out about this series of videos via Bill Burr’s podcast. I’m kinda like he is about it. How did nobody tell me about this?
It’s hilarious.

Mike Judge, creator of Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and a whole lot of other great stuff, made a series called Tales From the Tour Bus. It’s apparently on Hulu which I’m not gonna get, but I’ve been watching these little shorts on YouTube.

The stories are insane. Of course I’d heard stories about guys like Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis being into drugs, but I had no idea how crazy the scene got.

You have to watch this one, where George Jones develops multiple personalities, one of which talks like Donald Duck and gets in arguments with his old man personality.

The above two videos are pretty damn crazy. Billy Joe Shaver shoots a guy through the cheek in a bar fight (he lives) and gets away with it in court.

When people call this stuff outlaw country, they mean OUTLAW country. These guys lived like gangsta rappers. It’s barely even a question of whether they were good or bad. They were a mess. Alcohol cocaine mental illness and guns.

And yet I love a lot of these songs. I probably would no matter what I learned. I’m not a huge country fan, but when I hear them I remember the words. They were part of my childhood.

Which got me thinking about the whole “can you separate the art from the artist?” question. I don’t think we have much choice especially once a work of art becomes part of the culture.

You can cancel Michael Jackson but it’s too late to cancel Thriller.
Some things want to be in the culture and they’re going to be in it whether you like it or not.

I like how philosopher Timothy Morton refers to songs as entities in this exchange with Bjork. Entities… Not quite alive, but not exactly “things.” Almost spirits, because they can inspire.

Sometimes I feel like art wants to get into the world and it only needs a vessel. I don’t think it has a moral preference as long as it finds one.