I like Hank Williams, Jr. personally, though I’ve never met him. I know he’s a serious gun guy: he and Mike “Duke” Venturino used to hang out shooting and tinkering with Colt Single Action Army revolvers. I understand he’s also quite fond of Ruger revolvers, too.
“The Pressure Is On” is, in my opinion, a great album. Any time you have at least four solid bangers on an album, I think you can call it great.
There’s “The Coalition to Ban Coalitions”, a funny ha-ha only serious song about nanny state-ism. There’s a really really good cover of “Tennessee Stud“. There’s “Ballad of Hank” with Don Helms (this song is where the recurring WCD trope “fired everybody just as hard as he could go…fired some people that he didn’t even know” comes from).
And then there’s “A Country Boy Can Survive”, which I am picking this morning for reasons. If you don’t know the song, the reasons should become obvious as you get into it.
The preacher man says it’s the end of time
And the Mississippi River, she’s a-goin’ dry
The interest is up and the stock market’s down
And you only get mugged if you go downtown
I live back in the woods, you see
My woman and the kids and the dogs and me
I got a shotgun, a rifle and a 4-wheel drive
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk ’til dawn
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these old boys can’t do
We grow good ol’ tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
Because you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns
We say grace, and we say ma’am
If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn
We came from the West Virginia coal mines
And the Rocky Mountains and the western skies
And we can skin a buck, we can run a trotline
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just “Hillbilly”
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I’d send him some homemade wine
But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For 43 dollars, my friend lost his life
I’d love to spit some Beech-Nut in that dude’s eyes
Then shoot him with my old .45
‘Cause a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
‘Cause you can’t starve us out and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotguns
We say grace, and we say ma’am
If you ain’t into that, we don’t give a damn
We’re from North California and south Alabam’
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck, and run a trotline
And a country boy can survive, country folks can survive
A country boy can survive
Country folks can survive