- Welcome to Daytrotter
- Rolling Stone from Texas (Don Walser)
- Alcohol Blues (Mance Lipscomb)
- Freight Train Boogie
- Omie Wise
Pretty sure that Scott H. Biram will always be able to make you look sedate. Pretty sure the Texan will always make you feel sedate, like you’re a case of beer and a rocket up your ass behind. You’re never going to get to the place that he occupies at any moment so your best bet is to be an observer, to be a listener and see where this dirty, old, one-man-band takes you. He’s something like a cyclone that begins spinning his brains and twiddling his fingers first thing in the morning. He’s the kind of man who doesn’t see any point in delaying the inevitable. Why wait until noon for the first drops to hit. You must seize the day. You must raid the liquor cabinet, right after you’ve had that morning piss or shit, however your particular body does it, and once you’ve popped your head outside to get a sense of what the weather’s got up its sleeve. You’ve got to hit the ground running. You’ve got to tackle the hard road and make hay while the sun’s out. You’ve got to demolish your day – see it splattered against the carpet when you’re done with it. Biram is a manic of a songwriter and performer, the kind of guy who will be doing this until he can’t stand up any longer and, even then, he’ll be in his wheelchair, singing about drunken, messed up nights, toothless and with a crotchety flair. He’ll get away with pinching the nurses’ asses trying to bribe them into bringing him the vices that he’s been ordered to do away with, for his own wellbeing. There will still be that charm behind the rascal. The songs that he writes tend to go off the tracks and down a steep embankment – well, the people do. They’re hogtied by those damned vices that they like so much. There’s nothing that can stop them from finding them and smothering themselves in them. They are all habits that can’t be broken – especially that one of the amber and brown good stuff that just seems to go down better and easier with every passing bender. But can you really call them benders if they last? A bender’s gotta end for the classification to be permissible. Biram doesn’t pause. He sings the Mance Lipscomb song, “Alcohol Blues,” here, and he takes liberties with the old bluesman’s words, throwing in a fuck and a motherfucker, singing, “You can’t be my woman and some other motherfucker’s too.” It’s a song about a man singing in what seems to be the third person, as the accusations come in, commenting, “You don’t do nothin’ but drink your alcohol.” It’s one of those songs that ends with tumult, with the booze doing the majority of the thinking, the anger taking over and a cold-blooded, hot-tempered murder of passion. Biram knows that the sauce and love’s mighty revenge are timeless. He gives in to them.