The Charlie Daniels Band – Nightrider

(Epic, 1975)

Reviewed by Kloghole

I have a number of truisms that should be followed when it comes to purchasing albums or listening to music. One of the most important is that you should always resist buying an album after someone gets off the junk and “finds” Jesus. I didn’t know the son-of-a-bitch was lost in the first fuckin’ place, but that is another conversation best held on your front porch with some hapless god-monkeys who come by to share the “word.”

Unfortunately, I have two favored artists who fit this category. One, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, has gone off the rails of his own “Train of Consequences,” and the other is the uber-Jesus freak, Charlie Daniels. While I will leave the wreckage of Dave’s musical legacy to sit crumpled on the runway as he trades one mindless addiction for another, I want to highlight a bright spot in the career of The Charlie Daniels Band.

As a child, I can remember the long car rides to my grandparents’ house where we would listen to a few select 8-tracks in a very small rotation. While I never really developed a taste for the Kendalls, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, or George Jones and Tammy Wynette, I have a few others deliciously seared in my brain, Waylon’s Greatest Hits, Waylon and Willie, Waylon Live, and the subject of today’s review, The Charlie Daniels Band’s Nightrider.

Nightrider is lost between the hit record Fire on the Mountain and the smash hit “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” It, like many other good albums, tends to fall victim to capricious radio exec’s and a fickle audience. If they don’t hear some stupid shit that every fucking thumbsucker sings along to at a party, they just move on to the next chocolate covered turd. While this album sold respectably on the heels of Fire, I just don’t get the sense it is the album Charlie is known for, despite the fact that it is an infectious country-fried kick in the ass.

With the exception of my aversion to “Funky Junky” (a reworking of an earlier version on Honey in the Rock), every song is solid in its own way. You got just about everything you could want in a country album: an escaped convict, a washed up rodeo star, a blues lament about bad love, and a song about Texas. The album wouldn’t be complete without a nice drinking song. The song, “Everything is Kinda Alright” doesn’t fuck around and gets right to the point. It starts out with the line, “The early mornin’ sun shines through the bubbles in my beer” and goes on to ponder, “I think today is Sunday, but I am just too drunk to say.” It just brings back those lazy fuckin’ days that I spent drunk for weeks on end. I would wake up, finish my beer, and keep on trucking. The next day, I would drink a bottle of Jack or Jim Beam Black Label, and coast into unconsciousness. But, the song is not as much about being drunk as it is about not allowing your life to be enslaved to some employer or mortgage.

Another song, “Tomorow’s Gonna Be Another Day” (again a reworked version, but from Te John, Grease and Wolfman album) picks up the theme of escaping wage slavery and enjoying the finer things in life. The working class blues is firmly entrenched in the take-this-job-and-shove-it attitude of “so tell that man that I won’t be back to lay no more of his railroad track. I got little green weeds growin’ ‘round my shack.” A sort of quit work in the morning, go fishing in the afternoon, and smoke dope in the evening manifesto.

The album also has bite to it with the song, “Evil” (now less funkified than the Te John, Grease and Wolfman version). This one is a real ass-kicker. As a kid, I was pretty fuckin’ sick and tired of being kicked around and treated like dirt. Your heart starts to blacken, and you resonate with lyrics like “I’ve been handlin’ snakes since I was three, and I ain’t gonna take it no more, because I’m evil, keeps pourin’ out of me. All my life, I’ve been evil as I can be.” Fuck ya. If I weighed more than a buck and a quarter (soaking wet), I would fuck your shit up. Even so, don’t fuck with me. I have to say, I never lost a fight. Most fuckers just ran away or somebody pulled me out of the ring. This song makes my teeth grind just thinking about the lyrics.

Yeah, Charlie had it goin’ on back then. Fuckin’ great leads, lyrics you can relate to, and a not-so-veiled allusion to smoking pot. But, sadly, after High Lonesome and Saddle Tramp, you have to pick through the horseshit to find the kernels of corn in his music. To get a sense of how Charlie has gone completely fuckin’ bug nuts, compare the lyrics of his first “Easy Rider” song with his newer version, “Easy Rider ‘88.” In the first, he plays the role of a closet hippie, country dude with the unfortunate mission of trying to survive a redneck bar until his tow-truck arrives. After the careful placement of a boot and some fancy talkin’, he high-tails it out to his car with the “peace sign” on it. Once in his car, he “couldn’t resist the fun of chasin’ them all just once around the parkin’ lot.” I saved some of the best lyrics for your own enjoyment. It is fuckin’ funny as hell. You got to get a hold of this one (you can find it on the original Honey in the Rock, or the later retitled release, Uneasy Rider, or if you are really lazy, you can get the very inconsistent A Decade of Hits).

Now, fast forward to 1988, and Charlie changes from a fun lovin’ country-fried hippie to a homophobic dumbshit. “This funny looking feller kept coming on, and he was making me mad at some of the things he said, and then he put his hand on my knee.” I’d say it goes downhill from there, but the whole song would have to reach up to scratch an earthworm’s ass. I never did understand how a punk band got into a tranny bar. Charlie must not spend much time with transgendered folks.

This brings up the broader issue of the politics of music. Do we continue to listen to folks that are such obvious dumbshits? Alice Cooper made the comment that music should not be political, but “Eighteen” is a pretty political song about teen angst, not to mention the fact that songs about partying, degrading women or just tuning out are political statements. Cooper and Dee Snider are both right-wing lackeys. Ted Nugent is an absolute nut and makes some asinine eugenicist argument about how killing animals makes the species stronger. It really doesn’t matter how many ways the Nuge tries to spin this, he just don’t make no fuckin’ sense. I couldn’t give two shits about hunting, but don’t try to justify it by saying you are doing them a favor by selecting out the best of the breed. You do not make a species stronger by killing the biggest and strongest of the lot, but I guess evolutionary principles do not apply in the fantasy world of the right wing nut-job.

Stupidity is not limited to contemporary artists, though they seem to excel at it. Blind Willie McTell and others sing a traditional song called the “A to Z Blues” documenting how he will cut the alphabet into his cheating girlfriend. So what do you do? Boycott crazy? Fuck, I don’t know. The Last Session album by Blind Willie is phenomenal, but I cringe every time that fuckin’ A to Z song comes on.

For me, I tend not to draw hard and fast lines (hard to believe, ain’t it?). Others may look at these issues differently, but I refrain from buying albums that are simply too much for me to handle. I can live without Ted Nugent, Charlie Daniels’ gospel albums, and stupid crap about a girl slapping my ass. But, some albums were written by folks before they lost their mother-lovin’ minds. This is why I give Nightrider 3 out of 3 Sweet Sticky Balls. Put on your best cowpie hat, pull up your boots, and sink right into this country groove, just keep your eyes peeled so you don’t step in cow ploppie when pokin’ around for newer Charlie Daniels albums.