A sad song, a beer and a smile

A coworker recently admitted to being a John Mayer fan, and as I geared up
to unmercifully tease him (I’ve always thought of your body as wonderland.
Zing!), he commented that he doesn’t listen to lyrics, just rhthms.

I felt my Mayer jokes fade away (they weren’t that good anyways), and I started thinking.  I’m a lyrics guy.  I’ll take a good Dylan album over Kid A any day.  Heck, I’ll take most things over Kid A.  It’s not that I don’t listen to rhthyms, I’m just attracted to lyrics (and spunky blondes, but that’s a different post).
Engaging music, that I return to again and again, tells stories.  Todd
Snider and Chris Knight are two of my favorite musician story-tellers, and
guess what?  I’ve been listening to them a lot, lately.

Knight does not write happy songs.  Not his style.  He tells stories about
love being lost, life being hard and farms being sold.  The undercurrent to
these tales of woe supplies an image of a slowly fading working-class way of
life.  Toys are shinier, screens are brighter and life may not be better for
it.

If Knight is gritting his teeth through the difficult days, then Snider is
dancing barefoot around the flames.  He takes a satirical knife to anyone
stepping on someone else to get ahead, and laughs the entire time.

These two men take opposite sides to the same coin, and damned if I can’t
get enough of them.