30 Comments

  1. You could go on forever about the genre’s great sad drinking songs, but I’m in a positive mood tonight:

    Tom T. Hall, “I Like Beer” (if only for the ridiculous first few lines)
    Toby Keith, “Whiskey Girl” (mostly because of an inside joke with some friends. Try imitating Toby’s singing on this song next time you’re alone.)
    Loretta Lynn & Jack White, “Portland, Oregon”
    Roger Miller (naturally), “Chug-A-Lug”
    Willie Nelson, “Whiskey River”
    Garth Brooks & George Jones, “Beer Run (B-Double E-Double Are You In?)”

    I guess that’s a lot of favorites for someone under 21. Uh…

  3. Uh oh, I feel my cred slipping away all of the sudden…but thank you; your mis-pegging is my big, heaping ego-boost. Sincerely, though. I really appreciate that. And also sincerely, I really do hope I didn’t just lose cred!

    But wait…this means you haven’t been keeping up with the personal entries! Or maybe you just missed the subtle hint about my age in the title of this post:

    http://squintydans.wordpress.com/2008/06/27/between-here-and-gone-reflections-on-a-nineteenth-birthday-eve/

    And sorry to everybody else for interrupting this thread before it really even got started. Carry on, drinking songs! Woo!

  5. Dan,

    I read that personal entry but didn’t do the math. Hey, that’s the one subject I haven’t taught, and there’s good reason for that!

    Also, given that I learned 90 percent of what I know about country music while I was still in high school, you age does not impact your credibility. Good writing is good writing. Period. I’m sure if blogs existed when I was your age, I’d have had one! God, just writing that made me feel old, and I’m still in my twenties!

  6. George Jones … “White Lightning”
    Grandpa Jones … “Mountain Dew”
    …what’s up with the Jones’ boys? ;-)

    And for something totally different….
    “Whiskey Lullaby” — Krauss / Paisley

  7. Portland, OR was a hit with me both for it being a great song, and the fact I was living there when it was released.

    That said, this is a pretty well beat topic… just do a google search for it.

    – “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”, John Lee Hooker
    – “Friends in Low Places”, Garth Brooks – not so much for being about getting trashed, as singing it with your trashed buddies late into a wild night.
    – “Tequilla Makes Her Clothes Fall Off “, Joe Nichols – If it wasn’t so true… :)
    – “I Love This Bar”, Toby Keith – cheezy, but fun. Evenf or non Toby fans.

  8. No contest for me, either

    *** “There Stands The Glass” *** by the inimitable Webb Pierce

    other favorite elbow-bending classics:
    The Hag’s “Swinging Doors” and “Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down”
    ET’s “Two Glasses, Joe”
    Vern Gosden’s “Set ’em Up Joe( and Play Walkin’ The Floor)”
    Johnny Bush’s Version of “Whiskey River” (He wrote the song)
    Tritt & Stuart’s “The Whiskey Ain’t Working Anymore”

    and for the flip side of the issue Loretta Lynn’s “Don’t Come Home A Drinkin’ (With Lovin ‘ On Your Mind)”

  9. Yep, Hag. Also “The Bottle Let Me Down”
    Others: AC/DC – Have a Drink on Me
    Johnny Paycheck – Fifteen Beers
    Garth Brooks – Friends in Low Places
    The Band – Up On Cripple Creek
    Rod Stewart – What Made Milwaukee Famous

  10. Does “Dry Town” by Miranda Lambert count? I can’t help but laugh every time I hear that song.

  11. I can’t believe nobody beat me to the punch…

    “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, Johnny Cash. Four minutes of literature disguised as music.

    Also, since female drinking songs are a rarer commodity (unfortunately), “Here I Am” by Patty Loveless.

  12. great inputs from the cu-posters as usual. here are a few more:

    “it won’t hurt” – dwight yoakam
    “senorita margarita” – tim mcgraw
    “she’ll have you back” – tim mcgraw
    “whiskey, if you were a woman” – highway 101

    …and one of the catchiest songs i’ve heard in a long time – “in my next five beers” by trailer choir. jim malec introduced this outfit over at “the 9513” a few days ago – the best summer sound i’ve heard this season, right across all genres.

  13. My favorite drinking songs tend to be a bit out of the norm. I go in for a real weeper when I am drinking – it doesn’t matter what mood I start out in. But the melancholy of songs is usually what draws me to them in the first place. Here are a few of my favorite tunes to raise my glass too. Oh, and it’s always whiskey – Jack Daniels to be exact.

    Patty Loveless – Here I Am (the quintessential alcohol-consumption sing IMO)
    Mary Chapin Carpenter – Never Had It So Good, You Win Again
    Brooks & Dunn – My Next Broken Heart, She Used To Be Mine (anything by B&D really – I’d listen to Ronnie Dunn sing the phone book)
    Reba – Only In My Mind, I Know How He Feels, My Mind Is On You (album cut from 1986, helluva good song)
    Ronnie Milsap – Back On My Mind Again, There’s No Gettin Over Me (lots of others from Ronnie I drink to …)
    Sammy Kershaw – Matches, Don’t Go Near the Water, What Am I Worth
    Pam Tillis – Maybe It Was Memphis, Let That Pony Run and of course Spilled Perfume

    Others I enjoy while feeling no pain are Black Velvet by Alannah Myles, After All by Cher and Peter Cetera, Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler …

  15. Sorry this is 3 posts in a row from me, but I have to mention Vern Gosdin also. Set Em Up Joe, This Ain’t My First Rodeo, and Chiseled In Stone are wonderful bar-room companions. As is almost anything by Ricky Van Shelton – Cried My Last Tear For You being at the top of my list.

  16. It might look like I’m just naming all of the drinking songs that I can think of, but these are really just my favorite drinking songs in random order…and I’m sure I’ve left some out:

    “Sunday Morning Coming Down”, Johnny Cash)
    “Friends In Low Places”, Garth Brooks
    “One More Last Chance”, Vince Gill
    “Straight Tequila Night”, John Anderson  
    “Chug-A-Lug”, Roger Miller
    “Tonight I’m Gonna Cry”, Keith Urban
    “Tonight I’ll just Stay Here And Drink”, Merle Haggard
    “Whiskey Lullaby”, Brad Paisley/Allison Krauss
    “Cheap Whiskey”, Martina McBride
    “Little Rock”, Collin Raye
    “Ten Rounds”, Tracy Byrd
    “Family Tradition”, Hank Williams Jr.
    “Neon Moon”, Brooks & Dunn
    “Beer In Mexico”, Kenny Chesney
    “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home”, David Frizzell  
    “Beer Run”, Garth Brooks/George Jones
    “White Lightning”, George Jones
    “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”, David Allan Coe or Doug Supernaw/David Allan Coe
    “”Get Drunk And Be Somebody”, Toby Keith
    “Drinkin’ My Baby Goodbye”, Charlie Daniels
    “Dry Town”, Miranda Lambert
    “There’s A Tear In My Beer”, Hank & Hank
    “Billy’s Got His Beer Goggles On”, Neil McCoy

  18. The single all time best country song on alcohol’s destructive effects: “In Memory of a Memory” by Johnny Paycheck. In the song, Paycheck documents the breakdown of his marriage through a tour of his house. At the end, he sings “But this bottle takes hold of me. / Though I fought it, it took control of me. / That’s why I’m here tonight – in memory of a memory.”

    “Tonight the Heartache’s on Me” by the Dixie Chicks is a great drown-your-sorrows song too.

    Great call on “You Never Even Called Me By Name”, Leeann. It has one of the all time great lines in any song: “I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison”. I thinks that’s the only reference to the hooch in the whole song (other than David Allan Coe’s insistence that the song refer to the hooch). Still that one reference explains the rest of the song.

  20. I tend to reserve big drinking for nights out in the bars. Therefore, for me, the best drinking songs are the ones that encourage HUGE group sing-a-longs. There’s a reason bars routinely play “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Friends in Low Places”, “Livin’ on a Prayer”, “Sweet Caroline”, etc. People know them and love them and yell them as loud as possible!

    A lot of my country bar favs have already been listed, so I’ll just add some:
    Blake Shelton “The More I Drink”
    Charlie Robison “My Hometown”
    Kevin Fowler “Long Line of Losers”
    Jason Boland “Bourbon Legend”
    David Lee Murphy “Party Crowd”
    Hal Ketchum “Small Town Saturday Night”

    I have to add “Country Roads” by John Denver. Also, I’m not a Toby Keith fan, but these are his bread and butter songs. Same with Garth Brooks.

    There are a lot of great sad drinking songs, like “Whiskey Lullaby” and “Drinking Me Lonely” but they are really the last thing I want to listen to when I’m actually drinking! :P

  21. “Here I Am” by Patty Loveless… what a great song!
    I recently heard it being piped out of some building in downtown Nashville and just had to stop in my tracks and listen to it.

    “All Jacked Up” … Gretchen Wilson
    “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” … Big & Rich

  22. Great songs, and I like the Jason Boland shout out from Lynn. Another great one from Boland is “Pearl Snaps.” It tends to entice the HUGE group sing-along at concerts.

    Most of my favorites have already been mentioned, but a more recent, upbeat drinking song is Rodney Hayden’s “12 Ounce World.” Charlie Robison’s “Bar Light” nursery rhyme is fun, and Dale Watson and Johnny Bush’s versions of “Tequila and Teardrops” deserve mentions. Townes Van Zandt’s “Fraternity Blues” is funny.

    I could go on forever, so I’ll stop with these for now.

  23. “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino…” by David Frizzell
    “Beer Man” by Trent Willmon
    “Whiskey River” by Willie Nelson
    “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks
    “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin'” by Travis Tritt and Marty Stuart
    “Here I Am” by Patty Loveless
    “Drinkin’ Me Lonely” by Chris Young
    “Beer Run” by George Jones and Garth Brooks

    Also, there’s a local act called Chasin’ Steel that does a great song called “Drink My Dinner”. It has an infectious chorus where they rattle off every beer brand you can think of.

  24. Kevin –

    “I read that personal entry but didn’t do the math. Hey, that’s the one subject I haven’t taught, and there’s good reason for that!”

    But the entry is all about my first year of college! The math practically does itself!

    No worries, though; I’m just giving you a hard time (again). But it is pretty funny that you didn’t catch that. *Sigh*, old people…

    On another note, I think you ought to do an open thread for “songs of intimacy” or something of that nature, since going through my iTunes library for some of these recent ones has led me to re-discover how many great country songs there are about, well, sex.

  25. Ha! That would be an awesome topic! I bet Conway Twitty would end up making a lot of people’s lists.:)

  26. “Jose Cuervo” by Shelly West. It’s the precursor to Joe Nichols’ “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.”

  27. Trent Tomlinson – Drunker Thank Me
    Trent Tomlinson – The Bottle
    Terri Clark – Not Enough Tequila

    And I have to agree with Cheap Whiskey by Martina McBride and Dry Town by Miranda – and I am sure that there are others —

  28. How about (excluding any suggestions that I’ve read in earlier posts):

    * Ain’t drinking anymore (Kevin Fowler)
    * Corpus Christi (Robert Earl Keen)
    * Drinkin’ Thinking (Stacks of artists have done this, George Canyon’s is great)
    * Una Mas Cerveza (Tommy Alverson Band)
    * Fax Me a Beer (Hank Williams Jr)
    * Beer or Gasoline (Chris Young)
    * Domestic, Light and Cold (Brad Paisley)
    * Drinkin’ Bone (Tracy Byrd)

    Just some ideas…

  29. Surprised that no one has yet mentioned this one, as it’s funny as hell:

    George Jones and Merle Haggard–“C.C. Waterback”

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