Tag: Whiskey Myers

Southall — The Six String Sorrow Sessions

“Ten Years Later, Same Guitar, Deeper Scars”

Back in 2015, Read Southall wasn’t some festival headliner. He was just a kid with a Telecaster, a handful of songs, and more pain than polish. More pain than promise. That original album carried every bit of Oklahoma red dirt, beer-joint heartbreak, and 3 a.m. truth a man could fit into nine tracks.

Now, ten years later, that same restless spirit’s come full circle. Southall’s dusted off those old songs, pulled ’em back through a decade of scars and stages, and brought us The Six String Sorrow Sessions — a reimagined version of the record that built his name from the ground up.

🔥 The Backstory

The original Six String Sorrow was cut for around three hundred bucks in a storage shed, and it sounded like it — raw, honest, and stubborn in all the right ways. It didn’t need polish; it needed belief. And it got plenty of that, from every backroad fan who heard themselves in those lyrics.

This new Sessions version ain’t about fixin’ what was broken — it’s about showing how those songs have lived. How they’ve aged, how they’ve changed, how they still bleed the same way when you play ’em under stage lights instead of flickering bulbs.

💬 A Word from the Wise

As Ray Wylie Hubbard once wrote in his book A Life… Well, Lived:

“If you’re gonna write and record a song, make damn sure you don’t mind singin’ it for the rest of your life.”

Southall must’ve taken that to heart, ’cause he’s been singin’ these songs for a decade — and they still fit him like a scar that never quite healed, but never quite hurt enough to stop playin’.

🎶 The Sessions Lineup

Southall brought in a crew that reads like a who’s who of red-dirt royalty:

“Gunshy” (feat. Koe Wetzel) – Two roughneck souls hammerin’ the same nail: pride, pain, and the price of both. “Aero-Plane” (feat. Josh Meloy) – Sky-high heartbreak with just enough lift to make you believe again. “Daddy’s Hand” (feat. John Jeffers of Whiskey Myers) – Pure southern grit, soaked in reverence and sawdust. “Moon and Back” (feat. Sam Canty of Treaty Oak Revival) – The old wound meets the new fire — two generations of outlaws trading licks and scars. “Empty Hole” (feat. Hudson Westbrook) – Still hurts, still hollow, still honest.

When you’ve been playin’ the same song for ten years, you either outgrow it or it grows with you. The Six String Sorrow Sessions proves these tunes learned to breathe, break, and rebuild right alongside the man who wrote ’em.

“Re-recordin’ your roots ain’t lookin’ back — it’s remindin’ the road who made you.”

You can hear the miles in his voice now — the smoke, the loss, the hard-won calm. This isn’t nostalgia. It’s survival put to a melody.

This one gets a Pancho nod with a calloused grin.

Womp Whack Thunder

I’ve been hooked on Whiskey Myers ever since I stumbled across Broken Window Serenade. That song is sad as hell—like, “sit in your truck at midnight and wonder where it all went wrong” sad. But weirdly, that’s why I love it. Sad songs make me happy. Don’t ask me to explain the science of it—it just works.

So when I heard they dropped a new album called Whomp Whack Thunder (which, let’s be real, sounds like the name of a cartoon caveman’s finishing move), I had to check it out.

This new album? It’s got all the grit and heart you expect. Some songs roar like a Harley on the highway, others sneak in and hit you in the gut when you’re least ready. That’s the beauty of Whiskey Myers—they can make you headbang and cry within the same 40 minutes.

Whiskey Myers, at the top of my playlist because they can make sadness feel like a good time. Like, “Yeah my heart’s broken, but dang this guitar solo is a banger.”

Broken Window Serenade & Sad Songs That Make Me Happy

I want to circle back to Broken Window Serenade, because it shows what the band can do at its most affecting moment. There’s real emotional rawness—an ache in the lyrics, in the instrumentation, in the pauses between. That kind of song makes me happy not because it’s uplifting in a conventional sense, but because it’s honest. It acknowledges hurts, sadness, maybe regrets—but it also says, “Here’s where I’ve been.” And that authenticity swells into something cathartic.

I was listening to a guy talk last night about how when he hears the voices of God he hears it through music. I agree and this album is no different. Every time I listen to their sad songs, I feel better. Maybe it’s because they’re so raw and honest. Maybe it’s because they remind me I’m not the only one who’s been kicked around by life. Or maybe it’s just because Cody Cannon’s voice sounds like he chews gravel for breakfast.

Pancho.