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What’s up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone has had a nice week. Billy Strings just wrapped up a six night run up in the mountains of Asheville spread across two weekends and it was an absolute barn burner. No songs repeats over the six nights either, which I have big respect for. I had the pleasure of attending the first three nights and had a ball. I’m sure everyone reading this is aware of the hurricane that struck the area a few months back and completely destroyed certain parts, so it was nice to spend some time up there and support local businesses as best as we could. If you’re familiar with Asheville, you know that’s easy to do as it’s full of incredible restaurants of all types. We stayed right in the middle of downtown, so it was nice to just walk to and from everywhere and we got lucky with 70 degree weather all weekend. Anyways, the shows were incredible. It’s no secret Billy loves Asheville and NC as a whole, as they play here all the time throughout the year. I think bluegrass and folk music is so ingrained in the history of NC that you can just feel it in the air. As Billy put it, “you can walk down the street here and everyone knows who Doc Watson is.” I always appreciate at NC shows how he pays respect to the legends that came before him by playing lots of old timey traditionals and folk standards. This time I caught a song I’ve been wanting to hear forever and finally got it as the encore the first night, Salty Dog Blues. A folk song dating back to the early 1900s that’s been covered by countless artists like Misssissippi John Hurt, Lead Belly, Doc Watson, Flatt and Scruggs… the list goes on. It’s debated what the song is really about: “let me be your salty dog or I won’t be your little man at all.” I always heard it as a guy being like “I wanna be your man, but I also may be a bit of a dirty dawg.” It’s just a funny, tongue-in-cheek song and different lines and lyrics have been added in throughout the years, depending on which dirty dawg may be singing it. There were some pretty great lines from this version such as
“I like gravy, I like grits, I like girls with great big teeth”
“Two old men laying in the grass, one’s got a finger in the other man’s ear”
“I met a girl and she was willin, now I’m taking penicillin”
I think y’all may get the gist of it now. I’ve really worn my girlfriend out with that grits line. To wrap it all up, it was a great weekend full of incredible music and it was awesome to see the streets of Asheville full of life and happiness again after a historic and unimaginable natural disaster and the hard months that followed. Thanks Bill!