JOE BUCK
9 p.m. White Water Tavern. $7.
Several years ago, a buddy of mine — he’s a good man, but was also a very thirsty one back then — bought himself a big bottle of economy brand gin and decided to get down to the bottom of it. Keep in mind this was in the era before your plastic liquor bottles that are so prevalent on the bottom shelf nowadays. He went to a party and shared copiously, but somehow there was still a good amount of gin left over as the festivities began to run on fumes, so he skipped out and commenced to drinking with some hobos on the train tracks near White Water Tavern.
Anyways, he woke up back in his bed the next afternoon and, when he started to get up he found that his pillow was adhered to the back of his head with dried blood. He hadn’t a clue what had happened, but there was a good handful of broken glass enmeshed in the scabby carnage that was the back of his noggin. He still had his wallet and had sustained no lasting injuries, and he got the pillow unstuck without too much fuss. But he never did suss out what had transpired and was thus resolved: No more drinking with hobos.
But if his night had had a soundtrack, I imagine it would have sounded like hellbilly wild-man Joe Buck: crazy, blurry, liquor-fueled, touched by mysterious violence and tinged with foreboding evil. Buck’s played with Hank Williams III and The Legendary Shack Shakers in previous years and has played WWT several times. The Hooten Hallers hail from Missouri and truck in similarly stripped down rockabilly racket. So go to this show and have yourself a good time. But stay off the tracks after it’s over.