Some Bartenders Have The Gift Of Pardon

Well.

Now that the Top 100 Drinking Songs has run it's course, and the list is complete, I figger we'll get down to business and start covering drinking songs. Nothing but drinking songs. We'll get to the individual tunes that made the Top 100 over time. But we'll also going to cover any and all things drinking song-related too.

Normally we'll be posting about a single song, as opposed to an overview of a specific artist, but we're going to start this off we're gonna raise a toast to Mark Eitzel and American Music Club.

Mark Eitzel is a miserable bastard. He also happens to be a brilliant songwriter, with a keen eye for the underbelly of human interaction.

With The American Music Club, and through a spate of solo albums, Eitzel concocts a rare brew of observation, mining the corners of humanity through some of the darkest humour put to song. He also has a penchant for hilariously absurd song titles. AMC provides the perfect backdrop for Eitzel's bastardy, creating sonic landscapes both lush and persnickety, as the lyrics call for. And some of the prettiest steel guitar stylings this side of the honky tonk.

Eitzel has been known to enjoy a beverage now and again. In fact, it was an Eitzel show at the much-missed Stache's in Columbus that convinced my buddy Ryan and I that it was all right to be seen drinking Long Island Iced Teas in public.

Eitzel's drinking songs are more contemplative, of course, making small mythologies out of the dive bar and the bartender, granting each a supernatural power: to forgive or save. All peering from the bottom. They can also be painfully funny, as in "Gary's Song".

Please enjoy some inebriation courtesy of Mark Eitzel and The American Music Club. We'll be back shortly with a tune from the Top 100.


American Music Club: Outside This Bar (mp3)

Mark Eitzel: Some Bartender's Have The Gift Of Pardon (mp3)

American Music Club: Gary's Song (mp3)

American Music Club: Jesus' Hands (mp3)