When I was thinking about writing this post last week, I actually had something much different in mind for the subject. Then the weekend happened. For a while now I have been going to physical therapy for my shoulder. I did something funky to it after playing a round of disc golf and then coming home to mow my lawn. In an unusual turn of events, my push mower wouldn't start right away, so I had to pull he string pretty violently to finally get it going and I think that is where I did something to my rotator cuff or whatever.
That was in September.
Finally, about six months later, my physical therapist has moved me to visiting every two weeks and I have a battery of exercises I need to do myself at home. Saturday morning I went downstairs to do said exercises and I decided to throw a record on the turntable to pass the time. I went to my stack and I pulled out "Wild-Eyed Southern Boys" by .38 Special that I had picked up last summer on my trip to Colorado.
It was the first time spinning it, so I had to clean a little dust off of it. As I did my exercises, I was pretty amazed at just how awesome this record is. @mrsbozz and I got to see .38 Special many years ago when they were touring with REO Speedwagon and Styx. Given the number of bands (and I am guessing their age), the sets were very short. Plus, .38 Special was the opening act, so it kind of went over my head just how amazing they are.
In case you haven't figured it out, the theme for this weeks #threetunetuesday sponsored by @ablaze is "Wild-Eyed Southern Boys" by .38 Special.
"Hold On Loosely" is the opening track of Wild-Eyed Southern Boys and it is probably one of the bands more well known songs. Along with "Caught Up In You" which I will conceded sounds a bit similar to Hold On Loosely. However, that song isn't on this album, so I am not going to share it with you today. You are going to have to go look at one up on your own.
One of the things I never realized about .38 Special until I started doing some research for this post is the fact that Donnie Van Zant is the lead singer for .38 Special. I know, shame on me. If you are thinking wait, that last name sounds familiar. You are right.
Donnie's older brother Ronnie was the lead singer and co founder of Lynyrd Skynyrd. When Ronnie died in that plane crash, their younger brother Johnny took over for Skynyrd, but Donnie was busy doing his own stuff with a variety of other bands before finally forming .38 Special.
Apparently, according to Wikipedia, the name comes from a confrontation they had with some cops while practicing in a remote location. They got locked in a building and the cops had to shoot off the lock to let them out. Check out the Wiki if you want the full story.
The next song I am going to share with you is the title track from the album "Wild-Eyed Southern Boys". One of the things that really caught my attention with this band is how easily they can move between the pop genre and that dirty southern rock sound. I think this song is a perfect example of that. It's pretty easy to see how many of the bands around this time influenced each other. I can hear a bit of Skynyrd in there as well as Atlanta Rhythm Section and a few others.
Although they formed into a cohesive unit in 1975, they didn't really start to see the big mainstream success until the 80's. Actually, it was probably "Rockin into the Night" that had been originally written for Survivor that really launched their success in 1979.
It's honestly kind of amazing how so much talent can exist in a single family like that. I guess we have seen it before with other families, but still, it just kind of blows me away.
One of the things I find kind of impressive about .38 Special is the amount of staying power they have. If you jump over to that Wiki page that I linked above, you will find that the band has a massive number of line-ups over the years. In fact, from 1974 to the present they have had just shy of a dozen different lineups in the band.
Around 1992 Don Barnes started taking over some of the lead vocals for the band and by 2013, Donnie was no longer touring with them.
Today I am going to leave you with "Honky Tonk Dancer" also from the Wild-Eyed Southern Boys album. This performance is from just a couple of years ago and honestly, they still sound pretty good if you ask me. When I got to see them it was back in 2009 and Donnie was still with the band along with Barnes.
While I was thinking about writing this post this morning I was wishing I had some more photos to share with you. Then I remembered in 2009 when I saw them in concert, smartphones were still in their infancy. The latest iPhone at the time was the 3GS and I'm pretty sure I was sporting a Nokia N97 phone with the screen that slid out of the way to give you a full qwerty keyboard to text your friends with.
I'm usually the sort who just snaps a few photos anyway and then spends the rest of the time enjoying the show, so I guess it's no big deal.
I really hope you enjoyed this "special" group of songs I brought you today!
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