Why would the GREATEST ROCK BAND SINCE THIN LIZZY make the GREATEST COUNTRY RECORD SINCE MERLE HAGGARD STOPPED SMOKING POT???

In your face. Like them or don't. The Supersuckers do what they want to do when they want to do it. They always have. They always will. The boys have now made their first record of country music. They made their country music the way real country families used to make their music together, back when a fellow could count on two things being dirty: his pickup and his porn. They made it the old fashioned way, the way folks used to when singing was a way of bringing families together after a long day of picking things or, you know, doing things with hoes. What they did was they practiced very hard, played the very best they could... then hired professionals to cover up their mistakes. It worked out great.

Along with the by now expected brilliance of Dan "Raised By Wolves" Bolton and Renaldo Allegre's guitars, Dancing Eagle's drumming, and Eddie Spaghetti's bass and vocals, they got Mickey Raphael from Willie Nelson's band to play harmonica, Brian Thomas and Jesse Dayton (from Jesse Dayton's band) and Brantley Kearns (Dwight Yoakum's band) to add their own guitars, steel guitars, dobros and banjos. They got that gal the kids like, that Kelley Deal, to sing on a just plain lovely duet called "Hungover Together Again", and those who listen real close might even hear another familiar voice chiming a familiar lament somewhere on the album.

Their first CD was Empty Records' The Songs All Sound the Same, a collection of all their previous singles that at least one critic was moved to call "good." Praise for this record didn't stop there, though. Someone else called it "rockin'."

Their first full-on album was Sub Pop's The Smoke of Hell, and if you didn't hear this one more than ten hundred times in the year of our lord nineteen hundred ninety something, that's because that was the year you went to no rock clubs or parties or record stores and in fact just stayed in your room picking at that one really big scab all the time. The rest of us heard it, though. And heard it. Man, are we sick of that one by now.

Luckily for all of us, Sub Pop issued detergent, bleach and clean underwear when they released nineteen ninety four's La Mano Cornuda. Things sure can get messy when music gets this good. The title of this album refers to Satan, and let me tell you something, if it weren't for Sa-tan, these boys would have no tan at all.

Then, just when we were all getting our basement apartments cleaned up from the whiskey-and-blood tornado that was La Mano, the boys released nineteen ninety five's Sacrilicious. Not only was this album better than anything the boys had done since their last one, but it was during the recording of it that the boys got to meet, jam, and record with country legend Willie Nelson. Recording "Bloody Mary Morning" with Willie for Justice Records' tribute album Twisted Willie, playing that year's Farm Aid concert, and living the honest life of the American road all helped to awaken something strong in the Suckers: the love of country music.

Some people say they don't like country music. But those people who claim not to like country music are about to remember something. They are all about to say, "Oh, yeah, I hate country music because it never sounds like this anymore." Some folks nowadays-- sad to say-- really don't like country music. They're too young. It has just been so long-- too long, if you ask me-- since something this good came along.

The Supersuckers. Doin' it their way AND the high way.
BECAUSE THEY CAN.