By Hunter Rothwell
Straight out of the Southern rock tradition,
Whiskey Myers has emerged onto the national
scene from the private parties and flatbed trailers
where they began playing in East Texas.
Cody Cannon (lead vocals/acoustic guitar) and
life long friend Cody Tate (lead guitar) were already
collaborating writing songs when they and
another hometown friend, John Jeffers (rhythm
guitar), moved to Tyler, Texas to have a go at a
music career. There, the three friends added Jeff
Hogg (drums) and Gary Brown (bass) and formally
became Whiskey Myers.
The band describes their style as “[winding]
around a Lynyrd Skynyrd/Led Zeppelin-centered
foundation, veering off the spokes of grunge,
psychedelia, harmony-laden pop rock and
rockabilly…a Southern rock band with jam band
tendencies.”
On their second album, Firewater, the band
brought in ex-Shooter Jennings guitarist and
songwriter LeRoy Powell to produce the album.
Recorded at the famed Panhandle Studios in
Denton, Texas, Whiskey Myers pumped out 12
tracks of country rockin’ glory. These Texas boys
are talented musicians and songwriters that know
how to have a good time.
“Bar, Guitar and a Honky Tonk Crowd” opens
the album and is a hard-charging anthem for the
country lifestyle. Following is the blues-rock
influenced “Guitar Picker,” written by Cody
Cannon. The band revels in the lyrics:
Oh, Southern wind won’t you take me higher / I got
seven ladies dancing naked around an old camp
fire / Guitar pickin’ with a bottle of wine / I’ll be
an old guitar picker until I die.
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“Ballad of a Southern Man” and “Turn It Up” are
strong tracks, and “Anna Marie” has its eponymous
subject chew Levi Garrett with a bible in
her hand and a flask in her shoe. Its strongest
songwriting is Cannon’s “Broken Window Serenade,”
a beautiful, harmonic ballad about the realities
of life in rural America. This album is good
enough to leave in the CD player
on replay from May to September
all summer.
The great thing about Whiskey
Myers is their relentless touring.
The road warriors played 150
shows in 2010 alone; this is how
a band hones its skills and takes
its music to the next level. Just as
Hamburg had the Beatles in the
early days of their career playing
every night, Texas has had Whiskey
Myers. Their live shows have
gained a reputation of producing
intense musical interplay, and are
“knocking ‘em dead.”
A young group of talented musicians
that enjoy fishing, camping
and 4-wheelers have the chops to
be the real thing in modern country
rock, and we’ll hear more about
them over the next few years.
Cody Cannon said, “We know people
are going to compare us to bands
like Lynyrd Skynyrd, and that’s fine,
we take that as a high compliment.
But when they hear this new record,
they’re going to find out that
there’s a whole lot more to this
band. We love country music, we love rock, we love blues—we just love to jam,
period. It doesn’t matter to us where the music
comes from, it just matters that it is real.”
Similar artists that should be on your radar: Cross
Canadian Ragweed, Reckless Kelly, Ryan Bingham,
Hayes Carll and Randy Rogers.
