Gettin' By

I don't believe I was even aware of Jerry Jeff Walker until I was about 22 or so. Then all of a sudden he seemed to be everywhere to me.

My first boss got into the habit of calling me Jerry Jeff - I thought maybe because I'd seen a bunch of Grateful Dead shows and was still in the practice of talking about it. (digression : This was annoying I realize now, in the same way that people refering to Dave Matthews shows or Phish shows bugs the shit out of me.) Regardless, Chris knew that I liked music and urged me to give Jerry Jeff a listen. Glad he did.

About the same time, my friends and I started frequenting a downtown bar called the Village Idiot (and later the only slightly cleaner Doc Holliday's. At least Doc's had a door on the bathroom). Jerry Jeff was a staple and both places - but it was mostly Up Against The Wall Redneck Mother or London Homesick Blues. These are songs you can scream along to while drinking far too many $1.25 Papst Blue Ribbons.

It took a few years - who needs to purchase music by a specific artist when you're just gonna hear it every weekend night? - but I did eventually get around to buying Viva Terlingua. Seriously, if you're going to jump into starting a country music collection I think this disc should be right up there at the top of the list for ones to purchase. Yeah, you need to get some Willie, Waylon, Johnny and Merle, but Jerry Jeff is topflight in just about any country fan's book.

Gettin' By is a simple song, not a deep message but a good one. Don't stress, don't worry and live your life day to day without sweating the stuff you have no control over. A lot of people would be much better off (and happier) if they'd just pay attention to this credo.

You'd think with all this Jerry Jeff buildup I'd try to do something to remain relatively faithful to the original version. Nah, this blog is really for fucking around; this version bears only a slight resemblance to the original. But I like it.