The Return of Government Cheese

August 1987. I'm fresh off the boat, er, fresh out of my Mom's car at Western Kentucky University. I'm here as a college freshman. I chose WKU because they accepted me and my C average without blinking. I'm a theatre major. You wouldn't need all of the fingers on one hand to count the number of times I've gotten laid. I'm away from home and on my own for the first time and I don't know shit about shit. I'm convinced that listening to The Smiths makes me "edgy." For some reason, I wear bolo ties and fedoras. I'm really bummed by the fact that I've successfully completed 12 years of school and have a diploma to show for it and here I am facing at least another four years of homework and studying. I just want a beer. I want to play with titties. I want to be irresponsible. One day, a friend in the theatre department says, "Hey! You wanna go to the Cheese show tonight?" That was where my college education truly began.
Bowling Green, Kentucky in the late 80's was my first exposure to a "local music scene." I may be biased, but I think ours was pretty fucking sweet. Government Cheese were our punk rock ambassadors for that music scene. When I got to WKU, their "C'mon Back to Bowling Green" EP had just been released. I bought it on cassette after that first show. It's hard to describe how much I loved that damn cassette. I was always a music kid. I bought my first 45 when I was four years old ("I Shot the Sheriff" by Clapton, in case you were wondering). I followed the bands I loved, religiously. The Cheese were a different animal. You could drink a beer with them after a show. They would talk to you. They went to the same parties I did. They were OURS. I spent one drunken night at a party doing Bobcat Goldthwait impressions with Skot Willis. This inspired in my 18 year old self a whole new level of devotion to a band.
That devotion only increased when, at some point during my freshman year, the Bowling Green city council changed the legal age to get into a club from 18 to 21. Before, if you were under 21, you could still get in the club, but you had a wristband that identified you as someone who was legally prohibited from imbibing. This was a huge blow to my career as a fledgling alcoholic. The first Cheese show after the ordinance passed, if I remember correctly, was a viewing party at Picasso's for the debut of their "Face to Face" video (which would go on to air on MTV). I showed up and stood in line, but had zero hopes of actually getting in. I thought perhaps I could just invisibly slide past the bouncer. The fact that I was wearing a bolo tie and a fedora would have made this highly unlikely. I was about three people away from the door, shaking and trembling in fear of being discovered, when Tommy Womack appeared like an angel in a blinding light akin to what St. Paul must have seen on the road to Damascus. He grabbed me by the arm, told the bouncer, "He's with me," and pulled me into the club. For an 18 year old kid from Princeton, Kentucky who fancied fedoras and thought The Cure was "deep", that kind of selfless gesture will inspire a devotion that boarders on religious fanaticism. So, for the next few years of their existence, I sacrificed my innocence and sobriety on the pagan altar of Government Cheese.
A Cheese show was LOUD, sweaty, brazen, anarchic, and just plain right. It was rock and roll as it was meant to be: dangerous with a chance of bodily harm. At some shows, audience and band would be locked in a symbiotic frenzy together, only to simultaneously collapse in a heap at the end like we had just experienced an orgy that would have put the Romans to shame. That's not to say that human decency didn't prevail at times. One of my fondest memories is a show where my glasses were knocked from my face and into the throng. Somehow, Beth Tucker(now Womack) saw this happen and, somehow, found them on the floor and rescued them for me. Beth Tucker is a wizard.
I still, to this day, listen to Government Cheese. The songs fucking hold up. If you have never heard "I Wanna Be a Man" "Nothing Feels Good" "Yellow Cling Peaches" "I Can't Make You Love Me"  "My Old Kentucky Home" or "Camping on Acid" then you need to find them and listen to them. It's some of the purest punk rock to ever come out of the south. If you can't hear the genius in a lyric like, "I know your career is important to you, but my liver is precious to me..." then you don't understand rock and roll.
This weekend, I'll be doing something I never thought I would do again. I'm going to a Government Cheese show and I'm taking my young bride-to-be, Adrian. It'll be her first exposure to The Cheese. Maybe it's true that you can't go home again, but I can at least show her the house where I had some of the greatest times of my life. Tommy, Skot, Billy Mack, Joe Elvis, and Viva...thanks for making my younger years more awesome than they had any right to be. I'll see you Saturday night.

See Government Cheese Saturday night, August 23rd at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville, TN. Tickets are on sale now.

It's More Than Just a Bad Mood, Dammit

   12 years ago my day consisted of an anti-depressant/anti-psychotic medication cocktail, three times a day, and all I did, besides let my dog out every few hours, was sit on my couch, stare at the TV and drool on myself. That's what depression looks like. I spent a few years like that. There was no, "just decide to get over it." Gee, that heart disease is really bringing us all down and making it hard to be around you, what do you say you just get over it? See how ridiculous that sounds?    If there is anything good that can come out of the death of one of my heroes, Robin Williams, it's that maybe, just fucking maybe, a few more people will understand that depression is a disease and not a mood. Everybody has bad days. Everybody gets sad. That's called being human. However, not everyone has clutched a bottle of pills, or put a rope around their necks, or held a razor blade to their wrist, or put a gun to their head and tried to think of ONE REASON to take one more breath and failed. Wake the fuck up. These are not the actions of a rational being. It's a broken mind. Trust me, your brain can break just like a bone. The chemicals in your brain can fuck you up just as much as fluid in your lungs. It's a physical fucking ailment. STOP telling people to cheer up. Listen to them and try to get them to see a doctor.
   If I sound angry, it's because I'm fucking angry. I'm heart broken and goddamn furious. If I could, I would punch Robin Williams in the face and ask him if he understands what this will do to his wife, his children, his friends, and, according to things I'm seeing posted on social media, everybody in the world who was touched by or moved to laughter by one of the myriad creative gifts he gave us. I know what it's like. I've sat with a loaded gun in my mouth and thought that everyone I cared about would be better off if I was dead. I was wrong, of course. In that moment, though...you just want the pain to stop. Depression is a demon that will eat the flesh off your bones and show you a slide show of every bad decision, every humiliation, every hurt, every embarrassment, and every mistake you've ever made while it's eating you alive. It is as ruthless as cancer.
   Performers are a strange lot...comedians in particular. Almost every artist I've ever known, was tortured to some degree( the good ones, anyway ). Most of them get depressed. Sure, we're self-involved. We can be overly dramatic. We like to take our demons out and play with them. Some of us turn them into songs. Some turn them into books. Some paint. Some of us tell jokes about them. An article I read earlier by David Wong said it better than I can, about what makes comedians tick:
   "Every time they make a joke around you, they're doing it because they instinctively and reflexively think that's what they need to do to make you like them. They're afraid that the moment the laughter stops, all that's left is that gross, awkward kid everyone hated on the playground."
   Most of our jokes come from very personal and very painful places. They are a defense mechanism. They are also how we make you like us. It's this whole "push-pull" dynamic. I love it when I'm doing stand-up and I say something that offends and shocks the audience and then whip out a punchline that makes them laugh at something they were just offended by a second ago. I am a disturbed individual. I want to control and play an audience like a piano. I want to make you lose control and laugh, even when you don't want to. For most people, family and friends are enough. Performers need that extra affirmation from complete strangers to feel validated. Why do you think I'm writing this? My fiance', Adrian, is aware of this. She will tell you that I am no day at the beach to live with sometimes. She's a singer and actress, though...so there you go.
   Ask yourself a question: "Do the people that I care about, know that they can come to me if they're depressed, or do they think that I wouldn't take them seriously or call them weak if they did?" We have got to get rid of this notion that depressed people can just snap out of it or that they are weak and just brought this on themselves. You wouldn't scream at a person suffering from a stroke to pull yourself together and to stop doing this to yourself, would you? Let people know you're there. Validate their existence. Let them know that you want and need them to be a part of this fucked up existence. Give somebody a reason to laugh and to keep on breathing. Make sure artists know how their writing, their painting, their singing, their jokes, their performances have affected you and that you appreciate them. We don't perform in a vacuum.
   Robin Williams left behind an amazing body of work. If forced to choose, I'll take "The Fisher King" as the one that speaks to me the most. I can't believe that he's gone. The powerful play will go on without him. Please, don't stop before you've completed YOUR verse. I love you guys.

" You find some wonderful things in the trash." - Parry, from The Fisher King