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Whitey Morgan and Cody Jinks offered a study in extremes at Shank Hall Thursday night. In what was almost a co-headlining date, two of underground outlaw country's brightest lights displayed how their musically similar combination of twang and ’tude befits disparate sentiments ranging from nearly wholly unrepentant hedonism to the sort of thoughtful lyricism that might be termed country emo.
Morgan appears to have the higher profile in recent months, having come off last spring's acclaimed Sonic Ranch and a growing reputation as an inveterate road warrior. In a mostly standing-room crowd peppered with cowboy hats and hoisted long neck bottles and glass tumblers, Morgan and his five-piece band, The 78s, fueled a night of carousing with songs where a couplet about the rough ecstasy of alcohol—and, occasionally, the danger of cocaine—wasn't far from honky tonk accompaniment rife with flourishes of pyrotechnic pedal steel guitar.
Some writers have compared Morgan's voice to Waylon Jennings', but the former's more forthright surliness translates to a higher pitch of intensity than his stylistic forebear's usually statelier delivery. Whether regaling his fellow revelers with the "Me and the Whiskey," the tears-in-beer, wrist-slittingly melancholy "Still Drunk, Still Crazy, Still Blue," the “screw you!" of "Where Do Ya Want It?," or a snippet of John Prine's "Paradise," he embodies the kind of confrontation and defiance commercial radio country has largely lacked for at least a couple decades. When Florida Georgia Line sing of boozing, it's a brand-heavy lifestyle accoutrement; for Morgan, there's the sense of alcoholic enjoyment mitigated by abject desperation and an acknowledgement, however rejected, of living without the sauce and its potential consequences.
With much the same flavor as Morgan, Cody Jinks and his wonderfully named Tone Deaf Hippies offer a vision of a more nuanced outlaw outlook. Were it not for a scraggle of beard halfway down his chest and lyrical mentions of intoxicants of varying degrees of legality and the odd profanity that belie a different mindset, his earnest tenor voice could join the ranks of Randy Travis and Josh Turner in tonal purity. In this way, he could be more marketable than Morgan if Nashville comes courting.
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The depth of his songwriting could, however, go above the heads of the masses Music City has been dumbing down. Jinks is a thinker, be it about the process of creating his artistry on the so far unrecorded "Chasing That Song," his impoverished upbringing, the wisdom gleaned from the the older men with whom he conversed on his pre-music job driving forklift, or his own piece of mind. Per that last subject, he lends a grit and urgency to "Ready For The Times To Get Better" that pop country queen Crystal Gayle didn't quite reach in her hit '70s iteration. Numbers such as from his latest long-player, Adobe Sessions, including "Dirt," "Birds," "Rock and Roll" and conflicted gospel tune "Cast No Stones" speak from an intellect that processes life experiences with the thoroughness of cattle digesting cud. That ruminative perspective was reflected aesthetically by smoother, less ornate guitar lines than the flurry of flourishes joined to Morgan's generally rowdier sentiments.
Morgan joined Jinks briefly during the latter's set, but the result was arguably more poignant when the roles were reversed. During Morgan's opening set the two joined forces for George Jones' sobering "Choices." It was the sound of two current mavericks paying respect to a legendary singer while contextualizing the song for their own lives. How they both reflect their own lives in song while keeping a raucous strain of country alive made for compelling, contrasting musical portraiture.
