Recommendations of the Editorial team
Maybe the late Merle Haggard didn’t smoke marijuana or take LSD trips in Muskogee. But that certainly hasn’t stopped country music greats from swapping a sip of Tennessee Brown for a hit of Colorado Green. And also to sing about it.
However, true to the genre’s roots, these songs tell a complete, complex story. It’s never as easy as relaxing on the beach with a joint in your hand, and more often than not there are dire consequences.
They are stories that show both the joys and sorrows of a life of intoxication.
Johnny Cash, “Cocaine Blues”
With its roots in the Appalachian standard “Little Sadie,” “Cocaine Blues” revisits the classic melody. And adds the intense drama of a small flash of white to it, heightening the moral dilemma. Although there have been many sonic interpretations, no one has made it swing like this Man in Blackwho famously played it for the inmates of Folsom Prison.
Cash takes on this western vamp and tells the story of Willie Lee, who tried to escape from the police after killing his wife while high on cocaine. Of course, it’s hard to ignore Johnny Cash’s personal battle with drugs. Or to ignore his almost jubilant performance. One question remains unanswered. Is murder something different if it can be blamed on intoxication?
Ashley Monroe, “Weed Instead of Roses”
Being naughty never sounded so sweet. In this song, Pistol Annie is just a girl looking for a little spice in her relationship. With the help of leather, lace and a nice, strong pair of grass glasses.
“With every move, every shot, you look better and better,” she sings in a crystal-clear voice. And contrasts the provocative lyrics with a classic hillbilly boogie. The song is from her 2013 solo album “Like a Rose” and was ignored by conservative country radio stations. But it showed her great songwriting talent and that perhaps Monroe, and not her bandmate Miranda Lambert, is the raciest Annie of them all.
Old Crow Medicine Show, “Methamphetamine”
Reimagining ancient tales of forgotten Appalachian Mountains and lost coal mining towns, Old Crow Medicine Show illuminates the destructive power of drugs in working-class communities in this song co-written with Dave Rawlings.
“But mamma she ain’t hungry no more/she’s waiting for a knock on the trailer door,” sings frontman and fiddler Ketch Secor, accompanying the chorus with a dark harmonica. The song appeared on the 2008 album “Tennessee Pusher,” which reached number one on the bluegrass charts. And probably won’t be covered by Darius Rucker anytime soon.
Willie Nelson, “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”
As country music’s most passionate advocate for the cannabis scene Willie Nelson Actually, there aren’t many songs that specifically deal with the topic of getting high. Perhaps he prefers to lead by example rather than doing so in his lyrics.
But “Roll Me Up And Smoke Me When I Die” is a honky-tonk gospel that’s anything but subtle. Nelson teamed up with rapper and Rastafarian Snoop Dogg, Jamey Johnson and Kris Kristofferson and released the track on the holy holiday of 4/20.
Although the album version (from 2012’s “Heroes”) suffers from Snoop’s super-awkward twang-izzle phrasing, the stripped-down bonus tracks are classic Nelson, where he lays them down like his will.
Jamey Johnson, “High Cost of Living”
Jamey Johnson was in rehab when he wrote “High Cost of Living,” a song that both mourns time lost under the influence of drugs and wistfully looks back on the emotional lightness of an inebriated existence.
It is this undulating moral line that makes Johnson’s work so appealing. And so difficult for the establishment to handle (although Mercury agreed to release “That Lonesome Song,” which features that track, in 2008, it was recently dropped). “With my back to that damn eight ball, I didn’t have to think or talk or feel,” he sings in his booming baritone voice, and you wonder if he’d rather leave it that way.