Firewater

Album Review

The Allman Brothers Band was the major exponent of the Southern rock movement of the late 1960s and early ‘70s, but it has turned out to be the less-well-regarded Lynyrd Skynyrd that has been more influential, at least if one is to judge by the number of groups copying their styles. It's hard to find an Allmans knock-off, but it's hard to avoid Skynyrd ones. The Texas quintet Whiskey Myers is yet another, and on the band's second album, Firewater, the musicians play by-the-numbers impersonations of early Skynyrd music. It may be that it's just easier to ape Skynyrd, who always had more of a country element and less of an R&B focus, than the Allmans. In any case, the members of Whiskey Myers play familiar guitar figures as they boast of their belligerent Southern pride. Particularly offensive is their version of "Sweet Home Alabama," here called "Ballad of a Southern Man," its lyrics full of praise for guns, Christ, and the Confederacy with no hint of the inherent contradictions. "I guess that's something you don't understand," goes the smug chorus. But bigotry has never been hard to understand, just impossible for reasonable people to accept.