"Make Me No King " by Bones Owens, Tuesday, February 16,2021

In 2008 a gothic emo band appeared on Tooth & Nail Records called The Becoming. Their album produced a few singles and halfway through their short album cycle the DJ on RadioU informed the listeners that the band was now called "We Are the Becoming" for legal reasons. Later the band's video "I Cry"premiered on TVU. My sister said, "These guys look ridiculous." Pretty much. Their music kind of sounded like Hinder and they tried to look like Mötley Crüe. After the confusing name change, the band faded into Tooth & Nail record obscurity. The story of the strange band may have come to an end, but lead singer Caleb "Bones" Owens, has just begun. 

I'M A CIGARETTE ROLLING DOWN A EMPTY ROAD IN THE NIGH LIKE A SHOOTING STAR. I heard this story and checked out this record thanks to Ethan Luck. If his name doesn't ring a bell, it's not surprising. Luck is a working musician who plays mostly in the studio these days. He has a podcast called The Pirate Satellite where he talks to his friends, mostly other musicians, about their work. Luck got his start as a guitarist for The O.C. Supertones. Later he went on to play in Demon Hunter and Relient K. He also was a touring guitarist with Kings of Leon and has too many credits to mention. Luck certainly knows music, so when I was going through back episodes of his podcast last year, I listened to his "Top 10 Records of 2017." I knew some of the artists, but there were quite a few that had fallen between the cracks. Point-in-case, the EP, Make Me No King, of which the titular track is the song that I can't get out of my head today.

I'M A MIDNIGHT TRAIN KEEPING YOU AWAKE WHEN I COME HOME FROM THE BAR. Trading in his axe and death metal black for an acoustic and a man-in-black Johnny Cash outlaw style, Bones Owens's lyrics are haunting. It's the gospel music of the Southern Grotesque. It's the broken hallelujahs of the characters of a Flannery O'Connor short story. It's the rambler and the gambler waiting for God to cut them down. Many of the tracks on this EP talk about alcoholism. If this were commercial country, I would have dismissed this album as the Southern cliché. But somehow, through earnest songwriting, Owens invites you, dear listener, to insert your vice. What is tearing apart your relationship? This song has such a different feeling from anything else in this month's playlist. It's probably going to sound strange together, but the lyrics really do have to do with love. The line "I'm a photograph taken in the past/ but it wasn't what you thought" got me thinking about love. Isn't love about finding the real person underneath, flaws and all? It's not a sexy romance novel: the sequel to Boy Meets Girl is Girl Meets Boy's Vice. Inevitably the flowers you got for Valentine's Day will fade and die. The chocolate will be consumed and forgotten about. The honeymoon ends, and everyone must get back to work. If you start a relationship to hide from yourself, your first love, you, will come back and try to screw it up. What happens next is life.

Read the lyrics on Genius.