Dear Brinley,
Here at Raised Rowdy, we’ll probably never be on the cover of the Rolling Stone, in the pages of Vogue, or write a hit song, but we still fancy ourselves some fairly cool dudes. Don’t mind our recent, yet to go viral team picture. The lighting was horrible and we’ve since put an ad in Craigslist for a lighting intern willing to work for less than a ten year old makes mowing yards. Dudes cool enough, with aspirations of reaching your coolness status… with a little work and a lot more photoshop classes. We respect your Hollywood beard, smooth Tennessee drawl and that really cool GoogleUs lineage but still held out just a smidge of hope that we’d be invited over for popcorn someday.
That all changed yesterday. At the stroke of midnight, you released your EP Songs from a Bar and elevated yourself into a new social status we’ve heard only exists in back alley clubs on Music Row. The type of place that requires a 12 part handshake just to get through the door. Not only does this EP pick, twang and strum itself to the beat of some long lost traditional country sprinkled with a modern twist. It accomplishes this feat from within the confines of one of our favorite restaurants that only serve fried appetizers: a bar.
From “Those Kinda Songs” where you’re honest enough to pay the house band twenty bucks to not play Waylon, Willie or Merle because of the sore feelings they’ll dredge up, to coming right back with “Better on a Barstool” replete with steel guitar painting the picture of how much better life can be when the lights are dim and the longnecks are cold .
If that weren’t enough, you’re man enough to be honest with the girl you just met that you’re not ready for “Another Heartache” so she’s knows that your manliness has a soft side. And talk about man enough? You’ve got the cajones to let Heaven know they’ve got it all wrong “If it Don’t Have a Honkey Tonk”.
By now we’re group texting each other with nothing but crying emojis while binge watching This is Us trying to cope with what’s just happened, and the EP queue’s up “No Thanks” and we start tearing up our sheets so we can fly the surrender flag. Most of us walk into a bar just hoping to have a good time without getting kicked out, but not you Brinley. You lay down the law in “No Thanks” and set the non-negotiable terms for what a bar should have with a swagger normally reserved for a prize fighter.
So we’ll keep blogging, making memes and interviewing lighting interns while you walk around saving kittens from trees and dunking on Kim Jung-un. Call us?