Last night I was ready to announce "last call" when I put on Letterman to check out the music guest. There loomed Jamey Johnson, this truck-driving fella with a rich, burly voice. He recounted a conversation with his WWII-vet granddaddy … and I nearly had to wipe a manly tear from my eye. Titled "In Color," the song is moving without being maudlin, and Johnson, who co-wrote the number, delivers the touching lyric with old-school, outlaw authority — and charm. Fatherly charm. Big brother charm. Two old pals with lots of battle scars sharing a bear-hug charm.
But "In Color" is not the most gripping song on Johnson's breakthrough disc That Lonesome Song. That honor goes to the nearly six-minute long "High Cost of Living (Ain't Nothing Like the Cost of Living High)," another original. Here's this mainstream country singer — Johnson's on Mercury — candidly singing about his past struggles with cocaine. The lived-in lyrics and the shackled-but-ever-present demons in his voice place the song on par with the best by fellow and former Nashville rebels Waylon, Willie, Hag and Cash.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2008.