"From the desk of the self-appointed tiny folk band fan club president (Alabama chapter)
I am listening to the new CD for the first time as I type this. Because you care, I thought I would share my thoughts...
Love Bus. Just a hard drivin country sound to it."
--Larry Jelley, Self-Appointed Tiny Folk Band Fan Club President (Alabama Chapter)
Mallory was experimenting with her pink ukulele again. Amazingly, that's literal.
Anyone who had the slightest brush with The Rough & Tumble circa early 2014 knows that Mallory was going through a "tough time." By "tough time," it has since come out that early 2014 was the time when Mallory was just a few months in to life as a divorcee, and found herself in a little yellow house with Scott and their closest angry lapsed-Catholic drinking friend, Mike, and-- of course-- Butter. The four of them spent their nights making martinis, eating dinner, then binge watching episodes of Community followed by Bob's Burgers followed by sitting on the front porch drinking whiskey and smoking cigarettes and wondering what the heroin-dealing neighbor was up to.
That's to say, Mallory had the perfect sort of therapy for her current life events.
Though the above sounds like a dream, Mallory was also actively working through those stages of grief, while also picking up any job she could get, trying to make a living again with one income to feed herself and her big dog. Which is how she ended up experimenting with her pink ukulele on a stranger's couch in the afternoon while the two-year-old she was watching slept in the next room the day after her birthday. It should likely be mentioned that she, just the day before on her birthday, had received a quite unwelcome birthday wish from her ex on her voicemail. It might also be pertinent information that Mallory was in the Stage of Grief known as Anger.
That pretty much gets you up the speed, to this scene: Mallory enters the little yellow house after work, walks directly into Scott's room, asks for him to pick up his guitar, and promptly plays half a spiteful little blues ditty.
That little blues ditty turns into a complete song before Mallory leaves for her next job.
The Rough & Tumble isn't an angry sort of band, but they are the sort of band who can appreciate all of the feelings, and sometimes an angry song is what is needed to push on to new feelings (see our blog on Not Polite). It should also be noted that while every relationship leaves a scar, not every scar always looks the same. Like how pale this scar looked a couple winters later when Mallory and Scott finally figured it all out and got married themselves. Or how this scar turns a bit red from the banjulele strings (a trade up from that old stolen pink ukulele) after playing it a bit too hard in a basement bar in Manhattan, Kansas. Sometimes it smarts a bit at inconvenient times, and other times its not felt at all.
Angry or not, we bought a ticket for this song to ride on our Cardboard and Christmas Lights EP. You can catch it on the first stop at Spotify, or give it a final destination in your mailbox by ordering the EP at our little depot.