Jon Wayne – Two Graduated Jiggers

It’s been fifteen years since Jon Wayne released the infamous cult album Texas Funeral. Drunken, comic, brilliant and thoroughly dedicated to the Lone Star State in songs such as “Texas Wine”, “Texas Cyclone” and “Texas Jailcell”, the album was country of the most bizarre fashion. Its absurdly politically incorrect lyrics, nonsense words, and out-of-tune instruments begged many questions: How much was calculated and how much was accidental? Were they geniuses? Were they collectively insane?

Now, finally, comes Two Graduated Jiggers. Eight years in the making, it answers at least one question: Texas Funeral was no accident. Although Two Graduated Jiggers eschews the spare guitar/piano sounds of its predecessor for cacophonous, Tom Waits-like percussion, in all other respects it is as darkly foul and funny a masterwork as its predecessor.

Only “Time To Drink Whiskey” sounds like it could have come from the Texas Funeral sessions; the rest of the album leaps forward in arrangements and originality. The closing track is a fourteen-minute ramble titled “Texas Assonance” in which singer and group namesake Jon Wayne reads from his book Southwestern Cowboy Poetry, Volume 2 at his ranch while band members clang percussive instruments and whoever’s in the kitchen is continually admonished to “shut up them dishes…we’re trying to make a record in here.”

In addition to Wayne, who grunts, warbles, and slurs lyrics like a low-voiced bourboned-up Walter Brennan with Tourette’s, the group also includes Jimbo (drums), Earnest Beauvine (guitars), and Timmy Turlock (bass). Though Jon Wayne has been referred to as punk country, that doesn’t really fit; these guys have a much broader sensibility. In any case, they’re country, and you’ve never heard country more alternative than this.