Whitey Morgan and the 78s are a down’n’dirty country band from hardscrabble Flint, Michigan. Their last album, a self-titled joint, came out on Bloodshot Records back in 2010, but Whitey himself has been playing in country bands around the Midwest since 2005, and touring nonstop since he met up with the rest of the 78s in 2009. His music is raw, gritty, and honest, tailor-made for the honky-tonks your daddy used to frequent and hewn from the same solid bedrock as Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. His songs about drinking, drugging, womanizing, and regret come layered with wailing steel guitar and crisp acoustic plucking, all set to Whitey’s barrel-aged voice and hard-lived lyrics — “I gave up on Jesus when…
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…Mama gave up on me/so much for family life, it’s just me and the whiskey” bounces and jives, burying the depressive truth under a good time beat and outlaw patina. It’s real country, and what’s more, it’s the opposite of the glitzy beach pop that Nashville’s been pumping out. Whitey knows it, too, and had made his position crystal-clear: on this current tour, his merch booth is selling shirts with “Fuck Pop Country” emblazoned in huge letters on the back.
Finally free of legal headaches from a bum contract with Bloodshot Records, the band is now handling their own distribution for their highly-anticipated new album, Sonic Ranch. ”It took me a couple of years and thousands of dollars in lawyer fees to find out what a shitty deal I signed years ago,” Whitey explains ruefully. “In the music business, the music part of it is, like, half a percent. It’s just “business” over here. It’s crazy. But people buy into that shit because they don’t know any better, they’ve never done it themselves.”