For those of you who thought The Foghorns had a lock on Seattle’s working class anthem racket, allow me to introduce you to The Jesus Chords, a band that’s been grinding out their own brand of gritty, low-fi country since before I (and probably you) lived in Seattle. “When the Man Gets You Down” is a fine entry in the “country songs about shitty jobs” canon. It starts and ends with a simple chorus of solidarity, between which Greg Irving spools out an all too familiar litany of bad-job scenarios: disrespectful bosses, lousy hours, wage theft on top of crappy wages . . . basically the 20-teens economy in a nutshell. “When the Man Gets You Down” is pissed-off, but in a good-nature way – more of a call to booze than a call to arms.
I’m very much looking forward to catching the Jesus Chords’ working class call to booze in the perfect setting, Conor Byrne Pub on a Saturday night! Don’t miss their set at the Ball of Wax 43 release show on February 27th.