Country music is littered with murder songs. From Johnny Cash‘s “Delia’s Gone” to Vicki Lawrence‘s “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,” the genre has danced in the devil’s shadow more times than we can count. With his new solo track, Rob Williford pens a song about “addiction, adultery, and murder” with “Johnny.” Deliciously sinister instruments lace up around Williford’s coarse vocal chords, in a speak-sing fashion. It gives the song a necessary narrator-edge, making it even more macabre than it would otherwise be.
“Room 129, but the sheriff couldn’t find no witness / Just one hand clutching to an orange bottle / That black-label devil on a nightstand Gideon bible,” he sings, unwrapping the disturbing details. The song heaves and sighs as all good ole fashioned murder songs should. The evil spills from the song’s frayed edges, and Williford more than proves his stealth as an underrated storyteller.
As he details in an interview with Holler, the song sits “where the lines between good and evil are blurred… and the dirt roads intersect at desperation and survival. A small town southern baptist saga, this ballad of a boy named Johnny seeks to answer one question: ’How far can a man bend before he breaks?’”
Listen to “Johnny” below.
Photo by Dustin Haney
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