Honky-Tonk Weekly
#5: David Wills, "There's a Song on the Jukebox"
This is the fifth edition of Honky-Tonk Weekly, a weekly column here at the Tropical Depression Substack. You can read previous editions here. Every week, I will listen to and share a country song and write whatever comes to mind. Listen along! This week, we’re listening to a song on the jukebox a thousand times with David Wills.
Let’s say that you are in a bar.
Let’s say that you are wistful. Because that’s just how you are, or because you’ve had a little too much to drink. Certain nerve pathways in your brain are being suppressed; others are being given a boost. It is softening your vigor. You are thinking with unadorned sweetness about a certain someone who is not there.
In August 1974, David Wills, a singer you have never heard of, released a hit that made it to #10 on the country charts. The song was co-written by Nashville Sound architect Billy Sherrill and produced by Charlie Rich. Charlie had gotten rich off of a smooth countrypolitan sound, but he retained a reverence for traditional honky-tonk music. He liked to drink gin and tonics.
But you are not thinking about Charlie Rich, or about music. The bar is one of those bars that still has a jukebox. If no one plays a song, there is no music. Behind the bar, there are hot dogs rotating on one of those contraptions you find in gas stations, with a crockpot of chili next to it. But it looks like no one has eaten one of those chili dogs in a very long time.
You are sitting alone at the bar. There is a mirror opposite the bar. There you are.
You are young and thinking about being old. Or you are old and thinking about being young. You are, or were, in your twenties—always confident, often wrong. You are, or will be, much older than that—making mistakes with caution.
Bars, like airports, are familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. You’ve been here before and you will be here again. Someone has penned graffiti on the bar top in front of you. Sharpie ink on dark walnut hardwood: “Time’s Up.”
You take the next-to-last sip of your drink and hold the carbonation on your tongue and it feels all right.
You might be wondering whether he is thinking of you. You might be regretting what you did not say to her. You might be missing them, though it hasn’t been that long, not really. You might be replaying memories, which will distort those memories. Or you might be daydreaming a future, which probably uses the very same part of the brain. You might be hoping for a second chance. You might be hurt. You might have done the hurting. A certain someone is not there.
At the other end of the bar are a couple of friends who look too young to be here. They are speaking with a regional accent you don’t recognize. Is that the way people talk in Idaho? You have never been to Idaho. There is an old couple in the corner who look like they are dancing, though there is no music. There is a man dressed like a cowboy sitting alone at a table. He has a fresh look under his eyes. You conclude that he is not really a cowboy. There is a woman playing the slot machine video game who says “no dingo” every time she loses. You make a private note to yourself: You will tell that story later. There is a very old man with a very long beard sitting alone at another table, nursing a tallboy slowly. The bartender is handing you a drink. Make it a double, you say. But a certain someone is not there.
The problem, like every problem, comes down to space and time. Locality is mean.
The ceilings, you notice, are unclean. The bar smells mostly like a bar but just a little bit like sour laundry. That’s a sad smell, you think to yourself. But why is that a sad smell? It’s just a smell.
More strangers come into the bar and you silently say hello.
Maybe it’s not a certain someone. Maybe it is some other lack. Some other misalignment. A soft unease. The problem, like every problem, comes down to space and time.
Sometimes there is a giddy little feeling when you are lonesome but you are not trying to fix anything. There is a little beam of light coming through the only window in the bar and you see that there are little particles of dust dancing in the light and you wonder whether there are little dust particles dancing everywhere, they’re just not illuminated. You feel hopeful and satisfied, despite the blues. Or it is a certain kind of blues. That is how you are feeling now, and the beer is cold in your hand, and your skin is tender against the cold, and someone wanders up to the jukebox and puts a dollar in the dollar slot and this is the song that plays: