One of the fantastic albums I got recently was Happiness by The Weepies, a duet of folk singers Deb Talan and Steve Tannen. I liked several songs, but it's really this one I love:
It always rained around you
We tried to go inside and it would rain there too
It came pouring through the roof when we traveled underground
Whiskey, water, and tears 'til I thought that we would drown
Chorus:
Jolene, Jolene
Is it still raining everywhere you are?
We didn't hide from it at all
No we just let it fall
In the morning she was gone and everything was dry
The city streets were crowded and I felt like I would die
Repeat chorus
Now there's sunshine and flowers everywhere
And I don't care
All of these clouds will disappear
Like we were never here
But I swear there was a time I thought that it would never stop
And now I only think about you if it's raining or it's not
Repeat chorus
It's a classic uptempo folk-bluegrass tune with what sounds like some
variety of mandolin soloing, and I love it. In fact, the CDBaby page has a nice
sample of the song.
Following on the success of our release parties for the Absinthe, Bellini, Cosmopolitan, and Daiquiri service releases, today we had the party for...Everclear. Actually there were three parties at work running concurrently: the Everclear party, a farewell for one of the company veterans, and a woman taking a month off to get married had a smaller Bring Your Own Scotch gathering. (Why a party just for taking a month off? I don't ask these questions.) Ours turned out to be the most popular, which is common: we're a friendly bunch, we all get along, and we're fun.
Three guys, two of them VPs, decided to sip it straight on the rocks, ignoring the warning label which explicitly tells you to mix it with non-alcoholic drinks (I'm not making this up). They all sipped it, did the lip-smacking "Oof. Aaaaah." thing, and got to be macho for about ninety seconds before their tongues and throats started burning and they started eating pretzels. I took mine with cranberry juice. It's about as vile as vodka, but seems to have more kick for a given estimated amount of alcohol.
In New Orleans in 2001, as you walked down Bourbon Street you'd see endless bars, all serving the same blended drinks, basically Slush Puppies designed to get you drunk. One afternoon I asked a guy what was in them; he said, "Well, it's a mix. And Everclear."
I recommend leaving it to the professionals, unless you need to clean your tires.