Every once and a while and artist pops into your head and you think to yourself, “What happened to (insert name)?”
You listen to a bunch of their music, remember how fucking awesome it was, have a beer or two, get all nostalgic, long for the days of old, and then randomly tweet your feelings and wait for everybody to agree with you in a collective effort to will said artist back into existence.
A couple recent examples…
And the artist that I got to thinking about the other day… Josh Thompson.
Let’s take a walk down memory lane…
It’s 2009. Avatar had taken movie theaters by storm, Jason Aldean was riding his “Big Green Tractor,” and I was a pimple-faced college sophomore that didn’t know his ass from his elbow. But you know what I did know? I knew that a little song called “Beer On The Table” was a jam sandwich.
And then, just one year later, came another one called “Way Out Here.”
One of the best small town anthems in recent memory, and dare I say, better than “Small Town USA.”
“Won’t Be Lonely Long,” “Blame It On Waylon,” “Comin’ Around”… every single one was a damn good song. Although, none of them even broke the top 10 on the country charts.
He even hit you in the deep caverns of your soul with a knee-buckler of a song called “Sinner.”
These days, Josh is still producing great song after great song, but primarily as a songwriter.
He wrote a couple tunes on Luke Combs’ new album What You See Is What You Get, he was one of the writers on Jon Pardi’s new single “Ain’t Always The Cowboy,” he has a handful of cuts on Luke Bryan’s new album Born Here, Live Here, Die Here, including the title track. Not to mention cuts for Jason Aldean, Blake Shelton, Jake Owen, and more throughout the years… there’s no doubt about it, he’s built an impressive resume.
All of that being said, nothing hits quite like those 2009-2012 OG Josh Thompson songs from my college days. Underage, sneaking into country bars, trying to hit on girls that wanted nothing to do with me, hearing a song like “Won’t Be Lonely Long” come on knowing that in about two hours when the ugly lights come one, I would in fact be very lonely and eating $17 dollars worth of McDonald’s by myself at 2am. Sometimes you strike out, what can I say? I figured it out…
It was good times back then, really good times.
And Josh Thompson was the soundtrack for a lot of them.
