Don Williams: Your to-do for the weekend

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You can go see a good rock band, local or national, any ol' night of the week around here. Good country's a little harder to find within a stone's throw and on short notice. Drop that "good" before that "country" and I'd tell you to hoof it on out to The Rock Nightclub tomorrow night to see Josh Gracin, where the former American Idol semifinalist and celebrity Marine recruiter extraordinaire will be performing his slick and poppy take on country ($15/20, 8:00, AA). Warming up the stage for him tonight? Taproot. And following him in coming weeks? Powerman 5000. Fear Factory. A glance at The Rock's calendar, peppered as it is with country amidst a sea of 93X hard rock dinosaurs, reveals that perhaps the two genres share a common fanbase. After seeing this shared fanbase pumping macho fists and spilling WOOOOOHS!!! and beers all over the Xcel at the Brooks & Dunn show Friday before last, I can't pretend that any of this surprises me.

So skip The Rock for now. Your country music to-do for Memorial Day weekend is to head down to any one of our fine local record stores and pick up a Don Williams tape or CD. Put that sucker in a boombox and go to the goddamned lake. Don Williams, who turns 71 today and sadly has retired from touring and thus will never share the stage at The Rock with any side project of Max Cavalera's, has the perfect, mellow, low-down voice for sitting in a lawn chair in the hot, hot heat. And babies, it's gonna be a hot one alright.

Happy birthday to Don Williams. And now to everybody else, go do what I say. Heat. Lake. Boombox. Time to chill the fuck out to some Don Williams.