Those who witnessed it reveled in the enjoyment of this truly unique and fantastic experience. Those who didn’t will surely hear about it. Now those unfortunate souls must travel to The UK, Australia, or wait until?

Wednesday 13 did double duty at The Rockpile in Toronto on January 28th – the last night of his North American tour. The whole evening was unplugged and acoustic. In addition to performing a brilliant intimate and interactive storytellers set, pulling songs that span his entire career, W13 had the whole bar screaming for more with his outlaw country side project Bourbon Crow. Bar owners take notice – book this band, they will make you money!

The setlist was as follows, and everyone wished they played another ten songs:

“Dead Body”
“Drink Till You Ain’t Ugly”
“Piece Of Shit”
“Long Way To The Bottom”
“Nature Boy”
“Pour On Rain”
“Headed To The Alter”
“One More Round” / “Home Sweet Home” (Motley Crue cover)
“Suck My Dixie”
“Alcohol Is Awesome”

Prior to taking the stage, Wednesday 13, Rayen Belchere, and Roman Surman invited BraveWords scribe Aaron Small upon their tour bus for some Jack Daniels and good conversation; a brief bit of which has been transcribed below; look for more coming soon.

In November 2016, the best of Bourbon Crow collection, Hungover Hits From Hell – previously only available on vinyl – was released on CD complete with a brand new demo track called “Find Em, Fuck Em, Forget Em”.

The album cover is a mock-up of the movie poster for Full Metal Jacket. Original artwork for Stanley Kubrick’s film had the words Born To Kill scrawled upon the military helmet, which was adorned with a peace sign button. For Bourbon Crow, it was slightly altered with the headpiece reading Get Ready 2 Drink, and the button depicting the Jack Daniels pentagram.

Rayen: “That cover, Wednesday and I like the same kind of stuff, the same movies. For the record campaign we had this guy in Australia, Brett Williams, do a slew of our favourite movies and TV shows as promotional stuff. We’d launch a new idea every day – Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Sanford And Son. He did Full Metal Jacket and we thought it was fucking awesome; but it came about by accident.”

The new song “Find Em, Fuck Em, Forget Em” is pretty much self-explanatory, but…

W13: “Well, the Grammys hasn’t called us yet.”    

Rayen: “It’s just our tongue-in-cheek humour; in the same vein as the first record; ‘Headed For The Altar’, ‘Piece Of Shit’.”

W13: “We’ve got a new one called ‘OJ Did It’, and there’s another one called ‘Go On Get Your Nudin’, which is basically country slang in the South for go on, get you another one. But that’s turning into ‘Go, Get You Another Drink’. It’s a work in progress.”

Sounds like you’re writing for another album.

Rayen: “We could write a Bourbon Crow record in a day. We come from the same place, our styles of writing are similar. We’ll sit down and drink and whatever makes us laugh, we’ll write a song about it. Hopefully, at some point, when Wednesday gets done working his new record (Condolences), and time allows, we’ll be able to do another one.”

W13: “The Bourbon Crow set is the rowdy folks, and the way the Wednesday acoustic thing starts off is kind of campfire, storyteller. If we did Bourbon Crow first, everyone would be drunk as hell, so when I’m telling stories I’d just be talking over drunk people. Better to get that first. And the acoustic thing is alien for a lot of people. Once I start talking and people see that I’m human and they can interact with me; because I forget that people don’t know me the way I feel they should know me. A lot of people think I’m Dracula. They see ‘He’s funny, he tells jokes.’ That’s one of the most shocking things that happens.”

Rayen: “This whole thing is about drinking, being goofy, and having fun. This whole thing is an experiment. Thankfully Wednesday has such a big audience that we can ride the coattails and try Bourbon Crow and see if it works. So far, it’s working. Every night I see people leaving with merch, they’re singing along – even in Montreal where it’s mostly French. Out whole thing from the beginning was, let’s see if this finds an audience. So far so good.”

W13: “It’s definitely found an audience, and it’s the strangest thing. Doing this 12 years ago could have been career suicide. Country? A lot of fans hated it. I don’t even call it country; we call it a drinking project. It reflects where we grew up – on Dukes Of Hazard and Hank Jr. – that’s what Bourbon Crow is.”

February
22 - Newcastle, England - University
23 - Glasgow, Scotland - Cathouse
24 - Leeds, England - Key Club
25 - Nottingham, England - Rescue Rooms
26 - Manchester, England - Ruby Lounge
28 - Norwich, England - Owl Sanctuary

March
1 - Wolverhampton, England - Slade Rooms
2 - Bristol, England - Thekla
3 - Southhampton, England - Talking Heads
4 - London, England - Underworld

March
23 - Brisbane, Australia - The Brightside
24 - Sydney, Australia - Oxford Arts Factory
25 - Melbourne, Australia - Corner Hotel

Get your Bourbon Crow fix by clicking here.

(Photo by Aaron Small)