David Ball’s got a problem

By R. Keith Rugg, 6-03-09

	David Ball performs August 1 at the Oregon Jamboree.

As I’ve delved a bit deeper into getting drunk on country music, I’ve gotten a better idea of just how very prevalent alcohol use and abuse is in the genre.  This country music attitude toward intoxicating beverages might even be behind an incident that happened to me several years ago when I was spinning discs on a country music show waaaay out in the heartland, smack-dab in the middle of Iowa.

Back before CDs had been developed (or, as my kids would refer to it, back in the Stone Age), I had a country show on a tiny FM station, and all of us deejays were supposed to be reading PSAs- public service announcements- to promote the events taking place during a week of local Alcohol Awareness activities.  So I rattled off one of the PSAs in-between songs, and it wasn’t until the station manager jumped me about it that I realized that instead of saying “alcohol awareness,” I had consistently replaced that phrase with “alcohol appreciation.” I understand now that I should have told the manager that it wasn’t my fault, it was just a part of my cultural heritage as a cowboy.

***

It’s the fact of alcohol as such a strong presence in the country music lifestyle that allows one great country song to make a metaphor out of the whole situation:  Drinking isn’t the REACTION to his heartache, drinking IS his heartache over the loss of his woman.

A reader by the handle of Ditto recommended the inclusion of David Ball’s “Thinkin’ Problem” to our Drunk on Country Music list, and I heartily agree.  With lyrics that include lines such as, “Yes I admit, I’ve got a thinkin’ problem,” he sings of trying to quit, but not knowing when to stop.

I wake up and right away
Her name is on my lips
Once the memories start to flow
I can’t stop with just one sip

David Ball is a real-deal old-school honky-tonk singer-songwriter, and his career is proof of the quirkiness of the music industry that pure talent isn’t always enough to take and keep a musician to the top of the biz.  Being born in 1953, Ball wasn’t exactly what the industry was looking for in the mid to late ‘90s, when they were seeking young hunks in cowboy hats and t-shirts who could capitalize on the kind of cross-over success that Garth Brooks had sparked.

But “Thinkin’ Problem” still climbed to No. 2 on the country charts in 1994 and earned Ball a Grammy nomination.  “When the Thought of You Catches Up with Me,” also off the album Thinkin’ Problem, went up to No. 7, and then “Riding with Private Malone” hit No. 2 in the early ‘00s.

Keeping in the topic of Drunk on Country Music, David Ball has another single called “Too Much Blood in my Alcohol Level,” and you can see a video for it at his website at www.myspace.com/davidball.

These days, Ball is on an indie label, and says that as of last month, he was in the studio working on new material.  As for live performances, most of his summer schedule with his band The Pioneer Playboys is southerly venues, but they are slated for the Tooele County Fair in Tooele, Utah (just west of SLC), on July 30, and the Oregon Jamboree in Sweet Home, Oregon, with Tim McGraw, LeAnn Rimes and Montgomery Gentry on August 1.