11. Cigarettes and Wine

 Jason Isbell is back on the blog again. This time with a song that I consider real country music. Not any of that bro country talk rap with a banjo crap you hear on the radio. This one has pain, gritty guitar, great lyrics and feeling.  

I relate to this song because whether we like it or not the people that we cross paths with in our youth shape us and live inside of us still. This takes me back to days when I was young and dumb and thought I knew what love was. Lonely days looking for someone to make me feel loved where liquor and lust tended to carry the day (or the nights).  The time in your late teens as you come to terms with your smoldering youth when you think lust is love. The time when you are chronologically an adult, but all too much a child.  To me this song takes me back to the humid semi southern air filled with the scent of sycamores, rain, cigarettes and the feeling of "heartbreak".  The ignorance of youth, the pain that shapes us and that over time makes you thankful for life working out the way it did.