Many years ago, some friends with a country band called and said they had a friend with a bar in Eureka Springs, AR. that was mostly country but he wanted to try a rock band and they had told him about us, Rat Sass. We went and did the gig and he loved our classic rock but said he had a few people that liked to 3-step and wondered if we could learn 2 or 3 country tunes for the next time. I asked him if we could do 'em our way and he said yeah as long as the people could dance to it. So I rewrote the lyrics to 3 of the top country tunes at that time. Amarillo by Morning became Armadillos in Mourning, Boot Scoot Boogie became (for dog owners) Poop Scoop Boogie, and Friends in Low Places became Friends With Sad Faces. When we played 'em at the next gig there, most of the people smiled and laughed but the owners said a few got mad at us for making fun of country music, but he didn't care. Later that place sold and went back to straight country so we didn't play those songs anymore. Years later we played a biker bash in Oklahoma and at the end of the night, everyone still in the party mode retired to the beer tent to sit around and drink and bull s**t with the guys that worked there. Turned out that all the guys that worked there played acoustic guitar and went and got their guitars and entertained us for a while. Well, they took a break to drink and joke with us so asked one of the guys if I could play his guitar. He handed it to me but said, "You can't play this guitar. It only knows country music." I said, "Oh, I can play some country." which brought another round of laughs 'cause they all knew me as Mr. Rock n Roll. Well I started the chords to Amarillo By Morning and whistled the fiddle intro and got their attention. When I started singing the first line, "Armadillos in mourning, their dad lies dead in the road. The truck came without warning, It was carrying a heavy load.", they all started laughing so hard I had to stop and laugh with them. It was one of those, laughing so hard you can't get your breath things. They asked if I actually had lyrics to the whole song and I told 'em I did, and they got me to do the whole thing, with breaks every so often for laughing. When I was done they told me I had to add that to our songlist and it's been there ever since. I finally did it on a Yamaha 8 track cassette recorder I had with me and a drum machine doing all the parts. Just for s**ts and giggles, I put it on my myspace. Ya'll can check it out at
www.myspace.com/jeffcoleysband if ya want. Not the greatest recording but it gets the point across.