Hear Mike Cooley, Part Five: "Primer Coat"

"Primer Coat"

Mike Cooley doesn’t risk any danger here, and rightfully so: it wouldn’t suit the song. "Primer Coat" is a mid-tempo rocker, just the kinda thing the Truckers do best. Over a cascading guitar riff, picked like a waterfall in slow motion, Cooley presents one of his masterful character sketches. Meet the man who has quit drinking, misses his ex-wife, feels that his new girlfriend is too upfront, and whose sister is marrying in the fall. The thesis statement comes at the end, as we see a man traveling the roads at night, with his melancholy eyes glued towards road signs that will direct his restlessness somewhere else.

Some verses? I'll quote nearly the entire first one, since it typifies the type of images Cooley can burn into your brain: "the old man's out by the swimming pool/ he goes there to think/ talks on the phone sometimes/ hardly mentions a thing/ said he needed it for hos knees/ he used to swim back in school/ graduated in 89/ quit drinking in 92".