Couch Potatoes// Living Room Songs

—by jack

When I first met the lead singer of I WANT WHISKY, Atlanta’s pre-eminent radical politics/union/folk quintet (ed. note: I have no idea if this is true), he wasn’t GEORGIA SLIM yet, he was a skinny 16-year-old from Athens named Cullen who was dating my ex-girlfriend. Amazing that such a thing would start a 7-year friendship. But thankfully, Cullen has always been a laid back kind of guy (on a film set two summers ago, he earned the permanent nickname of, “the chillest dude”). Now that he’s a song writing, live-show playing, lead singer and guitarist for the burgeoning I WANT WHISKY, our meet-ups have increasingly revolved around music. 

This session was shot around Christmas. I met Cullen after he got off work at the sign factory he earns a paycheck at. His one floor rented house a little south of Atlanta’s Little Five Points neighborhood had a Christmas tree shoved in the corner of the living room and an old, dirty mattress on the front porch. “Yeah, Misha should really do something about that,” Cullen muttered, looking at the mattress. Misha is the Russian punk from Louisiana who rode his motorcycle East a few year’s back and settled in Atlanta when the bike broke down. He lives, I think, in the attic, I’ve never seen his bedroom.

As Cullen got ready to perform, another roommate, Goose, wandered into the living room. Goose is a blonde, handsome and very friendly guy with shocking biceps and smart eyes. He and his girlfriend, Sarah, also live in the one story. Oh, and so does I Want Whisky’s drummer, Matt. Trust me that it’s a lot of people under one roof, but in a cozy kind of way. 

All over the walls of the little house you can find radical posters of Emma Goldman and The Zapatistas. It’s no coincidence that the acronym for I WANT WHISKY is IWW. Cullen once described his songwriting to me as, “I write a love song and it turns into a political song, or I write a political song and it turns into a love song, either way it’s the same thing.” So, I am especially happy this week to present to you I WANT WHISKY. This is for the good folks in Wisconsin trying to keep the rights they thought they had secured 80 years ago. And, if you’re not into that, it’s for the girl or girls or boy or boys that got away.