Pug Johnson’s latest single is a cheerfully self-deprecating East Texas waltz that champions diminishing expectations, disappearing standards and that point in the night when any shame has long since dissipated. “Lowering The Bar” is the first focus track from Johnson’s third full-length, From A Beaumont Bar (Thirty Tigers), a “piano-first” collection steeped in the sounds and scrappy storytelling of classic country. Looking back on failed relationships from the safer vantage point of married life, Johnson mines his younger years for the type of misbegotten tales and romantic miscalculations whose inherent humor only grows with some emotional and chronological distance.
From A Beaumont Bar was co-produced by Johnson and longtime friend/collaborator Ryan Johnson, tracked mostly over five days at the Studios At Fischer in the Texas Hill Country. Aside from piano, accordion, fiddle and pedal steel figure prominently on the LP, with Pug slipping in references to everyone from Bob Wills and Jerry Lee Lewis to Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard.
For “Lowering The Bar,” the Beaumont-raised artist admits he was trying to nail the quintessential barroom anthem. “When I wrote the first verse and chorus, I was thinking about a guy who’s bumming everyone out at the bar,” says Pug. “(Co-writer) Payton (Ware) heard the hook line and made the connection about a guy lowering his standards. Hilarity ensued as we finished the next two verses.”
We’re proud to premiere Pug Johnson’s “Lowering The Bar.” From A Beaumont Bar is out October 23.
—Hobart Rowland
See Pug Johnson live.
