Track 15: "Huggin' the John"

Humor to Hide the Hurt

I was wondering what should be the main art for this track. Facebook must have been spying on me, because right before I finished writing this post, this ad appeared in my damned feed.

Well, you walked in the door you said, “Here we are!”

Actin’ like you’d never even been in a bar

You were just like a kid in a candy store

But you ended the evening on the bathroom floor

You were huggin’ the john, barely hangin’ on

You were doin’ more retchin’ than the toilet was catchin’

You were huggin’ the john

xx

Six beers in your belly and a shot in your hand

You jumped up on the stage and you fired the band

Fell on a table, broke a rib or two

Then you started pukin’ on the bouncer’s shoe

You were huggin’ the john, barely hangin’ on

Your heavin’ it was dry, but you was givin’ it a try

You were huggin’ the john

xxx

I poured you home it was almost dawn

You left your glasses out on the lawn

I put you into bed and you started to snore

Then you started crawlin’ toward the bathroom door

You were huggin' the john barely hangin’ on

You were weepin’ like a willow on your porcelain pillow

You were huggin’ the John

copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)

(Written 1982)

This silly little pseudo-rockabilly ditty always got a lot of laughs when I performed it. The subject is one that predates Foster Brooks, predates Crazy Guggenheim, probably predates The Bible.

That subject was getting sloppy drunk and making a fool of yourself.

I could list dozens of funny songs of this ilk.

This Loudon Wainwright tune is one of my favorites:

Although, as I’ve aged, I find this earlier Wainwright song to be more honest, if not as funny:

My song had two major themes:

1. Getting sloppy drunk is hilarious; and

2. Puking your guts out is even more so.

I still think "You were doin’ more retchin’ than the toilet was catchin’ " is a pretty snappy line.

But beneath the belly laffs, there was a heart-wrenching, real-life incident that sparked this song.

At the risk of going pop pysch on your ass, you even could say that I was using irreverent humor to mask my pain.

Sometimes that’s all a songwriter has.

In the real story, I wasn’t the one who was hugging the john. The only time in my entire life that I puked while drunk was one early morning in late 1972 on the way back to Albuquerque from Juarez after a night of border-town craziness there. I threw up on myself in the back seat of my friend Erik’s station wagon and promptly passed out.

I didn’t puke at all when I was in Juarez a few months ago. Come to think of it, I didn’t drink until the dawn’s early light either.

The person who inspired this song was my then-wife, the mother of my first child.

I felt torn about writing about this for public consumption. My wife died more than 10 years ago, but our daughter Molly is very much alive and now is in her 40s. I didn’t want to embarrass her, so recently I asked her how she’d feel about me publishing this.

She said go for it. So here we are.

This story starts one night in the summer of 1981, during the recording of Picnic Time For Potatoheads down at John Wagner Studios in Albuquerque. It was a Friday night in which we were working on the vocal parts for "The Green Weenie." (Not the same night that Jimmy Carl Black came in to record his drum part.)

I’d brought my wife to that session. It was one of the only nights any of us had brought any spectator to the recording.

My wife was having a great time time at first. She was drinking. She always was drinking in those days. I knew from the beginning she had a drinking problem. Her pregnancy and the birth of our child had slowed her down.

But this night it seemed she was making up for lost time. She was spilling her beer in the control room and getting so loud that it was becoming extremely irritating to our engineer and our producer, my brother Jack.

After the session the band and I decided to go grab a late bite at Powdrell’s barbecue on East Central (a wonderful restaurant that sadly closed down not too long ago).

I miss this place! [Photo from Yelp]

On the way over, my wife and I got into a fight. I probably started it, telling her how she’d embarrassed me in front of the band the studio personnel. She responded telling me what a killjoy asshole I am.

But she didn’t stop when we got to Powder’s parking lot. When we stopped and we got out, she started screaming horrible racist obscenities like "Ya’ll just want to suck a ni***er’s dick!"

The Powdrell family is African American, as was much of their staff and clientele. I knew I couldn’t bring her inside the restaurant in that condition.

I went over to tell Jack and the other guys that I wouldn’t be joining them. But before I even got back to my car, my wife had disappeared. Just walked off. I spent the next 30 minutes driving up and down the streets around Powdrell’s looking for her.

When I finally found her blocks away, it took a little time to convince her to get back in the car, but soon after she did, she broke down, crying, apologizing, promising to get help with her drinking.

And she did.

The very next day, she got in touch with Alcoholics Anonymous and started going regularly to meetings. Soon afterward, I started going to Al-Anon, which helped me deal with my own issues.

By the way, I’m not trying to portray myself as an innocent victim here. I had consumed way more than my share of the world liquor supply long before I’d even met my wife.

I did slow down considerably after Molly was born, though I didn’t stop drinking completely until about 20 years later.

So after that embarrassing night, my wife got sober and things got better.

For a few months.

But late one night, actually about 2 a.m., after going out "to a movie" with a friend, my wife stumbled in the house. I could smell the beer when she walked through the door.

She was loud and she was crying.

"I tried," she sobbed. "I tried but I couldn’t do it. I tried …"

Then she headed to the bathroom, where she retched for what seemed like an hour.

I should have known from Al-Anon about alcoholics relapsing.

But that night I felt crushed. I started thinking our whole marriage was doomed. I guess it was. Our time together was touch-and-go after that. (And her drinking was only one of our problems.)

It was months later that I wrote "Huggin’ the John." I don’t think I ever told my wife that this tune was "inspired" by that horrible night. We never talked about it.

I purposely made the gender of the song’s subject ambiguous and added some details that obviously didn’t point to my wife.

For instance, in the last verse, the line, "You left your glasses out on the lawn," was not something my wife did that night. She didn’t even wear glasses.

That little detail was based on one of my own drunken foibles. On the last night of my regular classes at the University of New Mexico in the spring of 1976, I got rip-roaring drunk, probably at Okie’s. I forget who poured me home, but I woke up and couldn’t find my glasses.

Nope, I didn’t drop them on my lawn. I dropped them in my driveway. And by the time I found them, somebody had driven over them.

Also, I pulled a couple of the lines of "Huggin’ the John" from other places.

For instance I stole "You jumped up on the stage and you fired the band …" from none other than the late and the very great Roger Miller!

In 1980 I went to Roger’s house in Tesuque to interview him for The Santa Fe Reporter. Before we got started Roger told me he’d been out drinking at The Palace in downtown Santa Fe the night before.

He kind of shook his head and said, "I think I fired the band." So I already was laughing before the interview actually started.

Roger Miller, the day after he fired the band at the Palace. Photo by Pam Mills.

At the time I wrote the song, I was watching tons of MTV, which basically was still in its infancy. So, yeah, I probably was inspired by The Stray Cats.

Also, in the early to mid 80s, I began to purposely educate myself on basic American roots music. At that point, earning a living mainly through freelancing at the Santa Fe Reporter and substitute teaching, I couldn’t afford to buy much new music.

But in those days, record stores had an abundance of cheap cassettes. I remember buying Elvis’ Sun Sessions and tapes by the likes of Howlin’ Wolf, Bill Monroe, Bob Wills, Muddy Waters … and Carl Perkins!

When recording "Huggin’ the John," we recruited an old friend, Wayne Brewster, who had played drums for many of my brother’s bands. (Wayne also played on a Panda Juke song called "Wild Humpin’," which didn’t make the cut for the CD release)

With Tom on electric guitar, we came pretty close to achieving cat class and cat style.

My wife and I separated in 1984 and divorced the next year. She struggled with addiction, poverty and mental health for most of the rest of her life. Though there were many years of bitterness following our divorce, by the time she died in 2013, we were on good terms. She even sent me a box of expensive fruit while my mother was in hospice. She died about a month after Mom did.

Boy, writing about this track took a few dark turns. But I bet there are plenty of funny songs, stories, cartoons etc. with background stories not grounded in hilarity.

So, the traditional ending of each Songs the Wild Taters Sang post seems, uh, kind of inappropriate.

But what the Hell, here goes anyway …

Now enjoy my song:

Get your own copy of Picnic Time for Potatoheads & Best-Loved auSongs from Pandemonium Jukebox HERE

Credits:

Steve Terrell: lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar

Tom Dillon: electric guitar

Wayne Brewster: drums