Mmmm, Venison

Friendly note: The links and video in this post will lead you to a man singing swear words. Loudly. So proceed only after you read.

I was writing tonight and listening to Wishbooks by Venison. I don’t know if you can get that anywhere. I know you can get this, which is a fine place to start, but doesn’t include the mighty “Weyauwega.”

I always feel like  I have to issue a disclaimer when I link to profanity, just out of respect to my readership (and my mother – I know she reads the blog, and I may stray, but I do not blithely stray). And no doubt, I generally write and talk about Holstein cows and red barns and faith and striving in a PG sort of way, but what I always loved about Venison was how they blasted straight through to the gritty heart of working-class Wisconsin. The Wisconsin of tough people working long shifts in mills (go ahead, listen to “Mill Song”) bound to shut down, and maybe they drowned their sorrows with beer, or maybe Jager, or maybe euchre, and sometimes these folks just put their shoulder back to the wheel and said – as we do here – “FORWARD!”  But then other times the sense of dead-end despair led to other conclusions entirely, and if the language isn’t perfectly churchly, well, I don’t mind being reminded that life is not always just a big bowl of cheese curds.


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