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What’s up Sorry State readers? I hope everyone has had a nice last two weeks. There are big things brewing here in Raleigh with the announcement of the full lineup and schedule for the Sorry State 10 Year Anniversary fest and I can’t fucking wait. It’s gonna be such a fun weekend. I’m excited to see all the bands but particularly, I’m looking forward to the midnight show at the Pour House on Friday night with Delco MF’s, The Hell, and G.U.N. all performing. It’s gonna be a wild show. I missed last week’s newsletter as I was out visiting my dad in Seattle with one of my buddies and my brother. Man, I love Washington so much. It is the most naturally beautiful place I’ve ever been to. It feels like being in a whole other country sometimes. There’s so much to do out there, especially if you like being out in nature and camping and stuff. We went out to the Hoh National Rainforest and camped out there for a night and woke up to some elk eating leaves off the branches around our campsite. We also went up to Mount Baker and had an awesome campsite right on the river and stayed up too late sippin cold ones before getting up the next morning and going for an eight-mile hike on the mountain. It was fucking awesome. I love just going on a big hike around dramatic snow-capped mountains. It feels like those scenes in Lord of the Rings when they’re just running around middle earth. If you’ve never been out towards the Pacific Northwest, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s amazing out there. Anyway, back to music now. One night while we were in the city we went out for dinner and had about a 45 minute wait. The restaurant happened to be right next to a record store (shout out to Daybreak Records) though so naturally, that’s where I killed my time. I honestly don’t really like buying records if I have to fly back, cause flying with records is one of the most stressful things. I happened to be flipping thru the bargain bin though and came across this Bob Willis 2xLP box. At $2 I couldn’t pass it up. If something happened, not a big loss but also the box it’s in is really solid, so I figured it would be fine. It was kinda a full circle moment too, cause my dad first introduced me to Bob Wills’s music a year ago when I was visiting him out there and then we came across this on this trip. This particular record is Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys For The Last Time, which, if you couldn’t tell by the name, is the last recording of Bob Wills and his original Texas Playboys and honorary Playboys (like Merle Haggard). By this point in his life, Bob had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, which affected his speech and bound him to a wheelchair. Nonetheless, on December 3rd and 4th, 1973, Bob led his Playboys through all of his classic tunes as he had so many times before. You can tell through the recordings how much fun they were having during these final sessions with the king of western swing. It’s nice to hear some of these songs in such clear quality as a lot of his stuff was recorded in the ‘30s and ‘40s so the recordings can be a little shoddy. Bob would go on to pass away less than two years after this session, so this stands as a monumental recording. There’s a reason why there’s a Waylon Jennings song called Bob Wills is Still the King. If you don’t know, now ya know, so go get some swing in your life.