Social Distortion

My buddy Colby introduced me to the band Social Distortion in 2004. At first, I didn’t like Social Distortion. All they’re music sounded the same to me. The same drum beats. The same guitars. I couldn’t distinguish between the end of one track and the beginning of the next. And then Social Distortion came to Kansas City. My buddy Colby was going through a rough stretch. He’d just had his second kid and was in between jobs. He needed a night of beers and loud music, a rough crowd and maybe a black eye. So I bought Colby a ticket for his birthday and one for myself. We hit up McCoys before the show for burgers and stouts. Colby bought us each a Jager bomb and we met several haggard concert goers slithering around the bar. I don’t want to say that I had a religious experience at the show (might just be the beers talking), but something shifted between me and Social Distortion that night. Looking back, I think it was the chemistry between the lead singer and the crowd: the way Mike Ness knew these people, and the way these people – an eclectic bunch of white-collar suits and blue-collar Dickies, kids and old men, cowboy hats and mohawks – loved Mike Ness. He was their evangelical poet of dirtbag redemption, and we were his surly congregation. That night I finally heard the difference between songs, the cut between tracks, and instantly I was hooked. A week or so later I sold a bunch of old records to a used record shop in KC and bought several Social Distortion titles. I began by listening chronologically, moving from the beginning of their career to their most recent release, and in doing so I heard Mike Ness tell his story of drugs, the death of friends, his struggles with cleaning up, then finding God and, finally, realizing sobriety. Ness’s whole story is right there in the music. His memoir, as they say in literary circles. His testimony, as they say in the church. From drugs to sobriety, from angst to celebration, Ness wrote and sang and recorded it all behind the wail of blues infused guitars, country simple drums, and punk-rock attitude. Mike Ness even taught me something about myself: more than anything else on a record or in a book or on a screen, I need to encounter someone telling the truth, no matter what that truth might be. Honesty begets honesty, and Mike Ness’s confessions drew out my confessions. Two days ago I checked Social Distortion’s website and saw that they’ll be playing Austin in May. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen them in five years, and I’m feeling long overdue for a religious experience.