Loretta Lynn — now 81 — will perform at Johnny Mercer Theatre in Savannah on October 6th. Tickets go on sale Friday, July 26th.

As I write this, the date hasn’t yet shown up on Lynn’s website or official Facebook page, but the date has been published by the Savannah Morning News and Bob 106.9.

From the SMN:

Tickets go on sale Friday and can be purchased at the Savannah Civic Center box office and etix.com

Click here for the Johnny Mercer Theatre on Etix.

And here’s the classic “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, which is also the name of the tour:

Here’s a pic embedded via Facebook of Lynn with Bret Michaels(!):

I don’t know if Lynn will be looking for any local support, but I’d like to nominate Damon and the Shitkickers.

So, good news.

Despite being plenty skeptical, I told him I’d catch one of their Saturday happy hour gigs at The Jinx on Congress Street. So at the end of March — I remember because it was during the Savannah Music Festival — I dropped in.

And I was sort of shocked by how good they were — by Damon Mailand’s easy command of so many country classics, by the tightness of the young band as they moved quickly from one song to the next, and by the sheer improbability of catching an act so good, so early, and free.

So for the past four years, there has probably been almost a 50/50 chance that someone looking for me on Saturday evening between 6:00 and 8:30 could find me at The Jinx listening to Damon and the Shitkickers. In addition to Damon on guitar and vocals and Charlie on bass and backing vocals, Igor Fiksman plays pedal steel, Anders Thomsen plays lead guitar and sings, and Mike DiSanza plays the drums. The lineup has changed only slightly over the years, but there have been some key changes: Damon has slowly but surely added originals to the seemingly endless set list; not long after I started following them, the band started playing gigs elsewhere around town and throughout the region, including weddings and other special events; Charlie’s hands toughened up so they wouldn’t start bleeding as he attacked the upright bass.

And now Damon and the Shitkickers has finally released their debut album, Short Cups and Long Nights. Happy hour at The Jinx on Saturday, June 8th will be an extended one — roughly 6 to 10 p.m. — to celebrate the release. You can read more about the evolution of the band and about the CD in my latest Unplugged column in Do in the Savannah Morning News.

You can follow the band’s gigs via the Damon and the Shitkickers Facebook page.

Like the classic outlaw country that it, Short Cups and Long Nights hits a few recurring themes — women, booze, loss, and longing. Not to dig too deep, but you can also hear the pressure in modern America to conform to limited expectations of manhood, relationships, and country music itself.

“Heartache To Go” — one of my favorite tracks — talks about life on the road: “I’ll take a six pack with a whiskey back, and a heartache to go.”

From “My Grandma’s Ranch”, which mocks the girls who want the country boys but then don’t want them to be country anymore:

I ain’t going to take you to London for Christmas,
I don’t vacation in France.
I take a week every summer and go up to Montana,
and shoot gophers on my grandma’s ranch.

“Shit (Or Get Off the Pot)” is in the same vein — it’s about a clinging girlfriend demanding marriage.

“There Ain’t Enough Whiskey (In This Bottle)” dispenses with that mockery. The speaker is clearly just trying to bury memories of a lost love, and when Damon says the word “sorrow”, it feels like he means it. It’s a perfect companion to the only cover on the album: Merle Haggard’s “What Am I Gonna Do (With the Rest of My Life)”.

It’s rich and varied stuff.

And sometimes it’s just really funny.

The most challenging issue for Short Cups and Long Nights is that no album can capture the energy of Damon and the Shitkickers’ live shows. It’s certainly an adjustment for this listener. Maybe the band’s followup should be a live album, about half of which could be devoted to covers that are highlights of the stage shows, like “Guitars, Cadillacs” and “Georgia on a Fast Train”?

But whatever Damon and the Shitkickers do next, I’m pretty sure I’ll be following along.

Here are some pics I took last year: