Darrell Webb

I am behind the times as usual.  I heard this on Sirius' Bluegrass Junction channel yesterday:  "Pistol and the Pen".

While perhaps somewhat unusual as a Bluegrass song, folk music has always had a lot of morbid elements to it, and somebody said that a lot of Bluegrass is "boy-meets-girl, boy-kills-girl, boy-goes-to-prison".  I see that the video seems to be associated with the death of Country singer Mindy McCready with whom I was unfamiliar prior to her taking her own life earlier this year.

The juxtaposition of the pen and the pistol is one that I can understand. It reminds me of the manly Robert Service poem, "The Quitter".  Webb offers a modern, civilized version for those of us caught in the desperation of what may sometimes seem to be a life of pointless suffering.  I suppose not everyone can relate, but a lot of us have found the pen to be an effective flotation device when sinking in a sea of despair, pain, and chaos.