Figured it was about time to give a nod to some local (which for me at the moment is Gainesville, Florida) train songs. Relating tales of epic binges, drunken wanderings and general debauchery, Whiskey & Co. are on No Idea Records, and their discography is mainly centered on wayward and inebriated nights out in Gainesville, an appropriately whiskey-soaked college town. I have seen them live a few times and they never fail to inspire beer-in-the-air singalongs from the crowd. Stylistically they combine the fuck-it-all/DIY/whatever-you-want-to-call-it sensibilities of the fertile Gainesville punk scene with alt-country. Close musical compatriots to them would be Lucero or Uncle Tupelo, and the excellent female-fronted vocals add a nice extra dimension.
Southbound Train relates the story of a ride on a train traveling South, which is definitely the most common direction one usually ends up going in a train song. The train ride is used to tell the tale of a lost love, a common trope for songs about traveling on southbound trains, before the band returns to their usual themes of being drunk in Gainesville. The narrator copes with a bottle of alcohol, lamenting how they are drinking themselves to death in a one-horse town. As someone who has spent about 6 years here, this place sadly does resemble a one-horse town at times. All-in-all its a pretty standard train song, but it does show how trains have become a fairly integral facet of the No Depression/alt.country mythology.
Lonesome Whistles 