Track Premiere | White Wine Whatever
Are we all to blame for all this? Of course we are. As humans, the disgrace we’ve made of life on this Earth is both insurmountable and unforgivable. Are we all due a break? And should that break involve wine? I think so.
We recorded “White Wine Whatever” before the presidential election—during the fall of 2024, I guess—with the total and absolute conviction that the election would turn out precisely how it did. Every morning, we would start by talking about how the Democratic Party was running essentially on the following platform: everything is fine. If you like the status quo, we’re your people. A few of us had done some government work, and one still does, not that I will endanger him by calling him by name. The first lyric goes:
Standing on the table
Talking Cain and Abel
Are you ready for the country?
Are you fully unstable?
That was the mood—grumpy and disagreeable as I recall. I think Tim was pissy with Jon about something involving drums being transported across town, and the long shadow of that cascaded. Of course, I hadn’t slept the night before, since I was finishing the songs, so my momentary powers of perception are fair to call into question. Mike V., the consummate glue guy, rallied spirits—saying something gruff and humorous and plausibly obscene. The funny thing about being in a band is that this is the self-selected group of damaged individuals who finally winnow themselves down to the few you can actually stand. And then you can’t stand them.
And then you can’t be apart. A dilemma. Anyway, I suppose I was meaningfully batshit when the tape rolled at 12:08 p.m. on that day and I told the band we were recording “White Wine Whatever,” which caused a mixed reaction. Peter, William, and Mike said they’d heard the demo. But Jon was confused. He thought it was a different song. Hours were wasted litigating this. I wanted to die. I guess we all did. This may also have been some manner of oblique strategy rendered by Paranoid Style co-producer and some-say-Svengali Jason Richmond. It was the best of times and the worst of times. I know this—I wasn’t the only one who cried. But the wind-up made all the difference. What you hear is me and several men in a midday hangover venting a full grab bag of frustrations.
Baby what’s your name
Or is that even germane?
Are you Northern Virginia
Or Virginia Plain?
By 1:12 p.m. the thing was done, and we moved on to the more elegant “Elegant Bachelors.”
Later, Dwight Yoakam’s lead guitarist, Eugene Edwards, came to play on this track, as well as Matt Douglas from the Mountain Goats. What a pairing. Your mileage may vary, but for me the moment at the 1:40 mark here, where Douglas’s supple sax takes over for Eugene’s greasy playing, is the sleaziest thing this side of the late Steve Cropper ripping the pea out of the pod on Rod Stewart’s “Hot Legs.” We’re all just lucky to have another at bat, but I feel especially fortunate to have brought these two musicians together in this context. Bobby Keys and Mick Taylor, somehow together again.
Anyway, that’s the printable part of the story of “White Wine Whatever.”
Now in conjunction with Southwest Review, I bring you the first-ever Paranoid Style Wine List Syllabus:
Commander Cody—Wine Do Yer Stuff
I’m no scold, but if you haven’t gotten hip to Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, the time is now to accelerate that process. These wild Michigan degenerates were in Ann Arbor the same time as the MC5 and the Stooges but inexplicably preferred trucker tunes and high lonesome ballads, and went on to record this perfect ode to the very reasonable uses of wine in certain situations, in order to turn the pressure down. “Wine, take me for a ride,” the Commander begs. The pedal steel weeps. He’s missing a woman, nursing an empty glass.
Champion Jack Dupree—Drinking Wine Spodie-Odie
A sing-along version from my personal favorite boogie-woogie pianist, reissued in 2007 on Blue Horizon Records. Scandalous legend holds that the “Spodie-Odie” in the title stood in for another name which would implicate a family member in an act of immorality with another family member or get a major league manager thrown out of a game. You can’t beat the Champion.
The Replacements—Red, Red Wine
One of the great pop songs of the ’80s buried on the back of the thrill-a-minute Pleased to Meet Me, it’s pure-Westerberg devotional: “Gallo or muscatel / Either one would be just swell.”
Def Leppard—Me and My Wine
A riff as rising and falling as valuations on Coppola’s Napa farms—one part Sabbath, one part Steppenwolf, another part Steppenwolf—incredible looks. This brawler is close to my heart, because—and I guess this is the headline—I think sharing is overrated. This is an amazing rock song, which actually walks us through a heavy metal singer’s decision to resist all manner of post-concert temptation and instead choose the seemingly sad comfort of his lone hotel room boozing. The thing I find most compelling about this wine song is the narrative arc: “Woke up in a subway station.” The same thing that happened to Pete Townshend in “Who Are You.” A recrimination classic that really rocks and majestically resolves in wine and whatever.
Willie Nelson—Yesterday’s Wine
It starts like a Raymond Chandler noir: “Miracles appear in the strangest of places / Fancy meeting you here.” So of course it was a setup. Then all of the details: Houston, Colorado, past adventures where people get together. “You give the appearance / Of one widely traveled” is the single most cordial way anyone ever said, “Ya look like shit.” The more subtle way is saying you look like yesterday’s wine. So much of country music is based in knee-jerk fatalism that it becomes more apparent over time that Willie’s genius is inextricable from his optimism. When I watched him at Jones Beach last summer perform a thrilling version of “On the Road Again,” I couldn’t but take him at his word. Ninety-two years old, he really still does like it out there.
The Paranoid Style—White Wine Whatever
In 2023 Jeff Beck died. Was it Covid? What does it matter? And sure, I felt bad, and this was a confusing one, because Beck meant different things to all of us. Peter made many mentions of his fascination with Beck-Ola, a very fine solo record with Rod Stewart singing. A lot of the people don’t remember the Yardbirds, but weirdly everyone in the Paranoid Style is obsessed with them. More shapes of Paranoid Style things coming soon.
Elizabeth Nelson is a DC-based journalist and singer-songwriter in the band the Paranoid Style. She also hosts the New Pony/Southwest Review podcast Known Associates, where she speaks to fellow writers, artists and musicians. Her new album—also titled Known Associates—will be released on Bar/None Records in February, 2026.
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