The Wednesdays

    The Wednesdays

    Florence, Alabama8 reviews across 3 releases

    alternative countryblues rockpunkrockabilly
    Discogs

    The Wednesdays was an Alabama trio from Florence built around the three Barrier brothers, with its first recorded material dating to December 1996. The 1997 debut American Midnight used cowpunk, rockabilly, and blues as a starting point, with rough vocals and a compact five-song format. By Midnight Songs in Time of War in 1999, the guitars had thickened into distorted punk while retaining Elvis-like swagger, mournful rockabilly singing, and occasional quiet acoustic passages. The lyrics moved from heartbreak and loneliness toward stories of alcoholism and the struggle to distinguish truth from lies, while the Christian themes remained indirect rather than preachy. The band's most characteristic contradiction was structural: the title song was missing from the disc, although its lyrics appeared in the booklet. Even reviewers who found the production thin heard unusual variety in the collision of garage melody with Southern imagery.

    In January 1999, the band played at Stanton Draper Correctional Facility outside Montgomery, a performance later issued as Live in an Alabama Prison. The set kept its blues base but pushed toward high-energy punk, with hymn material and a country-polka detour. Around the same period, Jamie Barrier also helped form the Pine Hill Haints, an Alabama band that became his continuing musical outlet. The Wednesdays remained active beyond Midnight Songs in Time of War: Arkam issued Fury in 2001, later releases carried the group into the mid-2000s, and Constant Radio appeared in 2016. Barrier also ran Arkam Records, which eventually issued the band's 1996 recordings as a self-titled 7-inch in 2007.

    3 releases reviewed