Sometimes it pays to speak your mind. Sometimes it comes back to bite you. And sometimes it gets you an album of raucous, booze-soaked songs with names like “The Prettiest Girl at the Shelter.”
Enter Lefty McRighty. The Ottawa-based songwriter, promoter, and radio host plays old-style country music. He took part of his name from honky-tonk singer Lefty Frizzell, and, like with most other things, McRighty has plenty to say about it.
“It was a silly joke, but it got people’s attention,” McRighty said of the name. “It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t even like it anymore, but it’s gotten me this far, so I kind of have to keep it.”
This bold streak carries through into his songs. McRighty’s second album, April 2012’s Nashville Roadkille, tackles topics like promiscuity, drinking, murder, and, perhaps most bizarrely, the invention of poutine. Through risqué humour and shock value, his songs stand out, he said.
“If I can go onstage and just say, ‘This is a song about tits,’ everyone in the bar is going to go, ‘Huh?’” McRighty said.
“But if I say, ‘This is a song about working for the man,’ they’ll go like, ‘Ugh, it’s another country song.’”
McRighty even markets himself with this bad boy appeal in mind. A press email jokes that three Ottawa clubs have banned him from playing. This is a slight exaggeration, as McRighty admitted in person, and has more to do with losing an ex-drummer’s close connections than any onstage antics.
This hard-partying persona takes cues as much from McRighty’s previous interests in punk and heavy metal as it does from 1970s country stars like Waylon Jennings, he said. It also stands in stark contrast to the clean, poppy “new” country ruling the radio dial and the Billboard charts.
But the image has its limits. McRighty has been looking for ways to balance his crass, novel songs with more family-friendly fare, and he freely admitted he plays up the persona to get media and fan attention. Still, he just can’t quit the routine.
“I did go through a period a couple years ago where I completely absolved myself of all those songs and stopped playing them because I wanted everyone to take me seriously as a songwriter,” McRighty said. “So I just started doing that, but everyone just wanted to hear the dirty songs. So now I’m doing like a mixture of both.”
