The Town Fryer in Cleveland is now closed. This is a travesty because it was the type of place that you could go and see music that would change your life for a five buck cover. If you were there early enough you could hear phenomenal music from their jukebox. They had one of the three best jukeboxes I’ve ever seen in a bar. The other two were at The Green Parrot in Key West and Grumpy’s in Falmouth. But the Town Fryer was something special and we lost something important when it closed. What we lost was the ability to discover music on the cheap and away from the five-hundred dollar VIP packages the summer tour festival sells you. Music in bars on a Friday night.

Before the Fryer closed I was there, writing a long article on J.B. Beverley and The Wayward Drifters for this website. After soundcheck J.B. and I sat in a booth and talked over a Budweiser. The bartender played music from the jukebox. We talked and laughed and J.B. looked at me and said, “You know who this is?” He nodded toward the juke. I listened. It was familiar, that voice, that thump and stomp of bass and drum, but there was something about it that kept me from naming names. I hadn’t heard it before but it was so close I could taste it.

“Waylon Jennings?” I said.

J.B. laughed.

“Nope. Whitey Morgan and the 78s. Know them?”

I said I didn’t.

“You need to listen to them. Do not miss out.”

This is how I discovered Whitey Morgan and the 78s music from the perfect triple play: a good bar, an excellent jukebox and the forceful recommendation from a man whose taste in music I trusted.

Two albums under their belt, Whitey Morgan and the 78s have now put out a live album, recorded in their hometown of Flint, Michigan. From the opening rip of “Buick City” to the closing notes of their phenomenal cover of Hank Williams’ “Mind Your Own Business” Born, Raised and Live from Flint delivers a tight, raucous ride. The influence of Waylon Jennings is there and it is unmistakable. But to toss off Whitey Morgan’s music because of the overt Jennings influence would be like tossing away the Allman Brothers’ music because of the overt Elmore James and Muddy Waters influence. You don’t do it. Instead, you accept it and see where these guys have taken it, how they have shaped and warped it, how they have made it their own. And made it their own they have. This is as much a rock and roll album as it is an outlaw country album, and the more I listen to good outlaw country music, the more I see just how much rock and roll it really is. Do genre classifications matter? Hell no. What matters is how the band played in front of the crowd, how tight they were, how much they pushed themselves. With those as markers, Born, Raised and Live from Flint is one of the best live albums put out this year. It’s one of the tightest and best albums this year. Listen to how the pedal steel comes in over the bass and drums in “Cocaine Train” or how Whitey bends his voice in “Honky Tonk Queen,” it is all done in service of the song, in the pocket and improvising. The rhythm section of the 78s will take you back to school for meat and potatoes lessons in groove. This is the type of music, and live set, that you want to see in a dark bar, the type of place that still allows smoking, where the women dance and drink cold longnecks and throw their arms around your shoulders and talk into your ear, where you can see the sweat on the musician’s faces and leave shots for them at their feet to drink in between songs. This isn’t music for short sets at outdoor festivals, it is for headlining nights and one night stands where the sound is good and the band can open up. Thankfully, Whitey Morgan and the 78s were captured at such a place and on a great night. Now it is just up to us to listen, to hear it.

But it is really up to us to get out and see these bands in these places so that venues like the Town Fryer don’t close. If we don’t we’ll be left with nothing but high ticket prices and a marketing major’s wet dream of special packages. The best package after all is one without pretension, just an excellent band with a lot of time to play, and a good crowd giving off the right vibes. Born , Raised and Live from Flint is exactly this. Do not miss out.