Rodeo clowns bring levity to the drama and muscle of cattle and man — a titanic struggle that can be a metaphor for just about anything. With his rodeo days behind him, Sloppy Scales sets his sights on political satire, incorporating country music and sounds south of the border in his own sonic melodramas. Alongside Atlanta’s Guilherme Shakespeare, the house band for the venue Buteco, Scales turns to the good old days on his song “When I Was 13.”
This time, Scales is his own target.
“‘When I Was 13’ represents a departure from my usual heavy-duty political satire, leaning instead into a more curmudgeonly, humorous reflection on generational differences,” he explains. “I aimed to balance the ridiculousness of all my songs with a touch of the sublime. Musically, I’d call it a ‘hillbilly samba’ anthem. It fuses a country-western train beat with authentic Brazilian samba batucada rhythms.”
And, of course, he go ta little help from his friends.
“Bret Busch and Lauren Gracco bring true country soul to the vocals, while the band ventures into some sarcastic musical ornamentation.”
Sloppy Scales’ debut album This Machine Mocks Fascists: The Sloppy Scales Songbook (out Dec. 20) is a hilarious Latin countrypolitan blues-rock bulldogging of America’s far-right politics. It’s refreshingly incendiary in its raw condemnation of injustice. It’s modern sad-clown music. It mirrors the humanist perspective of Woody Guthrie, while charting Sloppy Scales’ whimsically tragic biographical odyssey to this collection of songs. And, in equal parts, it’s a scathing and inflammatory takedown of radically conservative, bigoted and ultra-nationalist politics. He takes particular aim at Donald J. Trump, the MAGA movement, the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, and the racist, xenophobic and fear-mongering elements that have become the norm in our modern politics.