October 5, 2015

The Bottle Rockets’ Latest, “South Broadway Athletic Club,” Is One of Their Best

Todd Fox

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The Bottle Rockets
South Broadway Athletic Club
Bloodshot

Utterly familiar yet amazingly fresh on every album, Brian Henneman and company have made loose-jointed, empathetic roots-rock for more than two decades. South Broadway Athletic Club ranks among their best. Spiritual cousins of Drive-By Truckers, with less tragedy and more wry humor, this lovable St. Louis quartet honors people who don’t merit headlines, including the auto worker with a bad attitude (“Chrysler”), the dude with a canine best friend (“Dog”) and someone whose idea of a good time is wasting time (“Big Fat Nuthin'”).

The Bottle Rockets’ nimble mix of boogie, blues, and country provides the perfect setting for Henneman’s twangy everyman vocals. He’s been one of pop’s more underrated singers for a long time, but it’s never too late to get on the bandwagon.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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