The Cadillac Three released their third single for Big Machine records today, a slow burning electric jam called “White Lightning.” Written by Jaren Johnston, the group’s Grammy nominated songwriter frontman, for his wife Evyn, “White Lightning” has an old southern rock feel much like The Black Crowes “She Talks to Angels” or Marshall Tucker Band’s “Can’t You See.” Straight forward in its lyric, Jaren writes “She stole my heart, faster than a heat seeking missile on a mission, faster than a bass through the hoop when daddy’s fishin.” It’s every man, Americana spirit (he later reference’s Dale Earnhardt, Steve McQueen, and Elvis) deftly compliments the live drums, slide guitar and rock’n’roll intensity of Jaren’s vocal.
As far as singles go, it’s hard to predict where “White Lightning” will go in the effort to push TC3 to the mainstream listener. It’s not a summer jam like we’d be used to receiving from a new artist right before the summer tours begin, nor the fly-by-night, live-while-we’re-young attitude of most “love” songs released in this period. I get the impression that neither Big Machine chief Scott Borchetta nor the band themselves care too much to fit in with anything else. Jaren is not the typical Nashville frontman, playing to a 25-40 female demographic only, cultivating a solid image behind marketing and designer jeans; nor is the rest of the band, who each write and play on projects and with writers in town. There is a patience to the idea of The Cadillac Three, a commitment to make music they love and believe in, and play the shows they play until their time comes for the spotlight, if it comes at all.
And it’s working; TC3 fans have become an underground force to be reckoned with, similar to the way Eric Church built a career from the ground up, one song, album, and venue at a time. Long view is not an easily found trait among label heads in Nashville, especially in this market of declining revenue and fast singles, but like Church before them, TC3 might carve out their own corner of the market by consistently releasing great songs aimed directly at their fans, with success measured in the years, not the days or weeks. It’s nearly impossible not to root for that. White lightning, in that sense, fits that bill completely.