White Horse | Wooden Horse Tavern | Roman Empire | YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
Today’s tune is White Horse by Chris Stapleton. This tune came out in ‘23.
Born on April 15, 1978, in Lexington, Kentucky, Stapleton grew up in eastern Kentucky. He started to write songs and play the guitar when he was a teenager, learning how to play the guitar after taking just one formal lesson.
Chris Stapleton’s parents listened to a ton of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. He also credits his high school days of listening to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg as hugely influencing his music style. At just 18 years old, Chris Stapleton moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended school Vanderbilt University to study biomedical engineering. He dropped out within his first year, not having the passion for the studies, and returned home to Kentucky to sell cars, drive an ice truck, and work at a pizzeria while he wrote songs to play at pubs.
In ‘01, Chris Stapleton moved back to Nashville and signed with a publishing company to become a full-time songwriter. He credits meeting and working with Nashville songwriter Steve Leslie for giving him the idea that he should pursue a songwriting career. When he moved back to Nashville, Chris Stapleton had no intentions of becoming a performing artist. He wrote his first Billboard #1 hit, “Your Man”, for Josh Turner in ‘06. In ‘07, he wrote Kenny Chesney's “Never Wanted Nothing More.” In ‘10, he wrote Darius Rucker’s “Come Back Song.” In ‘14, he wrote Luke Bryan’s “Drink a Beer.”
It wasn’t until ‘15 that Chris Stapleton produced his debut album called Traveller. The inspiration behind his first album came from a road trip he took with his wife after his father passed away. Later that year at the Country Music Awards, Stapleton performed his rendition of Tennessee Whiskey with Justin Timberlake, which only helped further his rise to stardom. After the CMAs in ‘15, Traveller found its way to the top of the country album chart.
As of today, Stapleton has won 8 Grammy Awards. Last year he performed the National Anthem at the Super Bowl. The other cool part of his story is that he has gotten to perform with the likes of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, as well as Snoop Dogg for the ‘23 opening theme song of Monday Night Football.
Strong intro, he sets the scene for a relationship that may be a powder keg. Stapleton told American Songwriter that “My mind, it’s turning like a cloud of dust” is one of his favorite lyrics because “That’s probably the thing in the song that feels the most personal to me, just because that’s a constant battle with me, just racing thoughts and a mind that wanders a bit.”
It’s sort of a love song but in a different way than most. Plenty of times on Week to Week Notes, there have been Sad Song Sundays, which are great, but I like White Horse because it’s about a guy being able to admit he’s not finished with what he’s got to do. Not that women should sit around waiting for a knight in shining armor, but what’s the problem with the message of men trying to improve themselves first?
A lot of “love” songs today are either very emotional “Sorry, I’m a f*** up, please take me back,” or passive-aggressive type of pettiness. (Okay, Drake probably falls into this category but we ignore this on Mondays.) This tune isn’t either, it’s more, “Hey I still gotta figure out my shit out first and you can hold on tightif you’d like.” Call me ‘90s old-fashioned but there is some beauty to that. Stapleton said he wrote this song with his friend Dan Wilson in LA around ‘12 or ‘13 when there was a remake of Johnny Depp’s Disney film The Lone Ranger.
“I walked in the room to write with Dan at his house, and he said, ‘Hey they’re looking for songs for this Lone Ranger movie.’ I said, ‘Cool. Let’s write something. What do you know about it?’ He goes, ‘Well, we don’t really know anything.’ I was like, ‘Well, let’s just make a song that might sound like that.’ And so, that’s kind of where that came from, and we got to talking about how it would be cool to have a kind of rock-driven-western-themed song, and that’s kind of where the song came from and we kind of built it around a guitar riff, really.” (Source: IHeartRadio)
White Horse Tavern, NYC
Back in late August, I went Stumblin’ Along the Financial District of New York City and I stopped for 1 at White Horse Tavern. Great spot with $6 pints of Guinness located at 25 Bridge St, New York, NY 10004. In case you can’t read the sign above, it states…
“In 1641, on this approximate site, a fur trader named Philip Geraerdy became the first private tavern owner in the original Dutch settlement, opening the Wooden Horse (Het Houten Paard). Named after a torture device of the era, the tavern’s name provoked controversy so Geraerdy changed it a few years later to the White Horse Tavern. The current building dates to the mid-19th century, reflecting the architecture of New York’s mercantile era.”
Bridge Street is one of the oldest blocks in New York and the Dutch loved a nice pint, even if Guinness wouldn’t be invented until 1759. This Philip Geraerdy fur trading fella owned the first bar in America and this sicko decided to name it after a torture device that was inflicted on him when he was a soldier. Now before you scroll any further, fellas, make sure to hide the wives, don’t want to give them any ideas…
Jesus, Mary, & Joseph, it’s worse than I thought when they mentioned it to me while I was getting a pint. Ladies, if you want to try this with your man, Mark Caldwell in his book, New York Night: The Mystique and Its History, mentions having them “straddle two boards nailed together to form a sharp wedge that rested on four legs.” (Source: Bowery Boys History)
I’ve had enough of this, let’s read about the Roman Empire…
This Week’s Bit on The Roman Empire
This week your quick bit on The Roman Empire brought to you by Week to Week Notes featuring Ancient Rome: The Exhibition in New York is on the Praetorians.
The Praetorian Guard was an elite unit of the Imperial Roman Army. Their main task was to protect the Roman emperors, but only with Augustus were they ever really assigned as personal security escorts. Augustus is credited for being the emperor who created the Praetorian Guard so that makes sense. They were sorta like how the Secret Service protects the US President today, but not quite because it was 27 BC. After about 3 centuries of their existence, they became known for their palace intrigues, meaning they would use their political powers to scheme up plans to overthrow the current emperor and then proclaim a successor. In 312 AD, Constantine The Great had enough of the Praetorian Guard games and they were disbanded.
The marble relief above was said to have been created around 51 or 52 AD from the Arch of Claudius in Rome. It depicts soldiers who have been identified as Praetorians because of the richness of their apparel and the fact that their shields were a bit more oval.
Around A.D. 23, they had established their fortress called the Castra Praetoria which was located on the outskirts of Rome. Outside of just being the emperor’s bodyguards, they also had side jobs like emergency firefighting. While Rome had established firefighting crops called the “Vigiles,” Praetorians Guardsman would lend a hand here and there sometimes just for the public relations component of the emperor sending out his guards for disaster relief. For fun, the Praetorian Guard would also participate in “naumachia,” or staged sea battles. In these events, 19,000 men and upwards of 100 boats would clash in a mock naval engagement at Fucine Lake. That sounds absurd, but then again these were the Roman Gladiator Days so I guess this was pretty tame.
When they weren’t having fun, the Praetorian Guard would act as a secret police force where they would engage in espionage, intimidation, arrests, and killings on behalf of the best interests of the Roman emperor. Sometimes, however, they would turn on their emperors. They engineered the assassination of Caligula and the selection of Claudius as his successor back in A.D. 41. They also played a role in the murder of some dudes named Commodus in 192, Caracalla in 217, Elagabalus in 222 and Pupienus and Balbinus in 238. Once in A.D. 68, they were the reason Galba got to the throne and then just a year later they had him whacked for neglecting to properly reward them for his ascension. They were also total sellouts. Once in A.D. 193, they murdered Emperor Pertinax and then blatantly put the throne up for auction. What finally brought an end to their games was in 312 when the Praetorian Guard tried to play Kingmaker and supported Maxentius. War for the throne broke out that took up to 6 years and when Emperor Constantine finally defeated Maxentius & the Praetorian Guard, Constantine no longer felt the Emperor’s guards could be trusted. No kidding. (Source: History)