Song Premiere: A Drug Called Tradition “With You Miss You”

Abby Gogo were a glimmering if characteristically chaotic source of psych-rock sustenance during their nine (give or take?) years slugging it out in Atlanta’s (by way of Tuscaloosa’s) underground slime. Aside from soaking in the radiant reverberations of their recurring live shows and their terrific album (which I think was self-titled but I usually just called Stripe Tits) (and which still sounds excellent, BTW), most of my memories of them revolve around feeble attempts to tell the two twins, Jon and Bon, apart. Which one was the friendly bloke behind the bar at the Star Bar? Which one would I see wandering the sidewalks of L5P in increasingly disheveled states? Which one played with Dasher for a minute? Did one of them have a nose ring? Shit, I dunno. But they were a good band.

So a couple years ago everyone sorta started to realize that Abby Gogo had gone bye-bye and there was a new drug in town – A Drug Called Tradition. Named (I assume) after the Sherman Alexie short story involving tripping Indians, the trio consists of Abby Gogo co-founder Bon Allinson (the one that wasn’t Jon) on guitar and vocals, Pumakawa “Puma” Navarro (who was just called PJ when he played with Abby Gogo) on drums, and Asha Lakra (from Tikka and other local bands) (and sound engineer extraordinaire) (and one of the sweetest people in Atlanta) on bass guitar. Their sound isn’t radically removed from Abby Gogo’s stoned-but-steady excursions into the Southern gay-shoes stratosphere…perhaps with a heavier presence, sharper rhythms, a firmer sense of purpose. They’ve been playing a lot around town since 2015, and have only refined with time. After honing a solid set of songs, the three of them trekked to someplace called Water Valley, Mississippi to record their first album with producer Matt Patton, who’s been behind the boards for records by the Drive-By Truckers and Dexateens. Somehow escaping unscathed, they are now releasing the resulting LP, Medicine Music, on Friday, July 28th. That same night they’ll headline The EARL for a much-deserved celebration.

Over here at the S&S bunker we all gobbled a wheelbarrow full of peyote a little while ago and now we’re so drooling-from-our-eyeballs high we decided it’d be a good idea to share this eight-minute dose of enlightenment from Medicine Music called “With You Miss You.” Tune in, turn on, rock out…