Justified Lines

I found this version of Dave Alvin's "Harlan County Line" a few weeks ago and have been playing it about once a day ever since.




Alvin wrote the song for the great television show Justified, and the original appears on his album Eleven Eleven. Justified just finished its fifth season -- for which I as a fan am grateful, for though it had some very interesting moments, the season as a whole is the bottom of the list. Yes, the first season seemed to be kind of disjointed, and yes, the third season couldn't find a focus and wasted Neal McDonough.

But even though the fifth season seemed designed as fan service -- Raylan no longer had his baby mama/ex-and-maybe-future wife and fanbase haterade magnet Winona around, so he could chase anything in a skirt out of it, and Boyd Crowder got to be all criminally genius Boyd Crowdery (except when he was dumb as dirt), and intentionally dumb as dirt Dewey Crowe had a whole family of Crowes around -- it still stunk, by Justified standards, anyway. Season six is the final one, so here's hoping for the odd-even pattern to continue and we get a great sendoff.

And, just for the record, Alvin's "Harlan County Line" is so much better than the lame Gangstagrass-performed "Long Hard Times to Come" that it may actually be a crime to use the latter as the show's theme song. I don't know Kentucky law well, but I'll look into it first chance I get.