Lightning Stills

Lightning Stills has seen some things, drank some things, and wound up loaded on a gurney, all to keep that inevitable Sunday morning from coming down.


On the five-song EP “Sings His Songs,” Lightning Stills strums and sings his misdemeanor outlaw country tales alongside multi-instrumentalist and wizard of the steel Mike Friedman, with Chris Kelley (BACK WHEN, MONTEE MEN) on bass and the elusive Darren Broderick on drums. On “Passed Out on the Bar,” a single dose of desert-tinged Americana perfection, Lightning Stills, Friedman, and Broderick are joined on bass and vocals by the legendary Junkyard Dan.


In a suit that would make Nudie proud—bejeweled, embroidered, and glorious, Lightning Stills arose from the liquor-soaked tar and the ashy mud of a barroom floor to share his host of honky-tonk laments: coming home after a hard day’s work to find his lover three sheets to the wind; hearing “last call” and spending long nights counting rows, snorting hard-earned cash straight up his nose. He’s prayed for simple things, like getting from the barstool to a leftover pizza at home without being cuffed on the sidewalk in between. He’s landed in a joint with whitecoats who told him it was time to walk the line. He’s loved and lost, and, in the end, thought, “It’s all a warsh.”


And maybe it would be, if he hadn’t put pen to paper, voice to guitar, and turned heartbreak and habits into a new, roughhewn balladeer.
- Chris Harding Thorton