Sinking Radio: Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down

Here's my weekly reminder to tune in to Sinking with Sylvia and Todd (and Matt Dwyer) Friday from Noon to 2:00 PM on Little Radio. Tomorrow their guests will be Adeline and the Philistines. The Philistines features Jim Putnam (Radar Bros.), Aaron Kyle (Le Switch) and Stevie Treichel and Brian Cleary from the Movies. It should be a lot of fun.

Each week on the show, the hosts are cool enough to play an official You Set the Scene pick. My pick this week is Kris Kristofferson's "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down." The song got stuck in my head earlier today after interviewing Ross Flournoy from the Broken West (I'll post the interview early Friday). Ross recommended a Nick Lowe track called "Lately I've Let Things Slide" and after dutifully downloading it on iTunes, the song immediately made me think of this great KK song. Probably Lowe's lyric about digging a shirt out of the hamper...it's a pretty close cousin to KK's lyric about putting on his "cleanest dirty shirt."

The lyrics to "Sunday Mornin' Comin' Down" are absolutely fucking devastating. You know a song's probably pretty fucking good if Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings (and Ray Stevens probably had the biggest hit with it) all feel compelled to record it. Sunday's a common subject matter for writers (I don't have much of my music on my computer, and I can see that the idea of Sunday has inspired Apples in Stereo, Beck, Beirut, Bloc Party, Elvis Costello and Nick Drake). But few have captured a notion of Sunday as well as Kristofferson. "Well, I woke up Sunday mornin' with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt." And it gets better from there. He never explicitly says what led to his loneliness, letting the listener to fill in blanks. His imagery and wordplay are something songwriters should study. The guy's story is fascinating and varied and it's no surprise that he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Next time you're at a record store with a good used vinyl selection, do yourself a favor and pick up some Kris Kristofferson. His early records sell for under a few dollars and you might even get lucky with the dollar bin. I was lucky enough to catch his set at Stagecoach a couple of years ago and he blew me away (with just an acoustic guitar).

Tune in tomorrow to listen. If you can't you can stream it on his Myspace page too.

P.S. Johnny Cash completely owns the song when he sings it. It's hard to believe, but it might be even better than Kristofferson's version.