Jonny Corndawg: Down on the Bikini Line

Close your eyes and imagine what an album called Down on the Bikini Line by a dude named Jonny Corndawg sounds like — congratulations, you’re right! That’s not a bad thing, though. On his debut, Corndawg (nee Fritz) wends his way through ten charming, twangy, too-weird-to-have-been-country-classics-in-’73, honest and bighearted; he’s more Shel Silverstein poet than David Allan Coe dirtbag. Opener “Shaved (Like a Razor)” is about as risqué as it gets (though your interpretation of the maybe-cunnilingus-joke/a cappella hymn “Silver Pantie Liners” may vary from mine); mostly, he sticks to goofy tunes like “Life of a Bear” (“Bears live under bear laws / Bears will band together!”), “When a Ford Man Turns to Chevy” (“…an angel gets its wings”) and the joke-that-gets-real-sad “Undercover Dad”, where Corndawg’s narrator reads his daughter’s diary “to be a better friend” but by the end “[his] cover’s blown / I’ve cried all over the page / So much for undercover dad.” Corndawg reels you in with some good shtick — the blatant country signposts like weepy pedal steel guitar, the big rig and prostitute on the album cover, ringers like Deer Tick’s John McCauley, the freakin’ album title — but you’ll stick around for the genuine craftsmanship.