Groan all you want about President-elect Donald Trump. After all, we certainly are. But there's a silver lining to the orange cloud of despair headed toward the White House. He's giving songwriters of the world four years of endless material. Which is why we've chosen to grab you by the ear pussies and make you listen to this new one by an Austin band with some OC roots. This week, the Rubilators—led by OC native Walter Clevenger—released “Grab This Country.” It's a cheery, guitar-strumming pop tune that reminds us that just about anything sounds good when paired with a few catchy chords—even the ideology of a racist, sexist, pompous, spray-tanned megalomaniac.
The song opens with that infamous sound bite between Trump and Billy Bush and sets off two minutes of satisfying satire.
“We gonna keep out all of the Muslims, cuz they don't worship like my mama do, we gonna kick out all of those Mexicans, cuz they're takin' jobs from me and you.”
Once you listen to it, you gotta admit, the catchy chorus really does grab you.
“[The lyrics] just came out,” Clevenger says. “Just spewing back everything Trump was saying and just making it even more obnoxious.”
A long-time Costa Mesa resident, who fronted the local band The Dairy Kings, Clevenger moved to Austin recently to further his music career. He says he wrote the bulk of the song the day after the election after sitting in a neighborhood bar staring up a TV, horrified as he watched the election results come in. “I never thought of writing a political commentary song like that before, it's always been about girls or relationship stuff,” he says. “That night as the results were coming in, you could feel a vibe in the air like something just wasn't right. At the end of the night, obviously we all knew how it went.”
Less than a week later, he and his band (longtime Austin musicians Lee Potter on drums and Vic Gerard on bass) recorded the song in his living room in two takes and mixed it all in one day. And now it's here for you to get your grabby little hands on. Enjoy!
