\n<\/p>\n
\n\tMark Wystrach of Midland<\/a> refuses to accept the fact that he once owned overalls. \u201cNope, not me,\u201d he says, seated on a velvet couch in a mysterious secret wing of Garth Brooks\u2019 Nashville bar, Friends in Low Places, his feet kicked up on the coffee table. Today, he\u2019s wearing jeans, a striped pearl snap, and a hat, but I remind him that, last time we met up<\/a> around the release of their second album Let It Roll<\/em>, there was a mustache, a mullet, and most definitely a pair of overalls.<\/p>\n \n\tHe still denies it. Am I sure?<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou had overalls on when you played fucking Kimmel<\/em>, dude,\u201d his bandmate\/bassist Cameron Duddy says. He\u2019s tucked next to Wystrach on the couch with more than a few of his shirt buttons undone. Wystrach eventually concedes: Turns out, there is photographic proof. \u201cRegrets, I\u2019ve had a few<\/em>,\u201d he sings, before he, Duddy, and guitarist Jess Carson devolve into a conversation about the merits and comfort levels of various styles of overalls. Wystrach turns my way and says, with a dead straight face, \u201cYou getting all this?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOver the past 12 years as a band, Midland have made only a couple of questionable fashion choices. They\u2019ve made plenty of generally questionable life choices, as bands thrust into the limelight tend to do. Many of them involved alcohol. Out the window facing Lower Broadway, Duddy looks down at the famous honky-tonk they once got kicked out of (Robert\u2019s Western World<\/a>) for circumstances (intoxication, unnamed bandmember falling backwards off a stool, and something Duddy said to a bartender) that they refuse to repeat \u201cuntil the statute of limitations is up.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThese days, they\u2019re in a reflective, slightly more demure mode. Besides, Duddy says, \u201cWe can\u2019t afford rehab.\u201d They\u2019re fathers, husbands, business owners, and bandmates who Wystrach insists have been through the wringer and almost broken up a couple of times (Duddy disagrees: \u201cMark is just a sensitive soul and feels everything\u201d). And now, with neotrad sounds and Urban Cowboy<\/a> revivalists dominating country music<\/a>, they\u2019re also true trendsetters.<\/p>\n