Sometimes a few too many beers just leads to a nasty headache and a couple regrettable texts. Other times the night turns bad enough to inspire a whole song.
Phil Bregant of Milwaukee band Wire & Nail imagines one such night at Just Art’s Saloon, a longtime dive bar in Walker’s Point, captained by local legend Art Guenther on their new song “Too Drunk.”
From about 2019 to 2022, Bregant lived next door to the bar and became a regular alongside his bandmates.
“[One night,] as people do, I played way too many games of dice with Art, and ended up making a couple bad decisions,” Bregant says. The memory served as a springboard for a fictional honky tonk tale of far worse decisions on “Too Drunk, ” which follows “an embellished character” who gets into a fight, drives drunk and crashes his car into a telephone pole.
The tale of boozy bad decisions “goes out to” Guenther, who died in August at age 80. The bar, powered largely by the force of his personality, shuttered.
“Too Drunk” begins with a voicemail that Guenther left for Wire & Nail drummer Cass Borgardt – “a perfect nine seconds of exactly Art.”
Bregant has many fond memories of the bartender, well-known for his wild humor and total willingness to say anything and everything on his mind.
“He was the first person to make fun of you, to your own detriment, in front of your friends, your girlfriend. But he would also be the first person to help you out,” Bregant says. “He was a good dude. He was pretty rough around the edges, and he was definitely a polarizing character to some people, but that was his bartender pizzazz.”
Bregant remembers coming home late from gigs on many nights, peering in Just Art’s window, spotting Guenther behind the bar, knocking and then sharing a drink. He admired the older man’s willingness to operate on his own whims – staying open late when he was having a good time and closing abruptly when he wasn’t feeling it.
“He was kind of neighborhood watch,” Bregant says. “He was the first person to let me know if someone got too close to my car or if I was about to get a ticket. … If you got to know him, you learned that there was a lot more depth to him than just the standard jokes he would tell anyone that came in for the first time.
“So many people would go there just to check it out and get an opportunity to talk with this dude who became a legend for being so funny and unbelievably smart – but also would say whatever he wanted to, which would definitely piss a couple people off.”
“Too Drunk” is available to stream on Apple Music and Spotify now.
