Now that sounds like a country song… and it became one. This week, the lead singer of southern rock outfit Blackberry Smoke, Charlie Starr, stopped by the Drifting Cowboy Podcast to talk about his journey in music, the band’s humble beginnings, and of course, he told some wild stories about their early days playing in small bars. This happened many years ago, and Starr recalled they were playing about 250 shows a year back the, which is just astounding. During a few night run in Austell, Georgia, Blackberry Smoke was playing both covers and originals during their set to make a full night, and their late drummer Brit Turner had his then-girlfriend, later wife, Shannon there too. She was sitting there watching them play, when all of a sudden, Charlie heard the drums stop. He saw Brit run offstage and dive on some guy near the bar, and he started beating him up. Apparently, he had been flirting with Shannon and got a little too handsy, and obviously Brit did NOT like that. At one point, they took a break from the set, and Charlie and the band were standing over at the bar having a beer. All of a sudden, he heard a voice behind him and felt a glass beer bottle crack over his head: “And I hear a guy go, ‘Which one of y’all beat my a** last night?’ And before I could turn, a bottle crashed over my head, and I wound up on the floor. And I balled up, and I’m getting kicked, and I hear just wreckage going on. And that dude had come back with a group of his friends, and jumped on all of us. And everybody, like, our whole band and the dudes that were in the bar then, like there was a big bar room brawl. And I remember, the kicking stopped pretty quick. I remember thinking, I was kinda out for a second, but I remember thinking, I’m gonna get a rib broken. This is like a movie. This is how people get put in the hospital. They left me alone.” It’s the kind of thing you see in movies, but had to be absolutely insane in real life… Brit says one of the bartenders eventually walked over to him and asked if he could walk, and told him not to touch his head… because he had a huge piece of glass, from the Corona bottle, sticking out of his head: “A bartender girl came over and said, ‘Oh, sugar. Come with me. Can you get up? and I was like, ‘I think so.’ And she goes,’ Don’t touch her head. Don’t touch your head.’ I had a big old piece of glass hanging out of my head, a Corona bottle. So she takes me into the office, and lays me down on the ground, and put a jacket under my head. And she pulled it out, she pulled that piece of glass out. It was just kind of sticking in the skin, but she gave me a towel and she’s like, ‘Put pressure on it.’ I did. And then the bar owner, he’s in the doorway, they’ve cleared the bar, and he’s like, ‘I knew better than to hire y’all. I knew y’all were nothing but trouble.'” Brit ended up with 11 stitches in his head, and he says no, in retrospect, he wishes he could’ve seen the fight but obviously, he was majorly down for the count: “And I thought, when does anything like this ever happen. And so they called me an ambulance, and they put me on a gurney, you know, which was all pretty extreme. I wound up having 11 stitches in my head… So that was one of our wildest stories… that was real. I wish I could have seen the fight, but my eyes were full of blood.” I can’t even imagine… that’s one the wildest ones I’ve heard that’s actually real and true. Luckily, he wasn’t hurt worse, but 11 stitches in the head isn’t exactly ideal, either. Brit says the whole experience inspired their song  “Sleeping Dogs,” which was included on their 2012 album The Whippoorwill, and certainly captures the essence of that story and how it all went down at a “funky little joint on the edge of town…” The full podcast is available below. “Sleeping Dogs” The post Blackberry Smoke Frontman, Charlie Starr, Recalls INSANE Bar Fight That Landed Him In The Hospital With 11 Stitches: “A Big Piece Of Glass [In my] Head” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.