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WeeklyBeats.com / Music / sleepside's music / White Lightning

White Lightning

By sleepside on March 22, 2026 11:54 pm

A little Mountain Goats worship, a lead bass, trumpet samples, what more do you need?

› Lyrics

This song is a fictionalization of my great-grandfather, who supposedly ran moonshine (aka white lightning) during Prohibition in the US.

Drums are all M8 synths, electric bass was recorded live, the trumpet is from the "360 from Mars" Samples from Mars library (sequenced on M8), and the noise transitions are a reversed recorded of a distorted electric guitar

Bundle link (will include bundles for all my WB M8 Tracks)

Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike (BY-NC-SA)

Wow! Such a soulful vibe
Great vocal, great track!!!

This is nice.  The lyrics paint some evocative imagery and tell an interesting story.  Everything sounds great, but the bass really stood out to me as an important element in the song, and also just sounding particularly good.

It's all you need for a good time

In the UK White Lightning is vicious cheap cyder.

Nice vibe with the trumpets.

Bluesy and cool. Had to check out the Mountain Goats and I really get the inspiration. Your track feels a bit more intimate with the lofi drums and sparse instrumentation. Every sound feels very deliberate because of that sparseness. Great job on the lyrics too, the way you sing "Hail Mary" reminds me of "Old Mary" by The Dead Weather.

Bearcage wrote:

Wow! Such a soulful vibe
Great vocal, great track!!!

Thank you!


Cosmic Cairns wrote:

This is nice.  The lyrics paint some evocative imagery and tell an interesting story.  Everything sounds great, but the bass really stood out to me as an important element in the song, and also just sounding particularly good.

Thank you! The bass is a cheap Rogue run through the Sustainaid preset on a Fender Mustang Pro, with a bit of saturation and eq on the M8. Getting bass and vox to carry the harmony without needing guitar/pads was one of my goals, so I'm glad that worked for you

DESLRV wrote:

It's all you need for a good time

Hell yeah. Thank you!

NickLong wrote:

In the UK White Lightning is vicious cheap cyder.

Nice vibe with the trumpets.

Thank you! The trumpet was a "throw it in" idea, so I'm glad it worked for you

The only week I've been to the UK, all the ciders were nice and smooth. Looks like White Lightning got discontinued years before I came. But this

Wikipedia wrote:

Heineken decided to discontinue its manufacture due to its brand image problem in the United Kingdom as having become synonymous with under-age drinking, anti-social behaviour, homelessness and impoverished alcoholism

Is on-brand for moonshine too

Dustsucker wrote:

Bluesy and cool. Had to check out the Mountain Goats and I really get the inspiration. Your track feels a bit more intimate with the lofi drums and sparse instrumentation. Every sound feels very deliberate because of that sparseness. Great job on the lyrics too, the way you sing "Hail Mary" reminds me of "Old Mary" by The Dead Weather.

Thank you! The sparseness is partially intentional (I wanted vox + bass to be strong enough not to need full chord backing) and partially because I usually don't have the bones of a song done until Sunday. I do like spare arrangements, so it works out, but I'd like to go fuller one day.

(Always like when Jack White goes weird, like "Old Mary." And he's so good at the blue note thing I'm trying)

Great tribute, very appropriate slightly ragged vocal delivery.

fetalface wrote:

Great tribute, very appropriate slightly ragged vocal delivery.

Thank you! I have no idea what he actually sounded like, so I choose to believe this is a flawless impression

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