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There's plenty of feel-good humor on the new CD by The Drunk Uncles, scheduled for release at a Wednesday show at Southbound Bar and Grill in Knoxville's Old City.

Kooky characters ... plenty of references to beer-drinking and rough-housing ... even a cover of the Bob Marley classic "Three Little Birds," with local girl group The Naughty Knots providing female harmony.

But there's one song that resonates with the band's fiddle player, Blount County resident Gordy Gilbertson, on an entirely different level. If "Smashed Hits" is designed as a concept record about a night in a favorite little honky-tonk, then "The Man I Couldn't Be" is that moment of clarity on an otherwise blurry night where the subject takes stock of where he's been and where he's going.

Written by Gilbertson's Barb Hollow neighbor and Drunk Uncle bandmate Jeff Barbra, it's a biographical song of Gilbertson's life, sung by Gilbertson and book-ended on "Smashed Hits" by his voice from 35 years ago.

The story behind "The Man I Couldn't Be" dates back to Canada in the early 1970s, when Gilbertson was playing country music. Growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, he got his first guitar at 14 and knew almost immediately that he wanted to make music for a living.

"I played in high school, and I was in a country band from the time I was 18 up until 1969," Gilbertson told The Daily Times this week. "We had a chance to work with a booking agent in Saskatchewan, so we headed up and left for Western Canada. They would send us into places for a couple of weeks, so we were on the road stopping for a couple of weeks at a time.

"A couple of us had wives and kids at the time, so there we'd be, carrying playpens into the motel -- it was really different than what you'd picture a country band doing."

When his band first arrived in the Great White North, they were known as the River Valley Riders. The aforementioned booking agent, however, wanted to promote an American frontman, so Gilbertson was tapped. His last name, however, wasn't flashy enough, so the booking agent suggested he use his middle name. Gordy Dean and The Country Side were regionally popular in Western Canada in the early 1970s, and in 1974, he said, the group cut a single.

"Whispering Angel," the A-side of that vinyl 45, found a home on a number of Canadian radio stations. Dean, however, wasn't hip to the business side of things back then, however, and eventually the band broke up without fanfare. A few years later, he came to Blount County.

"I had a good friend, and his parents lived in Maryville, so I came down to visit," Gilbertson said. "I had quit playing up North because of the cold weather; I had chronic bronchitis, and the doctor had told me, instead of giving me medicine, to move West. I tried Colorado and New Mexico, but it was too dry of a climate, and I was miserable.

"I came here, and it was beautiful, and I felt good, too. I had a dairy farm up in Wisconsin that I put on the market, and within two weeks, I had moved to Tennessee. And after I got here, I noticed I didn't have to go to the doctor."

He started playing music again, mostly with local bands -- Homegrown Grass out of Wear's Valley, the Mountain Creek Band in Townsend. But after going through a divorce and getting his Barb Hollow woodworking shop up and running, he played music mostly as a hobby until he discovered The Drunk Uncles.

The band started around five years ago, when Barbra and his old friend Mike McGill put together a band to play the traditional country music from their childhoods. The Uncles played a few shows before line-up changes and job commitments sidelined the band; last year, however, Barbra and McGill picked up a steady gig at Backroom BBQ in Knoxville's Old City, and slowly but surely the weekly shows began to turn into the new version of The Drunk Uncles.

Gilbertson was brought on board after encouraging the guys to give it another go. He wasn't expecting to be handed membership, he said; he just enjoyed the music the guys made together and didn't want to see the band come to an end.

"I don't have the responsibilities I had back then, when I was the frontman," he said. "All I am now is a side man, so it's real easy. And the fact that I'm playing music again at 62 is kind of shocking to me. I never thought I'd get a third chance at it, especially doing the kind of music I love to do."

With the lineup fleshed out and an eye on recording a full-length debut, the guys cherry-picked their favorite country gems; Barbra, however, was inspired to write an original after hearing the story of Gilbertson's life.

"I was just telling Jeff what went wrong with my first marriage, and I told him everything," Gilbertson said. "My first wife was really a good Christian woman, and she wanted me to be a good Christian guy, but I just couldn't pretend. I was never really too happy, and I made a lot of mistakes -- it's a wonder she stuck with me through the years."

That tale would become "The Man I Couldn't Be," and when Jeff first played it in full, Gilbertson's children -- he and his first wife had four -- were there.

"He finished it and said, 'That's about your dad,' and they all basically got real quiet," Gilbertson said.

When it came time to put together "Smashed Hits," the guys wanted to contrast Gilbertson's voice on "The Man I Couldn't Be" with the voice with which he sang 35 years ago. As a result, the CD closes with bar chatter and "Whispering Angel" on the jukebox, an apropos ending that adds gravity to an otherwise light-hearded, fun-loving album.

"It was a real surprise, and I appreciate those guys doing that," Gilbertson said. "I can't speak the right words to explain how it felt. It was just kind of neat.

"And with this CD release show ... well, it just seems like the way things are going -- and I'm never one of those people who try to set their expectations too high -- that some opportunities might just come out of this."