About the Song
From his 1970 album Singer of Sad Songs, “Time Between Bottles of Wine” is a lean, hard-hitting track that peels back the bravado often associated with Waylon Jennings and lays bare a man wrestling with the consequences of drinking, wandering, and trying to recollect himself. Sitting somewhere between the outlaw legend and the honest troubadour, this song remains a compelling piece of realness.
In this track, Waylon’s voice carries more wear, more shadow than usual—not just the swagger of an outlaw, but the recognition of damage done and roads gone cold. The lyric paints a picture of sleepless nights, fractured memories, and longing for something steadier. “There’s nothing so hard for a man on the bum / As the time between bottles of wine,” he sings, and it lands like a statement of truth rather than a lyric of defiance.
Musically, the arrangement supports that mood—sparse, straightforward, and focused on the lyric. Rather than big production flourishes, you get the economy of expression: a guitar, a rhythm section that sits back, and Waylon’s vocal up front. The space in the track allows you to feel the loneliness, the regret, the quiet despair that often hides behind songs about drinking and travelling.
For an older listener—or anyone who’s walked the long miles of life—“Time Between Bottles of Wine” strikes as a vital voice of vulnerability. It acknowledges that the bottle isn’t just company—it’s distraction, escape, and sometimes surrender. But it also acknowledges the time between the bottles: the empty hours, the waiting, the haunted awakening where you confront what you’ve done.
Within Waylon’s journey, this track is emblematic of the place he occupied: a man who’d earned the outlaw badge, yet never pretended it didn’t cost him. It’s not a celebration of that life—it’s a moment of reckoning. And that makes it one of the more emotionally resonant pieces in his catalog.