If honky-tonks didn’t exist, County music would have had to invent them, because they are one of the genre’s most popular tropes, a cycle supported by the writers and singers who write and sing about honky-tonks, and the listeners who listen.
Enter “Down To The Honky Tonk” by Jake Owens, hot off of his #1 summer hit “I Was Jack (You Were A Diane”) https://boomermusicupdate.com/country/jack-diane-updated-sort/
It’s a song made to sing-along, fueled by clever lyric lines, very good ol’ boy, hail fellow-well met and rah rah, the kind of song I usually sneer at, but it sucked me in, and at end of the 3+ minutes, I was more than OK with it, yet, given the choice of what to listen to for some serious drinking, I’d skip Jake Owens and go right to Dwight Yoakam’s 1986 cover of Johnny Horton’s’ 1956 “I’m a Honky-Tonk Man,” with its juke-joint vibe and mournful tone.