"It used to be that Nashville would work to develop promising artists."
Crystal Gayle
Nashville used to have more integrity than just looking at the bottom line.
Crystal Gayle
Is this it? Is this Music City? Is this the Mecca of Americana music?
Todd, Chris, Ross, and I wander around downtown. Its a Monday night. Every bar is still host to prodigious players...'Robert's' is the only one I really vibe with tonight, much like the other night. The players are at the top of their game. Virtuosos. and crowd-pleasers. I can learn a lot from these guys.
Roy Acuff, Lester Flatt, Bill Monroe, Crystal Gayle, Kitty Wells. I imagine you on that stage, or on some stage across town back when the strip on Broadway here in Nashville was lined with brothels and speakeasies. When country music was the antecdote for the aftermath of the Great Depression and World War II. I imagine you pulling up a barstool here next to me and rubbing your tired eyes. If you walk the back-Nashville streets and alleys near the train tracks in west central, you can trick yourself into hearing the static laden radio frequency of the Grand Ole Opry show still buzzing in the night air. Let's order another round, boys, and toast a bygone day and its bygone working-class heroes. This place is not a museum, it is the once fertile soil where our roots still lie. There may be a drought, but tonight I'm praying for rain, and preparing to step foot onto the Cash Estate. If anyone ever understood the complexity...the grandeur, the underbelly, the in-and-outs of this town and its industry...its Johnny and June Carter Cash.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
OLD FASHION BIG TENT REVIVAL
Day III. May 12. 2008. Hendersonville.
------------
re·viv·al -
Pronunciation [ri-vahy-vuhl]
–noun
1. restoration to life, consciousness, vigor, strength, etc.
2. restoration to use, acceptance, or currency: the revival of old customs.
3. a new production of an old play.
4. a showing of an old motion picture.
5. an awakening, in a church or community, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion.
6. an evangelistic service or a series of services for the purpose of effecting a religious awakening: to hold a revival.
7. the act of reviving.
8. the state of being revived.
9. Law. the reestablishment of legal force and effect.
---------
This morning, Todd, Chris, and Ross will arrive in Nashville. They are flying in. I will meet them at the extended stay hotel called 'In-towne Suites' in Hendersonville, TN. This is where I will be staying throughout the duration of my time here. Its cheap but not dingy. Real cheap actually. $190 per week. Can't beat that with a stick.
They arrive at their rooms a few minutes before I do. I pull up to the hotel, and in thick-striped lemon yellow there is a big tent on the front lawn next to the parking lot. Sign welcomes a walk-up congregation, "OLD FASHION BIG TENT REVIVAL" it shouts in all caps. I really am in the rural South now.
Todd Erk plays Bass. Chris Giraldi: drums, and Ross 'Rolling Tunder' Bellenoit: guitar. We have the whole day and night to hang. Tomorrow morning is day 1 of tracking.
Let's walk to Waffle House. Smothered, covered, and capped. Over the course of the next few days, we dined on the House of Waffle cuisine ad nauseum. Not that it isn't good eatin'. But too much of a good thing, know what I mean? If the waitress at Waffle in Hendersonville, TN near the Exxon, read this blog...We say, "Hey y'all, from the band!"
------------
re·viv·al -
Pronunciation [ri-vahy-vuhl]
–noun
1. restoration to life, consciousness, vigor, strength, etc.
2. restoration to use, acceptance, or currency: the revival of old customs.
3. a new production of an old play.
4. a showing of an old motion picture.
5. an awakening, in a church or community, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion.
6. an evangelistic service or a series of services for the purpose of effecting a religious awakening: to hold a revival.
7. the act of reviving.
8. the state of being revived.
9. Law. the reestablishment of legal force and effect.
---------
This morning, Todd, Chris, and Ross will arrive in Nashville. They are flying in. I will meet them at the extended stay hotel called 'In-towne Suites' in Hendersonville, TN. This is where I will be staying throughout the duration of my time here. Its cheap but not dingy. Real cheap actually. $190 per week. Can't beat that with a stick.
They arrive at their rooms a few minutes before I do. I pull up to the hotel, and in thick-striped lemon yellow there is a big tent on the front lawn next to the parking lot. Sign welcomes a walk-up congregation, "OLD FASHION BIG TENT REVIVAL" it shouts in all caps. I really am in the rural South now.
Todd Erk plays Bass. Chris Giraldi: drums, and Ross 'Rolling Tunder' Bellenoit: guitar. We have the whole day and night to hang. Tomorrow morning is day 1 of tracking.
Let's walk to Waffle House. Smothered, covered, and capped. Over the course of the next few days, we dined on the House of Waffle cuisine ad nauseum. Not that it isn't good eatin'. But too much of a good thing, know what I mean? If the waitress at Waffle in Hendersonville, TN near the Exxon, read this blog...We say, "Hey y'all, from the band!"
Saturday, June 14, 2008
In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain
Carter Fold. May 10th. 2008. With Flo Wolfe. (The eldest living grandchild of the original Carter Family. John Carter Cash is the youngest).
Okay. I'm new at this blogging. The following entry is meant to be earlier in the chronology of my trip. It takes place right after 'The Gravel Road to Nashville' and right before 'Country Darkness'. The original entry was accidentally erased, and this one, in its stead is as close as I can remember. Sorry for the non sequiter.
Day I. May 10th, 2008. The Carter Fold.
"Music can change the world because it can change people."-Bono
"When the springtime comes on the mountain
And the wildflowers scattered o'er the plain
I shall watch for the leaves to return to their trees
And I'll be waiting when the springtime comes again
Yodel-ay-ee, ah-lee-oh-lay-ee
Ah-lee-oh-lay-ee-hee-oh-lay-ee"
'Little Annie'
(When the Springtime Comes Again)-Carter Family
Check the oil, kick the tires, fresh batteries for the cd player....and I'm off.
I left my home in South Philadelphia around 1pm, today.
Highway 95 South...pass Baltimore....pass DC....to route 68....to route 81....
the sky turns bluer...grass greener...and the hills begin to roll...
Soon, I was in the heart of the Shenandoah Mountains, passing the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is the Wilderness Road. The route Daniel Boone forged on his way to Virginia. Once a great trade route where furs and tobacco came carried by Indians and settlers. The songs in these hills, and their melodic lilts survived the tumult of generations upon generations. Irish and Scots-Irish, crossed the Atlantic...then crossed Appalachia...to become moonshiners and mountain men. Ministers and tobacco farmers in the wide blue-green expanse between Pennsylvania and Tennessee. I'm headed to Carter Country. And on this mountain highway lined with Pines, I can hear the songs of settlers in my mind...'Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you...' I know why the writer of that old folk ballad 'longed to see' her. I take off my sunglasses and its green so green it almost hurts the eyes. I haven't seen hills this color since I was on the West Coast of County Kerry, Ireland.
Fireworks stands and truck stops are advertised every twenty or thirty miles. Why is the North so mamby-pamby when it comes to illegal fireworks?, I think to myself, and make subconscious plans to stock up by the garbage-bag full on my way back home.
The shadows cast by the mountains stretch longer until the ancient cliffs swallow the sun altogether. I am now in the shadow of Clinch Mountain; the land of the Carter Family.
John Carter told me I oughta stop in on his family at the Carter Family Fold, in Maces Springs, VA. Just a few miles from Hiltons, VA. Its about 20 miles, I reckon, from Bristol, VA/TN. Bristol has a history all unto itself...involving the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and the birth of country music. We're a long long way from Shania Twain and Toby Kieth, here in Clinch Mountain. And that is fine by me.
I find the road I was told leads to the Carter Fold in Maces Springs. Its a thin serpentine mountain pass, traversing and winding all through the thickly forested hills leading to Clinch Mountain. Its dark now, but through the misted woods I see ranch houses and log cabins...road signs reading, "Boozy Creek Road" and "Church Road". Its getting jet black dark out here...and I love it. Every several miles the soft glow of headlights come fuzzily through the mist around a bend, reminding me that I might be going the right way...or at least that some one lives somewhere up this road, shrouded by clefts. There's the sign: "The Crooked Road", it reads. I know that this is the term for the "road" that AP Carter traveled, collecting the folk songs of this region. I don't think it was a physical 'road', but more of a life's path. We can thank AP Carter for the dawn of recorded music, for the over 300 Appalachian folk songs that he, his wife Sarah, and her cousin Maybelle recorded / wrote, and adapted. We can thank them for that famous picking style that you'd recognize if you hear it. The Carter family looms large, some would say 'the largest' in the great landscape of American music. And here I am, on pilgrimage to their backyard.
"The Carter Fold" the little green sign says, with a tiny white arrow pointing right. Its almost as if they want their visitors to really, really, want to find them...cause you wouldn't know its back here. AP Carter Highway stretches out in front of me. When I say highway, I mean barely two lanes with no white lines down the center, surrounded by lush vegetation and a ranch house or cabin every couple miles.
Feel like I've been driving for hours since I got off the main highway (81), but really its more like I've driven about a century back in time.
Lights flicker up over the ridge. Coming into sight now, I see pick-up trucks and cars lined up for well over half-a mile. The glow of a large wooden construction. My windows are down, and on the wind, I hear the unmistakable sound of blue grass music. The banjo twang signifies to me, that I am here. Clinch Mountain...the Carter Family...This is where it all began!
I'm greeted by a large old black dog at the driver's side of my car. Before I can get out the vehicle, his huge brown eyes meet mine. I hear the slap sound of the upright bass coming from inside the building, and feel my face stretch into a smile.
John Carter told me to look for a woman named Flo Wolfe. The oldest living grandchild of the original Carter Family. Walking into this room full of mountain folk dancing, talking, and eating, I get the mystifying feeling that I've walked into something sacred. I'd take off my boots if I didn't think I'd get glares from the locals. Walking up to the t-shirt vending stand, I ask the kind-faced elderly woman behind the counter if her name is Flo. "Yes, I'm Flo, and who are you?" she invitingly smiles. "My name is John Francis" as we shake hands. "John Carter sent me." She is still holding onto my hand...and holds on tight to it for the duration of our conversation. I tell her that I'm headed to Hendersonville to make a record with Mr.Cash, and he told me to stop in and say, 'Hi'. And see, with my own eyes, Clinch Mountain and the Carter traditions. Scanning the room, I see relics of old Carter Family heirlooms, a piano and Bible, a letter from Janette Carter, photos of Maybelle and Helen, Johnny and June. Folks in these parts do a traditional dance. I've heard it called 'flat-footing' and 'Appalachian Mountain dancing'. I don't ask what its called, but lots of people here are doing it. There are taps on the bottoms of their dancing boots, making a rhythmic sound on the hard wood floor. This place seats about 300, and Flo tells me that it used to be an old General Store, owned by AP. When he was dying, he told Janette, his daughter, to keep the Carter music alive. And Alive it is. Flo welcomed me with open arms. I stay until the old-time blue grass band's finale and the place clears out. I'm not through with Clinch Mountain yet, or maybe, its the other way around. Clinch Mountain ain't through with me.
Robert's Western World
Day II (continued)
I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.
Marshall McLuhan
The back streets of Nashville after midnight are seedy in some parts. Printer's Alley magnetizes a certain type of tourist. Its gaudy and blatant storefronts and marquis claiming 'authentic' New Orleans blues, and 'Live Dancers!' 'Show Girls', and 'Nashville Kareoke!', as if to say butchering someone else's song while your five sheets to the wind is somehow more elite in Nashville. I saunter threw Printer's Alley on this Sunday night like a hungry ghost. In need of something substantive. I won't find it here...If someone has to tell you they are 'authentic', they ain't...and I walk on...
Making my way up Broadway, every bar has a band blaring. Most of it is country rock. Even in spite of the 'fast food' style tourist pandering, this phenomenon always wow's me. Felt like this in Austin when I played South By South West. All the music from the bars and clubs bleeds out into the streets and mingles together in the oily sweat and smoke neathe the neon. Thats when I stumble (not literally) into Robert's Western World.
YES! and AMEN! Upright bass player slapping away like the boom-chicka-boom-clack of train tracks...drummer playin that locomotive language too...telecaster wailing and twanging, cutting through the barroom like heat lightning....I stand there, smack dab in the middle of the floor a foot from the stage and let the sounds soak into my skin...I feel the thump of the kick drumskin behind my eyeballs...the crooner at center stage with his acoustic gives me a wink, and I know that he knows that I know. These guys are playing for tips!? I find out later that two of these guys, the bass player and the drummer, have played with everyone from Johnny Cash to Dolly Parton. They are seasoned veterans in the war against crappy music. Here they are, in the autumn of their lives, playing for tips, and once...in a Nashville of a faraway different universe, they played these same songs on the Grand Ole Opry Stage. Back when America believed in music. Keep playin boys! I am grateful.
I think of art, at its most significant, as a DEW line, a Distant Early Warning system that can always be relied on to tell the old culture what is beginning to happen to it.
Marshall McLuhan
The back streets of Nashville after midnight are seedy in some parts. Printer's Alley magnetizes a certain type of tourist. Its gaudy and blatant storefronts and marquis claiming 'authentic' New Orleans blues, and 'Live Dancers!' 'Show Girls', and 'Nashville Kareoke!', as if to say butchering someone else's song while your five sheets to the wind is somehow more elite in Nashville. I saunter threw Printer's Alley on this Sunday night like a hungry ghost. In need of something substantive. I won't find it here...If someone has to tell you they are 'authentic', they ain't...and I walk on...
Making my way up Broadway, every bar has a band blaring. Most of it is country rock. Even in spite of the 'fast food' style tourist pandering, this phenomenon always wow's me. Felt like this in Austin when I played South By South West. All the music from the bars and clubs bleeds out into the streets and mingles together in the oily sweat and smoke neathe the neon. Thats when I stumble (not literally) into Robert's Western World.
YES! and AMEN! Upright bass player slapping away like the boom-chicka-boom-clack of train tracks...drummer playin that locomotive language too...telecaster wailing and twanging, cutting through the barroom like heat lightning....I stand there, smack dab in the middle of the floor a foot from the stage and let the sounds soak into my skin...I feel the thump of the kick drumskin behind my eyeballs...the crooner at center stage with his acoustic gives me a wink, and I know that he knows that I know. These guys are playing for tips!? I find out later that two of these guys, the bass player and the drummer, have played with everyone from Johnny Cash to Dolly Parton. They are seasoned veterans in the war against crappy music. Here they are, in the autumn of their lives, playing for tips, and once...in a Nashville of a faraway different universe, they played these same songs on the Grand Ole Opry Stage. Back when America believed in music. Keep playin boys! I am grateful.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Dreampiano
Day II. (Continued)
"There's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on"
Jerry Lee Lewis
I am sitting at an upright piano. Old, dark cherry red wood. Real ivory keys, stained a shade yellow and some chipped with age. I look down at my hands as they begin to play effortlessly. I am aware that I am dreaming. I take note that I am playing much better than I do while awake.
The high F key sticks a little. The song is familiar to me, but I don't recognize it fully. Slow, Waltz, in C. One...twothree....One....twothree.....One.....twothree....
The lid of the piano is off, and the notes are crisp and bright...I close my eyes in the dream, and feel the weight of my fingers indenting the keys, I'm inside the piano now, or at least my eyes are, I watch the padded mallets strike the strings, as my body is still playing the keys and tamping down the foot pedal in time with the changes. I've heard this song somewhere before, deep in my memory. Maybe my mother played it when I was a child. Maybe I heard it in church. No...that's not it...
It reminds me of a song called 'Poughkeepsie' by a band called 'Over the Rhine', but its not it at all...and 'Poughkeepsie' is played on an acoustic guitar. I don't know...its on the tip of my mind...the song's identity...Wait a minute! This is my song! I haven't written it yet! I'm writing it now, in my sleep! I hone in on my fingers moving. "Don't crush the bird", my childhood piano teacher would say. She told me that there was an invisible bluebird (or at least I pictured him as a bluebird) living under my palms while I played piano. Proper form while playing would leave enough space between palms and keys for the bird to breathe and avoid being squished. I slowly wake up out the dream...the song hangs on the air...in my hotel room...or is it in my head...or is it everywhere?...
I begin to hum the melody as objects in the room come into focus...
The song is still with me while I take a shower, put on my clothes and boots, and walk out the door, into the wisp of Tennessee breeze in the evening.
"There's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on"
Jerry Lee Lewis
I am sitting at an upright piano. Old, dark cherry red wood. Real ivory keys, stained a shade yellow and some chipped with age. I look down at my hands as they begin to play effortlessly. I am aware that I am dreaming. I take note that I am playing much better than I do while awake.
The high F key sticks a little. The song is familiar to me, but I don't recognize it fully. Slow, Waltz, in C. One...twothree....One....twothree.....One.....twothree....
The lid of the piano is off, and the notes are crisp and bright...I close my eyes in the dream, and feel the weight of my fingers indenting the keys, I'm inside the piano now, or at least my eyes are, I watch the padded mallets strike the strings, as my body is still playing the keys and tamping down the foot pedal in time with the changes. I've heard this song somewhere before, deep in my memory. Maybe my mother played it when I was a child. Maybe I heard it in church. No...that's not it...
It reminds me of a song called 'Poughkeepsie' by a band called 'Over the Rhine', but its not it at all...and 'Poughkeepsie' is played on an acoustic guitar. I don't know...its on the tip of my mind...the song's identity...Wait a minute! This is my song! I haven't written it yet! I'm writing it now, in my sleep! I hone in on my fingers moving. "Don't crush the bird", my childhood piano teacher would say. She told me that there was an invisible bluebird (or at least I pictured him as a bluebird) living under my palms while I played piano. Proper form while playing would leave enough space between palms and keys for the bird to breathe and avoid being squished. I slowly wake up out the dream...the song hangs on the air...in my hotel room...or is it in my head...or is it everywhere?...
I begin to hum the melody as objects in the room come into focus...
The song is still with me while I take a shower, put on my clothes and boots, and walk out the door, into the wisp of Tennessee breeze in the evening.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Nashville by Nightfall (continued)
Day II. Part II.
"We never actually slept in the Packard, but we'd stay at these places called tourist homes. Then they got these wonderful things called motels."
June Carter Cash
Something about mountain highways that makes me want to drive really really fast.
Must be the elevation, the gravity behind me as I descend at a sharp incline. With my Bible on the dashboard, I watch the odometer almost kiss the 100mph mark...and I ease off the accelerator. This is living. And there's not a cop around...barely even another car on the road. Eighteen wheelers roar and snort down the mountain, like dinosaurs bracing for extinction. I'm shaving off the miles to Nashville, and Ryan Adams' "Cold Roses" is on my stereo.
The Nashville skyline is comin into view, like Dorothy's Emerald City so full of promise and hope...so many illusions and thinly veiled wizardry. I'll be careful not to fall asleep in the poppies tonight. Nonetheless, I have some butterflies in the gut as the overhanging sky turns brush-burn-red and orange and slowly to bruised-fruit- blue.
The Athens of the South, The Protestant Vatican, The Buckle of the Bible Belt, Cashville, Music City, Nashvegas! The wide arms of the Cumberland River wrap round my imagination, like the haunting meditation of a pedal steel player, like a faith healer, it finds the ailment and offers balm...if you believe! Nashville, could I be home? Is your glitter as spurious and lackluster as the lacquer thin veneer of your modern songs? Cumberland River, sing me your sad story of glory come and gone. I have come in search of your knowledge, Nashville, I have come for blood. Is there a swollen heart still pounding in your comatose chest? Once your muses were red fox's with tails on fire, fleet footed and Nudie suited royalty wrapped in the violet robes of myth and brandishing six-string scepters and five-string swords! Your totems were copper-headed gods, feeding you like pelicans feed their young; with their own flesh. Our saviours from you came, plucked from Alabama cotton farms and Louisiana bayous by the very hand of the Almighty, and placed with tongues on fire in your mythic honky-tonks! Where have you buried your dead, Nashville? Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Lefty Frizzel, Sam Phillips, Hank Williams, Earnest Tubb, Patsy Cline, June Carter Cash, Maybelle Carter? Do the ghosts in the Ryman pews still wail? I have seen the mockery of those heroines and heroes images, set up on your graven tourist alters. Reminding those who still believe in American music that, yes, these men and women did stand here on these stages and uttered oracles, giving voice and two-step to the earthen stained common man. And twisting the dagger twice, reminding us by your cartoon fetish wax-museum minstrelsy, that our prophets live here no more. You have murdered your priests while they were still in the temple! You have lynched them with tourism and candy-coated CMT nooses! Priests with names like Perkins and Presley! If you could find a way to cheapen and commodify your own demise, if you're record companies were intelligent enough, you'd write a pop country song about it! You have taken even the silver dollars off the eyes of my heroes' corpses, Nashville! I have heard that your love has died, Nashville, and tonight your moon has no halo.
I check in to the hotel room, and plop myself on the sturdy mattress and swim off into a deep sleep...
This is what I dreamed:
"We never actually slept in the Packard, but we'd stay at these places called tourist homes. Then they got these wonderful things called motels."
June Carter Cash
Something about mountain highways that makes me want to drive really really fast.
Must be the elevation, the gravity behind me as I descend at a sharp incline. With my Bible on the dashboard, I watch the odometer almost kiss the 100mph mark...and I ease off the accelerator. This is living. And there's not a cop around...barely even another car on the road. Eighteen wheelers roar and snort down the mountain, like dinosaurs bracing for extinction. I'm shaving off the miles to Nashville, and Ryan Adams' "Cold Roses" is on my stereo.
The Nashville skyline is comin into view, like Dorothy's Emerald City so full of promise and hope...so many illusions and thinly veiled wizardry. I'll be careful not to fall asleep in the poppies tonight. Nonetheless, I have some butterflies in the gut as the overhanging sky turns brush-burn-red and orange and slowly to bruised-fruit- blue.
The Athens of the South, The Protestant Vatican, The Buckle of the Bible Belt, Cashville, Music City, Nashvegas! The wide arms of the Cumberland River wrap round my imagination, like the haunting meditation of a pedal steel player, like a faith healer, it finds the ailment and offers balm...if you believe! Nashville, could I be home? Is your glitter as spurious and lackluster as the lacquer thin veneer of your modern songs? Cumberland River, sing me your sad story of glory come and gone. I have come in search of your knowledge, Nashville, I have come for blood. Is there a swollen heart still pounding in your comatose chest? Once your muses were red fox's with tails on fire, fleet footed and Nudie suited royalty wrapped in the violet robes of myth and brandishing six-string scepters and five-string swords! Your totems were copper-headed gods, feeding you like pelicans feed their young; with their own flesh. Our saviours from you came, plucked from Alabama cotton farms and Louisiana bayous by the very hand of the Almighty, and placed with tongues on fire in your mythic honky-tonks! Where have you buried your dead, Nashville? Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Snow, Lefty Frizzel, Sam Phillips, Hank Williams, Earnest Tubb, Patsy Cline, June Carter Cash, Maybelle Carter? Do the ghosts in the Ryman pews still wail? I have seen the mockery of those heroines and heroes images, set up on your graven tourist alters. Reminding those who still believe in American music that, yes, these men and women did stand here on these stages and uttered oracles, giving voice and two-step to the earthen stained common man. And twisting the dagger twice, reminding us by your cartoon fetish wax-museum minstrelsy, that our prophets live here no more. You have murdered your priests while they were still in the temple! You have lynched them with tourism and candy-coated CMT nooses! Priests with names like Perkins and Presley! If you could find a way to cheapen and commodify your own demise, if you're record companies were intelligent enough, you'd write a pop country song about it! You have taken even the silver dollars off the eyes of my heroes' corpses, Nashville! I have heard that your love has died, Nashville, and tonight your moon has no halo.
I check in to the hotel room, and plop myself on the sturdy mattress and swim off into a deep sleep...
This is what I dreamed:
Nashville by Nighfall
Day II. May 11th. Part I. Ruby's Country Kitchen
"When I first came to Nashville, people hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could."
Loretta Lynn
I wake up in my Bristol motel, around noon, and make quick work of washing up and checking out. I'm Nashville bound.
I've been driving for about an hour, and notice the gas light come on. Good timing. I want a cup of coffee and maybe some breakfast. Pulling off the closest exit advertising a gas station, I find myself a huge truck stop. Fill it up, check the oil, kick the tires.
This landscape is a feast for the eyes. I feel the tug of the back roads, and the midday sun on the back of my neck...I feel like getting lost for awhile. Back road weaves into back road, and thinner roads still. Old cabins and Pentecostal churches, horses and steer, round hay bails checker the blanketed green. If I didn't know it was real, I'd think it was an astro-turf carpet on these hills. I'm going to drive until I find a diner, if it takes all afternoon.
Between two churches, one Baptist and one Methodist, and across from the General Store, I come upon 'Ruby's Country Kitchen'. I can't tell you where it is, or how I got here, been meandering for nearly an hour. "Try our pie." the sign invites. The parking lot is packed, and standing in the driveway stones of the lot, families and couples are adorned in their Sunday best, right down to giant silvery belt buckles the size of saucers. These men were wearing huge buckles way before it was en vogue in New York City hip-hop and hipster culture, or top 40 modern popcorn country fame. I doubt they even know that it came and went in and out of style. I've stumbled into the great American tradition of going to lunch after Sunday morning church. Spiritual food, then something from a frying pan. Reminds me of growing up in my hometown. I walk in, greeted by smiles and 'hellos'. Sitting down at a booth and pull out my pad, I begin to write. I'm immersed in recording the events of last night, Carter Fold then O'Malley's. Ruminating on the contrasts of the two destinations...examining the duality of the regulars and the bartender at O'Malley's. The waitress is standing next to my table and asking if I want something to drink, and she has to ask twice, cause I'm still in the misty Bristol of my recollection. Looking up, my eyes are met by her two sky blue eyes glimmering the way a Celt's eyes will. She's young and pretty, and I'm involuntarily tuned into her Southern draw, the shape and timber of her question, rather than the question itself. "Coffee, please, black. Thank you", I sheepishly answer. I could stay here all day drinking coffee and writing, but Music City beckons.
Finishing up my eggs and grits, and laying a tip down on the table, I find the cashier. The sign hung on the wall above the register is advertising a gallon of milk for 5 cents. It must be from the 1920's.
I never did try the pie at Ruby's Country Kitchen. But, I did get a real strong rhubarb taste of life around these parts. Strong, sweet, slow, melodic, vibrant, and honest...like my waitress' musical drawl.
"When I first came to Nashville, people hardly gave country music any respect. We lived in old cars and dirty hotels, and we ate when we could."
Loretta Lynn
I wake up in my Bristol motel, around noon, and make quick work of washing up and checking out. I'm Nashville bound.
I've been driving for about an hour, and notice the gas light come on. Good timing. I want a cup of coffee and maybe some breakfast. Pulling off the closest exit advertising a gas station, I find myself a huge truck stop. Fill it up, check the oil, kick the tires.
This landscape is a feast for the eyes. I feel the tug of the back roads, and the midday sun on the back of my neck...I feel like getting lost for awhile. Back road weaves into back road, and thinner roads still. Old cabins and Pentecostal churches, horses and steer, round hay bails checker the blanketed green. If I didn't know it was real, I'd think it was an astro-turf carpet on these hills. I'm going to drive until I find a diner, if it takes all afternoon.
Between two churches, one Baptist and one Methodist, and across from the General Store, I come upon 'Ruby's Country Kitchen'. I can't tell you where it is, or how I got here, been meandering for nearly an hour. "Try our pie." the sign invites. The parking lot is packed, and standing in the driveway stones of the lot, families and couples are adorned in their Sunday best, right down to giant silvery belt buckles the size of saucers. These men were wearing huge buckles way before it was en vogue in New York City hip-hop and hipster culture, or top 40 modern popcorn country fame. I doubt they even know that it came and went in and out of style. I've stumbled into the great American tradition of going to lunch after Sunday morning church. Spiritual food, then something from a frying pan. Reminds me of growing up in my hometown. I walk in, greeted by smiles and 'hellos'. Sitting down at a booth and pull out my pad, I begin to write. I'm immersed in recording the events of last night, Carter Fold then O'Malley's. Ruminating on the contrasts of the two destinations...examining the duality of the regulars and the bartender at O'Malley's. The waitress is standing next to my table and asking if I want something to drink, and she has to ask twice, cause I'm still in the misty Bristol of my recollection. Looking up, my eyes are met by her two sky blue eyes glimmering the way a Celt's eyes will. She's young and pretty, and I'm involuntarily tuned into her Southern draw, the shape and timber of her question, rather than the question itself. "Coffee, please, black. Thank you", I sheepishly answer. I could stay here all day drinking coffee and writing, but Music City beckons.
Finishing up my eggs and grits, and laying a tip down on the table, I find the cashier. The sign hung on the wall above the register is advertising a gallon of milk for 5 cents. It must be from the 1920's.
I never did try the pie at Ruby's Country Kitchen. But, I did get a real strong rhubarb taste of life around these parts. Strong, sweet, slow, melodic, vibrant, and honest...like my waitress' musical drawl.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Country Darkness
Day I. (continued)
"Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well."
-- Florence King
As I leave that embrace of the Carter Family Fold, and all of its warm hospitality, I make a bee-line for Bristol. I'm hungry and tired...in need of food, drink, and a bed. Been driving all day, and now I'm satisfied after walking into those hallowed halls the Carter's built.
I pass the Country Music Museum to my left...and a little further down, in the downtown part of Bristol, the sign welcomes me to Tennessee. Bristol is a rare city that is cut down the middle. It sits on the border between VA and TN, straddling one of those imaginary fences arbitrarily drawn by land-owners and state founders in the years after the conquest and removal of the indigenous Indians. (In this area it was the Northern band of Cherokee who's literacy rates were higher than our own U.S. national percentages currently.) I find a motel. Check in, and head to the gas station. I'm gonna buy some beef jerky, a pack of American Spirits, and ask someone where to go to buy a burger and a beer. The fella behind the counter tells me to go to O' Mannion's. "Its a family owned pub he assures me", and he thinks I'll like it. "Sounds right!" I reply and thank him for his advice.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I have no sense of direction. When God was handing out directional skills, I didn't get the memo. I was waiting in line for the 'overactive imagination' and 'bad temper' goods, instead. Suffice to say, I am lost in Bristol looking for O'Mannion's. Okay, I'll stop at another gas station and ask for a second opinion as to how to get to this joint. Its another BP, a few miles away from the last one. The man in line buying chewing tobacco is wearing a hat with the word "Rebel" and a tattered Confederate Flag on the front. Sleeveless shirt and real greasy hands, like he's been working on an engine. He looks like guys I grew up with. (Just cause I live in Philadelphia doesn't take the country out of me.) I ask him where to find this O'Mannion's. He looks me in the eye with a look as serious as a wake. 'You mean, O'Malley's', he gruffs. "Hmmmm, maybe I do mean O'Malley's" All this driving, and I'm tired, and the accents different down here. He gives me crystal clear directions. I'm making my way to O'Malley's.
Pulling up to the bar in the parking lot, I notice three things. 1. The giant American flag painted on the outside of the cinder block rectangular buidling.
2. The name of the bar hand-written in blood-red spray paint above the door. "O'Malley's" 3. The 'stars and bars' Confederate flags on every truck in the parking lot. Why would the first guy at the first gas station think that I'd like this place? Is this a joke, or worse...was he trying to lure the unsuspecting Yankee into a macabre modern day reenactment of the battle of Bristol. Okay, enough, I am not afraid of dives like this one...and I don't have trepidation at the site of the rebel flag. I get it, I think. And, the part I don't get, I don't pass judgment on.
Good or bad experience, this will certainly be an experience. I walk in, walk up to the bar, pull up a stool and sit down. NEXT TO A ROTTWEILER who is laying on top of the bar! I like dogs. The bartender comes up to me with a half-grin and asks me for ID. I produce it. "Pennsylvania?! We got a Yankee here boys!" The whole bar, which is lit by bare light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures and those long luminescent bulbs often used in drop ceilings, turns to look. I make eye contact with a few, and give a nod. Cinder block walls with one coat of hurriedly applied white primer paint. A Confederate battle flag occupies one entire wall at the far end of the room, at the other end - pool tables. Pool balls are being whacked in a game between two guys in t-shirts, jeans, mullets, and calloused looking working hands, dirtied from the day at the garage, I imagine. The jukebox switches to its next song,
It's Waylon, his barreling voice intimates,
"There only two things in life that make it worth livin'
That's guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women
I don't need my name in the marquis lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love"
If I had put the dollar in the jukebox, I would have picked this song myself, one of my favorite from Waylon Jennings. This place just got twelve times more welcoming.
Looking around the room, I see that, without exception, everyone in this bar is missing teeth in the front. I loathe stereotypes about toothless hick towns where people are racist and illiterate, etc...fill in the blank. I grew up in the sticks, with country people. We had horses and goats, and I often worked as a farm-hand for nearby farmers. I have and will defend country people til the day I die. But, I'm not exaggerating...everyone in this bar was missing a few teeth. The regulars were all VERY drunk, and flashing suspicious glances my direction at the "yankee alert" the bartender just trumpeted. He tells me, "If you can tell me where Daniel Boone and moonshine were from, I'll buy you a beer. I like these kinds of games, and the 'free beer' incentive is an added bonus. Especially cause I know the answer. "Boone and moonshine are both from Pennsylvania, my home state", I smile wide. The dog on the bar lifts his left ear. Mr.Bartender's eyes get real bright, he puts out his hand, I shake it. "Damn right, Yankee!, both from Pennsylvania, most people don't know that!" He laughs and shakes his head at the profound realization that someone else in his bar tonight is a student of history. I've won his friendship, or at least I've won the right to sit at his bar, next to his dog.
I'm drowsy with hunger. I ask if there is a bar menu. He points to a hole in the cinder block wall adjacent to the bar. "Go up to the hole and ask Cindy what she's got." I've never done this kind of thing before, that is, ask for dinner through a hole in a brick wall, so I'm kind of enthused at the prospect. I walk up to the hole, only to be obstructed by a very large woman who falls into me. She has kind tiny eyes squinting through her tiny crooked glasses lenses. Very short cropped hair, and a wide grin exposes a missing front tooth and two missing eye teeth. "Let me ask you something, see that woman over there across the bar, is that a man or a woman?" I stare across the barroom to a woman sitting at a table drinking Bud. She has a mullet, cut-off jean shorts, a tie-dye sleeveless shirt, sneakers with no socks at the bottoms of her long skeletal legs. Clearly, a woman. My new 'friend' blocking the 'food-hole' tells me that her brother, who then materializes near the bar and must have been hidden behind her girth, wants to "f*%#& that woman who is really a man".
"She's not a man! He slurs, and lurches forward at me, as if to threaten me not to take his sister's side. His breathe is heavy with whiskey, hard as kerosene (as Townes Van Zandt put it). His body language is announcing that he's ready and willing for a fight, and may even crave one, like a billy-goat warns before he gets on hind-legs and bucks. I disarm him by putting out my hand and saying, "Hi, I'm John, what's your name?" "Randy!", he bellows. He's a slight man with a huge beer gut, caked-in dirt and grease from his fingernails to elbows, bald, unshaven, and also missing a few chompers. "I'm her twin brother!" He announces to me, in a tone meant to be interpreted, "What do you say to that?". I try to lighten up the situation with, "Funny, You don't look anything alike." They both go totally straight-faced and say simultaneously, "We're not identical." At this point, I want to either get to that food-hole or go to my car and find a different establishment. His sister tells Randy to get out of my way so I can get to the food-hole.
A young blonde with very stringy hair, missing her two front teeth, asks me if I'm hungry. "Sure am" I say. "I'd like a cheeseburger." "No problem, sweetie. Comin' up". I like the custom of giving and receiving terms of endearment like 'sweetie' or 'darlin' from anyone, especially a lady, no matter how young or old. Its a dieing art. And this woman in the food-hole has mastered it. I head for the bathroom to wash up. Huh, no running water! The toilet is a hole in the floor...and the spigot at the sink turns, but not a drop comes. I take inventory of my situation. I'm enjoying this experience, albeit it's a bit more than I bargained for when I asked the locals for the best watering hole. I have a bottle of water and soap in the car. Perfect. I run to the trunk of my car, dig out the soap, wash up, and by the time I'm back in the door, my burger is waiting for me in the food-hole. "Enjoy it sweetie!" As she turns toward the kitchen light, through the food-hole, I notice the bruise on her cheekbone. "I will, thank you.". Pulling up my stool, and sipping on my Budweiser, the sound of kamikazi flies dieing on the bug-light in the corner breaks the silence between songs. The bartender saunters over to me wanting to introduce me to his dog, who is now eyeballing my burger, panting. "His name is trigger! Know why I named him Trigger?" He asks expectantly. I don't respond. He continues, "Cause it rhymes with nigger and I taught him how to bite niggers!!" He laughs hysterically. "And he don't even like how they taste!" I decide to pay my bill. I'm not leaving because of his comment or his dog's affinity for biting black people, I'm leaving cause my stomach is turning with a cocktail of suppressed anger and sorrow, pity for this man and his dillusional little life. I shake his hand on the way out, and he says, "Come back and see us again,now!" I answer with silence.
I'm driving back to town. This burger is getting tossed out the window. I'm not hungry anymore. I find my Waylon Jennings cd with the song on it, "Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us feuding
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry's train songs
and blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain't nobody feelin' no pain..."
I breathe deep lung-fulls of the country air outside my open window. Passing back into town via State Street, I see a shamrock above a pub door with a sign hanging out in front of a crowded bar. The sign reads, "O'Mannion's".
"Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well."
-- Florence King
As I leave that embrace of the Carter Family Fold, and all of its warm hospitality, I make a bee-line for Bristol. I'm hungry and tired...in need of food, drink, and a bed. Been driving all day, and now I'm satisfied after walking into those hallowed halls the Carter's built.
I pass the Country Music Museum to my left...and a little further down, in the downtown part of Bristol, the sign welcomes me to Tennessee. Bristol is a rare city that is cut down the middle. It sits on the border between VA and TN, straddling one of those imaginary fences arbitrarily drawn by land-owners and state founders in the years after the conquest and removal of the indigenous Indians. (In this area it was the Northern band of Cherokee who's literacy rates were higher than our own U.S. national percentages currently.) I find a motel. Check in, and head to the gas station. I'm gonna buy some beef jerky, a pack of American Spirits, and ask someone where to go to buy a burger and a beer. The fella behind the counter tells me to go to O' Mannion's. "Its a family owned pub he assures me", and he thinks I'll like it. "Sounds right!" I reply and thank him for his advice.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I have no sense of direction. When God was handing out directional skills, I didn't get the memo. I was waiting in line for the 'overactive imagination' and 'bad temper' goods, instead. Suffice to say, I am lost in Bristol looking for O'Mannion's. Okay, I'll stop at another gas station and ask for a second opinion as to how to get to this joint. Its another BP, a few miles away from the last one. The man in line buying chewing tobacco is wearing a hat with the word "Rebel" and a tattered Confederate Flag on the front. Sleeveless shirt and real greasy hands, like he's been working on an engine. He looks like guys I grew up with. (Just cause I live in Philadelphia doesn't take the country out of me.) I ask him where to find this O'Mannion's. He looks me in the eye with a look as serious as a wake. 'You mean, O'Malley's', he gruffs. "Hmmmm, maybe I do mean O'Malley's" All this driving, and I'm tired, and the accents different down here. He gives me crystal clear directions. I'm making my way to O'Malley's.
Pulling up to the bar in the parking lot, I notice three things. 1. The giant American flag painted on the outside of the cinder block rectangular buidling.
2. The name of the bar hand-written in blood-red spray paint above the door. "O'Malley's" 3. The 'stars and bars' Confederate flags on every truck in the parking lot. Why would the first guy at the first gas station think that I'd like this place? Is this a joke, or worse...was he trying to lure the unsuspecting Yankee into a macabre modern day reenactment of the battle of Bristol. Okay, enough, I am not afraid of dives like this one...and I don't have trepidation at the site of the rebel flag. I get it, I think. And, the part I don't get, I don't pass judgment on.
Good or bad experience, this will certainly be an experience. I walk in, walk up to the bar, pull up a stool and sit down. NEXT TO A ROTTWEILER who is laying on top of the bar! I like dogs. The bartender comes up to me with a half-grin and asks me for ID. I produce it. "Pennsylvania?! We got a Yankee here boys!" The whole bar, which is lit by bare light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures and those long luminescent bulbs often used in drop ceilings, turns to look. I make eye contact with a few, and give a nod. Cinder block walls with one coat of hurriedly applied white primer paint. A Confederate battle flag occupies one entire wall at the far end of the room, at the other end - pool tables. Pool balls are being whacked in a game between two guys in t-shirts, jeans, mullets, and calloused looking working hands, dirtied from the day at the garage, I imagine. The jukebox switches to its next song,
It's Waylon, his barreling voice intimates,
"There only two things in life that make it worth livin'
That's guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women
I don't need my name in the marquis lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love"
If I had put the dollar in the jukebox, I would have picked this song myself, one of my favorite from Waylon Jennings. This place just got twelve times more welcoming.
Looking around the room, I see that, without exception, everyone in this bar is missing teeth in the front. I loathe stereotypes about toothless hick towns where people are racist and illiterate, etc...fill in the blank. I grew up in the sticks, with country people. We had horses and goats, and I often worked as a farm-hand for nearby farmers. I have and will defend country people til the day I die. But, I'm not exaggerating...everyone in this bar was missing a few teeth. The regulars were all VERY drunk, and flashing suspicious glances my direction at the "yankee alert" the bartender just trumpeted. He tells me, "If you can tell me where Daniel Boone and moonshine were from, I'll buy you a beer. I like these kinds of games, and the 'free beer' incentive is an added bonus. Especially cause I know the answer. "Boone and moonshine are both from Pennsylvania, my home state", I smile wide. The dog on the bar lifts his left ear. Mr.Bartender's eyes get real bright, he puts out his hand, I shake it. "Damn right, Yankee!, both from Pennsylvania, most people don't know that!" He laughs and shakes his head at the profound realization that someone else in his bar tonight is a student of history. I've won his friendship, or at least I've won the right to sit at his bar, next to his dog.
I'm drowsy with hunger. I ask if there is a bar menu. He points to a hole in the cinder block wall adjacent to the bar. "Go up to the hole and ask Cindy what she's got." I've never done this kind of thing before, that is, ask for dinner through a hole in a brick wall, so I'm kind of enthused at the prospect. I walk up to the hole, only to be obstructed by a very large woman who falls into me. She has kind tiny eyes squinting through her tiny crooked glasses lenses. Very short cropped hair, and a wide grin exposes a missing front tooth and two missing eye teeth. "Let me ask you something, see that woman over there across the bar, is that a man or a woman?" I stare across the barroom to a woman sitting at a table drinking Bud. She has a mullet, cut-off jean shorts, a tie-dye sleeveless shirt, sneakers with no socks at the bottoms of her long skeletal legs. Clearly, a woman. My new 'friend' blocking the 'food-hole' tells me that her brother, who then materializes near the bar and must have been hidden behind her girth, wants to "f*%#& that woman who is really a man".
"She's not a man! He slurs, and lurches forward at me, as if to threaten me not to take his sister's side. His breathe is heavy with whiskey, hard as kerosene (as Townes Van Zandt put it). His body language is announcing that he's ready and willing for a fight, and may even crave one, like a billy-goat warns before he gets on hind-legs and bucks. I disarm him by putting out my hand and saying, "Hi, I'm John, what's your name?" "Randy!", he bellows. He's a slight man with a huge beer gut, caked-in dirt and grease from his fingernails to elbows, bald, unshaven, and also missing a few chompers. "I'm her twin brother!" He announces to me, in a tone meant to be interpreted, "What do you say to that?". I try to lighten up the situation with, "Funny, You don't look anything alike." They both go totally straight-faced and say simultaneously, "We're not identical." At this point, I want to either get to that food-hole or go to my car and find a different establishment. His sister tells Randy to get out of my way so I can get to the food-hole.
A young blonde with very stringy hair, missing her two front teeth, asks me if I'm hungry. "Sure am" I say. "I'd like a cheeseburger." "No problem, sweetie. Comin' up". I like the custom of giving and receiving terms of endearment like 'sweetie' or 'darlin' from anyone, especially a lady, no matter how young or old. Its a dieing art. And this woman in the food-hole has mastered it. I head for the bathroom to wash up. Huh, no running water! The toilet is a hole in the floor...and the spigot at the sink turns, but not a drop comes. I take inventory of my situation. I'm enjoying this experience, albeit it's a bit more than I bargained for when I asked the locals for the best watering hole. I have a bottle of water and soap in the car. Perfect. I run to the trunk of my car, dig out the soap, wash up, and by the time I'm back in the door, my burger is waiting for me in the food-hole. "Enjoy it sweetie!" As she turns toward the kitchen light, through the food-hole, I notice the bruise on her cheekbone. "I will, thank you.". Pulling up my stool, and sipping on my Budweiser, the sound of kamikazi flies dieing on the bug-light in the corner breaks the silence between songs. The bartender saunters over to me wanting to introduce me to his dog, who is now eyeballing my burger, panting. "His name is trigger! Know why I named him Trigger?" He asks expectantly. I don't respond. He continues, "Cause it rhymes with nigger and I taught him how to bite niggers!!" He laughs hysterically. "And he don't even like how they taste!" I decide to pay my bill. I'm not leaving because of his comment or his dog's affinity for biting black people, I'm leaving cause my stomach is turning with a cocktail of suppressed anger and sorrow, pity for this man and his dillusional little life. I shake his hand on the way out, and he says, "Come back and see us again,now!" I answer with silence.
I'm driving back to town. This burger is getting tossed out the window. I'm not hungry anymore. I find my Waylon Jennings cd with the song on it, "Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us feuding
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry's train songs
and blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain't nobody feelin' no pain..."
I breathe deep lung-fulls of the country air outside my open window. Passing back into town via State Street, I see a shamrock above a pub door with a sign hanging out in front of a crowded bar. The sign reads, "O'Mannion's".
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