Southeast USA May 2006

May 1 Steve James drove up from Austin and I flew into Atlanta for this tour-lette. First stop midnight at the Crowne Plaza, where Steve, standing outside for a smoke, was panhandled by a fellow who was the Spyboy for the Wild Tchoupitoulas. Still in exile, he was unable to go home to New Orleans. Next day we headed to North Carolina, where a weeklong guitar workshop awaits us. We ate amazing "meat and three" southern food at Henry's a roadside cafe on route 23.The trouble with those delicious soul food diners is you can see the effects of the diet on the fat people all around you who eat it every day.

May 2 2006
This is interesting. The Music In The Mountains Guitar Workshop (first one ever) is at the Wildacres retreat in Little Switzerland North Carolina. It's an artist's ridge-top retreat, founded by the Stop-Leak Radiator fortune of a Mr. Blumenthal (who bought the property at auction from the estate of the guy who wrote "The Clansman", aka" Birth of a Nation").
They have a good aesthetic-no air-conditioner or heater fan noise, organic food. We guitar players are sharing the place with forty assorted writers, quilters, potters and a random astronomer.

May 4
Speaking of fat people, our host here is a 300 pounder named Bob Frisbee, a guitar enthusiast of the most relentless sort, who is just pleased as he can be to be surrounded by five of his favorite guitar players and who cares not a whit if there are only 8 students. He brought his family up for the concert and all six of them were just as huge-except for mom. She was little and thin and charmingly in her own world (I should think hearing loss might have it's advantages in a big family).

May 5 Asheville NC
Down off the mountain and back to the world of waves. I have to say, the Wildacres land, full of strange bugs, multitudes of new (to me) flowers and the sound of the wind in the trees (not just the surrounding trees, but the roar of 40 mile an hour wind coming through 4 ridges of millions of trees-very grand, you can see why mountain people go nuts and hear the voice of god) is definitely different than the lowlands. I think it's the lack of waves and the minimal use of electricity. No microwaves, cellphone waves, radio waves, wifi waves plus no car roar, no air-con roar-there's a distinct peacefulness from the lack of manmade noise.
We went to visit David Holt, the banjo player. He's a funny cat-very enthusiastic, with the permanent heat of a 12 year old kid. He is a good banjo player and collector of mountain songs, who is very successful presenting old music to squares. Now he wants to play slide guitar in a rock and roll band. He was getting Steve to help him write a song titled "Fuse and Dynamite" or something like that.

May 6 Charlotte NC
I really like our hosts in Charlotte, Richie Rosenthal and his wife Jenny. They're librarians with highly developed senses of humor; secular Jews in a town where the clerks wish you a "blessed day" when they hand over your change. The gig however is not quite there-not enough people and the sound is always disconcerting (it's primarily an alt-rock house) and I think Joe Cool (the sound guy) has blown out the treble on his ears.

May 7 Floyd West Virginia
It's very familiar here, like Northern California. Hippies and rednecks in peaceful accord, what could it be? Oh DOPE, that must be it! The commune in the '70s, the mountain-grown marijuana, the drug profits laundered through cool galleries and coffee-shops, it's all the same. Nice concert venue too (lots of reggae on the bill, another clue).
Our host here is a guitarist named Scott Perry, who has mostly retired from the road and has a little music shop.
The morning following the show we were kibitzing over coffee in their little farmhouse, listening to the dogs bark, and we started talking about Lightening Wells. Steve and I realized we were looking at four days off, so we called him up. Six hours later we're in Farmville.

May 8 Farmville NC
Lightening still lives in his same little farmhouse, stuffed full of records and books (he's a super high-brow reader: right now he's on a Huuysmans kick, preceded by Zola and Flaubert. He's the very portrait of a southern intellectual). His world is doomed though-the surveyors stakes are surrounding his house and barn within 10 feet, and soon he'll be an island in the midst of instant fiberboard suburbia.
He cooked us a great dinner and we stayed up late yelling and listening to records as usual. Next day we went to visit Alex in Fountain. He has a wonderful cafe/store, full of everything from poetry to penny candy, but he's incurred the wrath of the locals by complaining about the town's largest employer over a health and safety issue, so the locals won't patronize him, in fact they seem out to get him via building inspections and demands for extra bathrooms. So sad-all these little towns with great cheap old space, but no one to populate the audience.

May 10 Fairfield NC to Okracoke Island NC

Following the coastline we passed through Bath (oldest town in NC and very lovely-a headland surrounded by water, old houses old trees, no Big Box, black guys fishing from the bridge (I think the presence of "No Fishing From Bridge" signs might be an indication of how racist a town is, since it's black people who like to do it).

It's totally like Louisiana here-swampy, water table an inch below ground, small commercial fisheries and oyster farms, wildlife refuges (although why they call them refuges I don't know, since they let them hunt there-what kind of refuge is that??) and even the food reminds me of Louisiana. Last night at the random roadhouse by our hunter's motel, we had great oyster stew and broiled seafood in a blackened crust, and there was pepper sauce on the table (always a good sign in a restaurant).
I'm writing this from the ferry that connects Swan Quarter with the tip of Cape Hatteras, Okracoke Island, which Lightening promised us is little and old, just like we like it. It's a two hour ferry ride from the mainland (for only $15 a car-such a deal). The ferry here in nowheresville seems to be the last place to have the Homeland Security color-coded Threat-o-meter in place. It's pink today. You New Yorkers were wondering where those dollars went...

We'll stay here tonight then make some time towards D.C. and Bryn Mawr.

May 11 Okracoke to Chicoteague Virginia
Well Okracoke is great-we immediately rented some bikes and pedaled out through the marshes to the long shore, where it was just warm enough for a swim. These southern beaches are disconcerting-you have to look both ways for cars when leaving the water, like crossing the street. There's a cool lighthouse and a very good nature trail.
We drove up Hatteras to the mainland, and at Virginia beach crossed the mouth of Chesapeake Bay on an extremely long bridge tunnel. it's 14 miles long with about half that underwater. The bridge just seems to end in the middle of the ocean and you go down under. Scary!
We ended up in Chicoteague, another town famous for it's lighthouse, which is now in a forest instead of a headland, as the shoreline has shifted so much over 100 years. Also famous for oysters, of which we devoured a few. Also for ponies, little wild swamp ponies, guaranteed to bite. Come to think of it, Okracoke had wild ponies too-it's a thing: lighthouse, marsh, ponies. Chicoteague is full of nice ratshack motels, and the downtown still has commercial fishing boats along the waterfront. Seems more New England than Southern.

May 17 Washington D.C.
Ok this is how it's going to be in the "New World" : wireless internet access but no toilet. We'll listen to our Ipods while dying of cholera. SUVs will choke the roads in both directions but no one will have a job.
Welcome to the Third World America-this is it. Now we have armed children with machine guns, high government officials on the take, streets, sewerage and roads that never get fixed: just like Africa. But look on the sunny side-street food proliferates, there are "cuida-coches" (car guards) just like in Mexico City in downtown Washington DC, and you can now feel just fine about ignoring any orders you get from above: post Katrina are you going to do ANYTHING an official source tells you in a disaster???
We just spent three extremely pleasant days at the heart of Mordor, the throbbing evil that is Washington DC. Just like Mordor, the inhabitants all around are charming, industrious, folk-music loving Hobbits, living in the shadow of radiating evil. DC is a lovely town to boot-it's extremely European. The buildings are Parisian height and seem designed by the same kind of mind that built Paris and Brussels, so it's very walkable and pleasant. I read that Leonardo DaVinci thought the perfect proportion for a cityscape was a street as wide as the buildings are tall, which is true of much of D.C.Just don't look up at the snipers on the roof!
We stayed at the Washington Plaza, a modernist '60s white and black pop art wonder, with windows that opened, a great lounge, giant pool, complete with cute Italian lifeguard, located 8 blocks from the White House, where Code Pink (the anti-war mothers' group) was staging a Mother's Day protest.
The music and sociability of the people of the greater Baltimore/Mordor area is stimulating. The Folk Society threw a great house concert for us at the Glassie's house and we saw Trish Byersly, John Jackson's former companion and agent, who we miss having on the scene. We had a wonderful time hanging around with Phil and Judy Wiggins at Busboys and Poets, the lefty hangout on 14th NW, where you can get cheese grits AND Bloody Mary's AND The Nation. That and the scene at downhome Archie's Barbershop, where a dedicated gang of guitar players keep Archie Shepard's flame alive, and Miles and Jenny have the cutest little bluesguy for a kid.

May 22 Thomson Georgia

The Blind Willie Blues Festival is a lovely event, out in a hay field. Robert Lockwood played early in the day, as did Devil In A Woodpile, a band I've been hearing about and wanted to check out, so we arrived pretty dang early and had a bit too long of a day in the heat.

There was a random European tormenting Mr. Lockwood backstage with news of death and disease. Why would anyone think a musician his age (or any age) would want to hear of an old friend's sickness three minutes before having to play a show?!? Lockwood did his best to ignore the fellow and played a lovely set on his 12 string electric. Devil in a Woodpile was worth the trouble too.

Next day-back to Seattle for me and Steve drove home to Austin. He stopped in New Orleans, but it made him too sad to see the streets still lined with great piles of trash, the empty neighborhoods and the hustle of ugly new construction. He had to keep driving until he got to Lafayette.

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