Category: Uncategorized

The Road to Baton Rouge

You know the lovely drive through Stanley Park in Vancouver? Imagine that for 444 miles, that’s what the Natchez Trace is, a gorgeous, slow-speed park drive for 10-12 hours, no towns, no gas stations, very few entrances and exits, no nothing.
I started down my portion of the Trace pretty early and had the drive mostly to myself, allowing for such classic shots as…
and…
furthermore…
finally…
A gorgeous drive, upon finishing driving the Trace I found this old country store featuring a buffet lunch and some incredibly friendly people.
The food was outstanding, all of it… except the collard greens, fifth and last try, they taste like fish food smells.
FUN FACT: The four trees in front of me here are part of a line planted 300 years ago to mark the border between Spanish land and Choctaw land.
FUN FACT: The hill behind me is an earthen mound, likely built by Tunica indians, such mounds are all over Mississippi but only recently has intense study of them been undertaken.
Arrived in Baton Rouge and went for a hike in the swamp, it’s not that hot, about 80f but with the humidity and my lack of exercise lately I was dripping pretty quickly.

Further down the blues trail…

In the Delta the land was perfectly flat and level 
but it shimmered like the wing of a lighted dragonfly. 
It seemed strummed, as though it were an instrument 
and something had touched it.
–Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding
Nobody loves me but my mother, and she could be jivin’ too.
– BB King
The covered railroad marker in the picture below (in tiny Tutwiler, Mississippi) marks the spot where, in 1903, composer WC Handy heard a plantation boy playing strange repeating music on a guitar using a knife to slide the strings and repeating a tune with no chorus. His later attempts to recreate what he had heard would become the blues.
Main street Tutwiler.
Just down the road from Tutwiler is Indianola, home to the King of the Blues himself.

The story goes that BB heard U2 on Saturday Night Live and liked the band, he sent a note to Bono asking if he would write BB a song.

The video is awesome, it shows them hanging out and recording the song at Sun Studios (Bono using the microphone I was holding the other day).

I stopped in at the very impressive and insanely friendly BB King Museum for a planned half hour stop that became two hours.
BB’s office at the time of his death.
The final version of his tour bus sits in the parking lot like a dog waiting for its master.
After Indianola I kept going southeast to Greenville, another blues centre, and home to the Winters brothers and… Muddy Waters!

Lunch at a local cafe, I asked the owner how old it was, she said she didn’t really know but that her family bought it in 1909.
On her suggestion I had the special, chicken and sausage gumbo with rice.
Followed by catfish, collard greens, coleslaw and corn muffin.
And banana pudding, everything great (collard greens not so much).
After lunch (and another blues museum, can’t write about them all) the GPS decided the road below was a highway and put me on it for 45 minutes of extreme back country driving, serious Children of the Corn vibes.
Eventually supervan rounded a bend to see these old abandoned buildings.
And three or four houses like this.

I pulled over and got out to take some pictures of the ghost town and quickly realized it was not a ghost town at all and these houses were not abandoned.

I drove on, checked the map and no town is listed at that spot.

On to Jackson….

Clarksdale – Blues Ground Zero

Lord, that 61 Highway may be the longest road I know
She run from New York City, down the Gulf of Mexico.
– Mississippi Fred McDowell “61 Highway”
Got my first good look at the Mississippi on my way south out of Memphis, driving old highway 61 to New Orleans over the next few days.
There are different blues museums pretty much every 30 minutes along Highway 61 but all of them so far are worth seeing so the short drive from Memphis to Clarksdale ended up taking all day.
Clarksdale, where Robert Johnson sold his soul at the crossroads..
In honour of Robert I grabbed some BBQ and had a little picnic at the crossroads.
Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’ done ?”
God says. “Out on Highway 61”.
– Bob Dylan
Gorgeous old motel
WC Handy’s coronet, Father of the Blues.
Blues bar!
The bar was amazing, I was the first customer of the evening so the owner, Red, put me to work helping with setup, the whole evening was perfect, great friendly people, amazing music, dancing.
The guitarist, Lou, had gotten a kick out of me when I was helping with setup and once the room was full of people introduced me as “a famous Canadian comedian”, invited me to tell a joke and then played a gorgeous blues cover of Neil Young’s ‘The Needle & The Damage Done’.
The mood was so friendly and warm, maybe 30 people at most, like a house party, lots of cross-talk and introductions. The crowd was probably half local and half outsiders, having the locals was key as they knew a bunch of call and response bits and things to yell out that added a ton to the evening.

 One local lady in particular made sure she sat with everyone and talked to each of them and got their story.

I noticed this friendly lady would run out the front door each time anyone would leave for the evening, ensuring they got a proper goodbye and closing conversation out front. This made me shy and nervous so when I eventually did leave for the night I timed it for when her back was turned…

I slipped out and was just buckling my seatbelt when there was a gentle knock on the van window, there she was, grinning and shaking her finger at me. We chatted a while, she said she knew I was going to be a “slipaway guy”.

A great night.

Non-Stop Truck Stop – A Day In The Life

Taking you through what is mostly a maintenance day!
7:30am – Wake up, van is already starting to heat up, just a week ago in Oklahoma I couldn’t stay warm.
8:00am – I grab my go-bag and head into the truck stop, sorry the “Travel Plaza”. I slept like a rock for 8 hours solid last night but still feeling groggy.
This has been home sweet home this week.

Walk past the camo gear, take a right at the racist/sexist T-Shirt display and into the bathroom to clean up for the day.

8:45am – Looking for breakfast when the low fuel beeper starts beepering, pull off into a Circle K/Shell to get gas. Cannot pay at the pump without either a Shell rewards card or a zip code, try 90210 but no luck. Apparently Shell has never considered the possibility that a non-American could ever need gas.
9:00am – find a great looking little breakfast place called Brothers Juniper.
9:15am – Greek gyro omelette, awesome, everything you would find in a gyro but wrapped in eggs.  Biscuits so far in the south are unlike anything I have ever had, they are amazing.

9:45am – Time to do laundry, I put this off as long as possible.
After laundry I headed to the Civil Rights Museum, all I saw yesterday was the ceremony but didn’t actually get inside. Park supervan and walk around the corner to see a line to get in stretching around the block, it’s now cold and windy so I decide the museum can wait until tomorrow.
Lots of input lately has me a bit ground down so I pulled into a church and have a nap.
I met a local the other day and we’d agreed to meet up today to hang out, had some beers with her and some of her friends and chatted away the afternoon.
Grabbed some not great BBQ for dinner, spotted this sign in the BBQ place’s parking lot.
Yeah.,,,
After dinner I swung around to Starbucks and whittled away the rest of a nothing day chatting with friends back in Vancouver and doing very little.
Shower time!
This is a shower!
And back to the Flying J Travel Plaza to settle in for the night, probably time to move on tomorrow, getting restless.
Supervan is superbedroom!

Martin Luther King Jr.

Early morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
  – U2 “Pride”
Actually Bono had his facts a bit wrong, the shot that killed Martin Luther King Jr. happened at 6:01pm on April 4. Today marked the 49th anniversary of that day.
The Lorraine Motel where the assassination took place is now the National Civil Rights Museum. I headed there around 5:00pm to see the ceremony.

I took a video but it doesn’t seem to be working, I’ll leave it linked in case it fixes.

The singing, speeches and prayers were moving and an entire 6 minute silence was observed ending at 6:02pm.


Stax Records – Soulville

Stax Records in Memphis and Motown in Detroit made up over 70% of the soul music recordings during the 60’s and 70’s, the old Stax building is now the Soul Museum.
This is the organ that Booker T & the MGs recorded ‘Green Onions’ on.
Here’s a pretty great live version.
I got kinda wrapped up around this point and kinda forgot to keep taking pictures so not much more.
This old recording console at Stax allows you to twist and slide, after Stax when I went to meet Jody at Ardent records I had this conversation with him:
“Is the console from the cover photo of Sister Lovers (the third Big Star album) still here?”
“Naw, it’s in the Stax museum, I think you can touch it there though.”
“I just did!”
“All roads lead to Big Star.”
Isaac Hayes’ Cadillac

Sun Records – Elvis, Johnny, Jerry Lee, Carl, Roy, Ike, Howling Wolf

Sun FREAKING Records!
Sam Phillips ran Sun Records out of this building in Memphis, personally discovering Sam Cooke, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Ike Turner, Carl Perkins and Elvis.
In 1951 while preparing to record a new song “Rocket 88” Ike Turner’s guitarist dropped his amp and tore the speaker cone, with no replacement and no time Sam Phillips stuffed the cabinet full of newspaper and accidentally created the first use of guitar distortion.
You can hear the fuzz-buzz of the broken amp on the final recording too, almost sounding like a saxophone, rock and roll is born.
On Dec 4, 1956 Sun Records hosted an impromptu gathering of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.
The foursome spent the afternoon fooling around in the studio and cutting tracks. The tour guide played us a snippet today that was Elvis telling the other guys about this amazing new singer he had just seen, Jackie Wilson.
Here they are gathered around Elvis at the piano.
This piano.
This is the actual microphone used to record the first Elvis tracks, Johnny’s “I Walk The Line”, Great Balls of Fire and the studio tracks from U2’s Rattle and Hum,

Big Star Day – Unexpected Epilogue

I feel like I’m dying,
I’m never going to live again.
Yesterday when I popped in to Ardent Studios I chickened out.
The sole surviving member of Big Star, drummer Jody Stephens, works at Ardent. I wanted very badly to ask if he was in yesterday but couldn’t do it.
I walked in to Ardent this afternoon and asked the guy at the front desk:
“Does Jody Stephen’s still work here?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he might do an autograph?”
“I don’t know, Jody is pretty busy today.”
At that point I heard a voice from the back yell:
“What are you telling people about me!?”
Jody came out of the back, shook my hand and signed my copy of “#1 Record”.
We chatted a few more minutes and then Jody asked if I had time for a tour ! ! !
He proceeded to spend the next half-hour showing me every room in the studio, telling me Big Star stories and answering my questions.
I’ve been speechless a few times this trip already but this was something different.
Very little footage exists of the band, they were never really successful enough to tour or be filmed. This bit of footage is about all there is, the whole band is there, in the studio I was standing in this afternoon, you can see Jody working on the drums along with the rest of the band.