Naw I Don't Need No Drugs

Hanna Ave, Indianola, MS

In the universal sign for "let me hold a dollar" a lanky black man lunges up to the car making a circular motion with his right hand. I roll the window down...

"You got a couple of dollars I can hold?"

I reached in my front pocket and pulled out a folded dollar bill that had been in there days.

"That's all I got...You gettin' my last dollar brother."

"You got 35 more cents?"

I laughed and dug it out for him.

"Man you ain't got another dolla?"

"I told you that was my last dollar...I need to get movin' brother. The poleese see my white face stopped on the street like this and they're gonna think one thing."

"You need some drugs man?"

"Naw I don't need no Drugs. I can't be monkeyin' around up here I gotta get back to Jackson."

"You goin' to Jackson? Today?...Oh hold on a second. Wait right here.."

Then he started off toward a house...

"Brother I gotta go. I'm workin'."

"A'ight...A'ight."

What on Earth he wanted me to transport down to Jackson we'll never know but, in my experience it could have been anything from nickle bag of dope to his Grandmama.



I was down there yesterday morning because the night before I couldn't get any pictures...there must have been 10 cops down there and at least that many people lined up on the sidewalk.

I've seen Blues Travel sites nonchalantly explain how easy it is to fly into Memphis, rent a car and drive down into The Delta...Clarkesdale, Leland, Indianolo are "just a two and a half hour drive." I'd like to hear how that's worked out for some of these folks in sandals, baggy short-pants, and Robert Johnson T-Shirts. I imagine being berated with shouts of "you ain't on Beale St. now" isn't the worst of it.



Church St.

Every town in The South, of any size, has a Church St. In Jackson it's Farish St...Memphis has Beale St. The old Black business district. Not just Jukes but, grocery stores, taylors, cobblers, ice cream shops, they had everything. What Church St. had that none of the others did was B.B. King.



I love B.B. King...who doesn't. It's not my favorite brand of Blues (though he's certainly my favorite Urban players and his voice...geeeeze.) but, it's the first I heard and knew. As a little kid I appropriated my Daddy's cassette of 16 Greatest Hits and carried it around in an old tape recorder...even to bed at night.



Anyway that's Idianola. So is this...



Before I let you go. We need to slip back to Leland. I mentioned that there were a few players from around there...and indeed there are and indeed they deserve mentioning.

Son Thomas...not only a Blues player but a renowned artist. They call him a "folk" artist but that's always seemed condescending to me.



You gonna tell me this fella was just ignorantly making sculptures without any sophisticated understanding of what he was doing...bah.

What about Johnny Winters?



Man...Kiss My Grits..that is good.

Booger Loves Sissy

I want our resident expert on the anthropology of emotions to explain this expression of Love as anything but Mystery and Truth.

Satartia, Mississippi is a collection of houses around a cotton gin in the Delta. There's a couple of churches and a Grocery...


(These are the places that The Shed with it's Christmas lights and license plates is trying to emulate. You can buy some staples and honeybuns, bait, and cokecolas in these places but, they're more like social halls. They serve meals and coffee...local musicians will play outside or in if there's a dance floor...pool tables, etc. .)

The place is owned by a woman that seemed perfectly sane but run by two young women who are crazy as outhouse rats (they insisted that they were Booger and Sissy)...I barely got out of that place without a mark.

It was one of the funnest calls I've been on in a long time.

Before you get to Satartia, comin' from Jackson, you gotta pass by Bentonia...



Home of the Blue Front Cafe and Skip James...



I wish I'd gotten a picture of the two convicts being hauled up to the top of a flag pole to change light bulbs...in the bucket of an excavator.

I spent the rest of the day gettin' further into The Delta...


(Allan II)

Holly Bluff, Delta Grocery...where the owner has a cast iron cross from a Confederate grave that must be almost 150 years old. It was surrounded by rattlers that had been taken off snakes he'd killed.

A Grocery in Mayerville with a shag Budweiser rug nailed to wall over the dance floor.

Glen Allen on Lake Washington...where things are slow goin'.



My last stop was in Leland. It's home to it's share of Blues players but, it's also the birthplace of...



Time to start day two...Greenwood, Ita Bena, Morehead, Indianola, etc.

The Title has been fixed...as ISBW keenly observed "who calls themselves bogger?" :)

At first I thought it was a typo...but I did it twice.

Blue Father's Day

This mornin' The Boy brought me a present wrapped in the funny papers.



The book was put together by Roger Stolle owner of Cat Head Records in Clarkesdale. Cat Head and Fat Possum records have done a great job helping to ensure that Blues..real vibrant hard-country Blues...has it's own space to operate in.

Hava little taste of Como Mississippi...and Mr. R.L. Boyce.




The Boy doesn't yet know how lucky he was to have been born where he is...but he will. I'll make sure of that...just like my Daddy is the reason somebody would automatically think to give me a gift like this...it's all cause of his Blues and Soul records (or tapes).

He was here last week and and actually took a better picture of The Blue Front Cafe than one on the cover. His has patrons.

I hope The Boy feels lucky to have me as a Daddy one day...the same way I feel about his Grandaddy.

We'll leave it with Duwayne Burnside singin' his Late Great Daddy's song...

King of the Road

Work was a little squirrely yesterday...I went from Slidell, La to Vancleave, Ms, Ocean Springs (I had an important call to make there)...



Gulfport...then back to Slidell, La to work with my favorite knucklehead in South Louisiana (he really is a knucklehead and he really is my favorite)..then back to Gulfport followed by a return trip to my room in Slidell.

Lot's of radio time though...I heard Ring My Bell by Anita Ward yesterday. Did you?

The Highlights...





And the greatest song that ever came over the FM...



I couldn't help but wonder, as I was beating on the steering wheel and breaking out in goosebumps...if Elvis had to deal with haters when he was becoming the King of Rock n Roll the way I'm having to as I become the King of Painting.

Who knows?

Alright, back on the road today and home to Martha and The Boy tonight.

Holla!

All This and a Link Wray Reference - Part 1

I burned a lot of rubber in the last few weeks...



From Pascagoula to Holly Springs and a lot of in between.



Usually I spend my time in the car turning the dial trying to find Brittany and Pink songs...or searching in vain for the rowdy preacher I once heard in L'usiana. He was givin' a sermon on sess and pawnografry. He got so fired up describing his former wicked ways that he completely lost track of his Amens and Hallalujahs ...

"I read yo Playboys magazeems, AMEEEEEEEEENS...and yo prenthouses Halllujjjhaaaaa!!!"

In South Louisiana I can pick up Catholic radio programs (not too many of those in my neck of the woods) which are interesting...don't usually hear a lot of discussion on transubstantiation...or hear well reasoned arguments against birth control. I spent an hour once listening to a fella explain how the prohibition against birth control was not a ban on casual hanky-panky within marriage.

I heard Hunka Burnin Love twice last week...with a steering wheel in your hand, that's livin'.

I love the radio but, sometimes I need a break from it...I can only turn the dial on With or Without You, Sweet Emotion and Tom Sawyer so many times before wanting to punch it...screaming about a conspiracy to ruin my road trips.

So sometimes I bring CDs...zip into the office here at the house and grab a few off the shelf without much thought. This time I saw a familiar pink cover and sitting on top of it was this....



I don't know how I feel about Captain Beefheart as Captain Beefheart...there are moments of blues brilliance like the above, pure genius and then there's weirdness for the sake of being weird...like I rapped the vegetable satellite with a chocolate covered cue stick...or whatever. It just seems so contrived...or worse desperate to be different. Then there's the voice...I don't know if an intimate familiarity with Howlin' Wolf makes it better or worse...sometimes it sounds like a brilliant reinterpretation. Sometimes it sounds worse than George Thourogood doing One Bourbon One Scotch...

All that's not much of an issue here. Safe as Milk is a transition record and there's plenty of fuzzed out straight up R&B left on it to get past some awkward moments...and its got Ry Cooder.



Fantastic record and it'll have me breakin' out The Make Up by next week...



Hey Don...and Frank...especially you Frank...that's what truely strange imagery sounds like.

Next up the pink one...it deserves its own post.

The Greatest

Last night The Sister had her little Supper Party...which means I spent most of Friday night and Saturday morning with this....



I was tasked with, ripping cds, finding and arranging songs, burning discs and creating an 80's themed cover for the compilation that we discussed a few weeks back.

Finding the songs was a challenge...these compilations are all the same except for one or two tracks (it's great for the artists...if you want Jukebox (Don't Put Another Dime In The) you're gonna have to buy 867-5309 for the fifth time). Rippin the dodgy discs, which hadn't seen the inside of a jewel case since CD's were packaged in long boxes, wasn't as easy as it should have been. The cover was no problem for a high-stepper...but, listening to The Sister try and decipher the legal consequences of signing up for a free trial on Rhapsody was tedious (as was having to explain to her that stealing, even anonymously in the privacy of your own home, is still stealing). D*&^$# if the song she was trying to track down (Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins) didn't turn out to be on one the discs...those comps are impossible to tell apart.

All that was a chore, but the biggest pain in the butt of all...was finding a place in the sequence for Heat of the Moment by Asia...Seriously? Not only is it a dreadful piece of super-rock trash ...there's just no comfortable place for it between Der Kommisar and Shake it Up. In a move of quiet retaliation, I stuck the German version of 99 Red Balloons on the disc.

Yet despite it all...I managed.

So now you are presented with the sound of woman...who has called me an idiot and a demon, called me a moron in icing, who has told me to kiss her grits and threatened my life all on these very pages...eating crow.



Winning!

80's UK: Squeezy Cheese and Whine

In the continuing effort to smarten up The Sisters poncey tea party (and to keep her from running her friends off with Level 42 and Simply Red) we offer the 80's UK side...

Side: Ponce

1. Tainted Love - Soft Cell



2. It's My Life - Talk Talk

3. Love Plus One - Haircut 100


4. Rio - Duran Duran

Should Be...

That **** is WIZARD!

5. Material Girl - Madonna
Her moment...all down hill from that point on.

6. Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order

7. Goody Two Shoes - Adam and the Ants.

8. Doctor Martens Boots - Alexei Sayle

9. Don't You Want Me - Human League

10. Poison Arrow - ABC

11. If You Were Here - Thompson Twins


12. Just Can't Get Enough - Dee-pesh-kamode

13. I Want Candy - Bow Wow Wow

14. What is Love - Howard Jones

15. Dancing Horses - Echo and the Bunnymen

Should be...



Cheerio B***es!

The 80's: A Sophisticated Approach

In between themed toddler birthday parties, running marathons and working at a non-profit..The Sister gets together with a Supper Club.

It's her turn to host this month. Never one to leave a bad idea alone when it can easily be made so much worse...she has decided to give her night an 80s theme. My brother-in-law rightfully dreads this, not as a one-off but, as a challenge to the rest of the club. You can just see it in his face when she talks about it...this is all leading to a night some months from now when he'll be forced to talk like a pirate if he wants the salt.

For her it's an excuse to indulge in her favorite delusion...the 80's According to S****t...by making a mixed CD (shouldn't that really be a tape?). Thursday night, after supper, we sat around the table and listened as she explained which bands and songs were being considered...the fist troubling omission between all the Level 42 and Huey Lewis was Berlin.

How can you put a new wavish/80's compilation together without The Metro?



Then she balked at Haircut 100!

My own personal 80's list would consist only of a Fall side and a Prince side...but for her purposes, as vague and sketchy as they were turning out to be, how can you exclude Love Plus One???

"Well," she says, "I love those songs but, my taste in music is a little more, you know, sophisticated than most"...most what? 8 year olds.

Then she screwed up her face at Don't You Forget About Me. The song hits me like a bad smell too, but it is The Breakfast Club and she's throwing an 80's themed party drenched in day-glow and tied with a scrunchy...the decision's not really her's to make.

Obviously she needs help..and as y'all know, because I've told you so many times, I am nothing if not a loving and doting brother. As always...I'm here to help.

Here is your list lil Sister...it might not rise to the esoteric levels of sophistication you're comfortable with...but It'll be a hit.

We'll break into sides...keeping with the theme.

Side: Bougie

1. The Metro - Berlin

2. Head Over Heels - Go Gos

This really is one of my favorites.

3. Kids in America - Kim Wilde

4. Shake It Up - The Cars

5. B52's - 52 Girls


I know I know...but you tell me which decade it's most comfortable in.

6. Devo - Whip IT

7. The Waitresses - I Know What Boys Like

8. Stray Cat's - Rock This Town

9. Joan Jett & The Blackhearts - I Love RocknRoll

10. When Doves Cry - Prince



Y'all feel free to make your own suggestions...she really needs the help.

I'm off to work on Side: Ponce.

Biographical Tid Bit #3

I was almost killed by, and may yet die from embarrassment because of...one of these.




It happened in the parking lot at Hudson Salvage in Brandon...I'll never forget it. We had just left the store and were headed across the parking lot to the car when my right foot slid...more like a glide really...out from under me. It was so sudden and severe that Martha grabbed my arm.

I was the first to notice what had happened. I stared at the rubbery fleshy yellow lump in silence...not wanting to believe it while my mind started calculating the implications of what had happened.

Then I heard it...a guttural braying that was hard to place...like a pony and elephant having a heated argument..hahuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh heeeeh heeeh heeh...followed by gasping...huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh and sighing....aaahhhhhhhhhh...over and over. It sounded like the universe was laughing at me but it was just Martha...and when the sister found out....

It's a sound that's echoed in my head for 14 years.

"You slipped on a banana peel." That's their answer to everything.

As has been recently established by one of our loyal readers, I have the looks of a young Marlon Brando..."You slipped on a Banana Peel."

Style? I've got miles and miles. Martha's moseyin' around this morning in a pair of, admittedly flattering, sweatpants and short terry-cloth robe while I'm lounging in a red and white gingham oxford, a pair of perfectly faded jeans and loafers. Ralph Lauren told me he wanted to have my baby..."You slipped on a Banana Peel."

The two of them have a good degree from fine institutions. I have degrees from Superstar institutions...."You slipped on a Banana Peel."

I have a better record collection than both of 'em put together. They think James Chance was a game show host and neither one of 'em could name one Slint song or pick Mark E Smith out of lineup...."You slipped on a Banana Peel."

Etc.

Nothing I've done in life or may yet do can get out from under the shadow of that banana peel. This may end up being the only biographical tidbit that matters in the end.

Radio Grown Folks...Another Smokin' Installment

Junior Kimbrough...Tramp


Jessie Mae Hemphill...Go Back to Your Used to Be



Asie Payton...I Love You



Y'all are welcome.

The Boy and his G'itar.

That's my boy during Show and Tell at his little school. Lots of stuffed animals, pull-toys, action figures and then that.

Flippin rock star...that's all.



It's a little loud, but you know....*


*That's Rory Gallagher and Bullfrog Blues courtesy of some French TV show and Dr. Wommm's Patented Stupidity Cure...links in my reading list.

The Judgment of Parents and Children

Me and Martha have been parents now for two and half years. We're makin' it I reckon...he's healthy, we can take him out in public, people like bein' around him, he minds well. Well, at least he minds other adults...his "teachers", the lady who watches him at Church and The Sister.

He's constantly pushin' it with us...always schemin' and get's a little lippy sometimes. He's got his Moma's big, beautiful brown eyes and a stubborn streak that's force is as strong as it's origins are mysterious. :cough:

We were told that as parents we'd make mistakes...then we were told again, then again, and again. Got emails and text sayin' you will screw up...received a certified letter saying it's inevitable...some relative or close friend hired a sky writer. It was if we hadn't been raised by parents of our own :) .

I'm sure we're messin' up somewhere...not whippin' him enough I reckon. My Momma expresses regret now about every whoopin' she ever gave me, but the truth is I deserved 'em. I wasn't nearly as bad as The Sister of course, but if there was one or two that I didn't deserve...there was one or two things she didn't know about. It all evens out.

I'm not really thinkin' about parental regrets this morning though...it's too early for that anyway. It'll be years before we know just how badly we've screwed up. I'm thinking of things I should have done differently as a kid.

And not like handing my Daddy an atrocious mid-term report right after the Blues Brothers finished. I thought for sure he'd be in a better mood to take it after laughing for two hours straight...that just...that...that turned out to be a really bad idea.

I'm talking about the things I could've and should've tried to get away with like the all-ages Replacements show in the summer of 88. I was staying with my buddy for a couple of weeks in Tallahassee. We were millin' around pestering college kids in Vinyl Fever like we did most afternoons when we heard the Replacements would be playing that Friday night at the Musical Moon.

We knew we'd have to get permission but like most 15 years olds we never internalized anything...we were gonna be there. His momma was fine with it as long as my parents were. Shockingly the answer was no...they didn't want me getting a head-start hanging out in bars. Crushed...just crushed.

We should've gone...we snuck out of his house all the time anyway. The thing is we didn't ask permission to sneak out...we never had discussed sneaking out of the house so no one had ever specifically said we couldn't...it wasn't a matter of direct defiance you see.

My parents had done a really good in the sense that I hated the idea of disappointing them. The other thing was I just didn't want the hassle of getting in trouble...I'd be on my own soon enough. Plus that little town we lived in at the time was bad enough without being stuck in my room for a month. We went to the movies instead. Faced with a direct "No you may not"...I flinched. I should've run the risk...even if we'd gotten caught I'd have seen The Replacements* and chances are I'd be ungrounded by now.

Funny thing is that same summer or maybe the next...I ended up in a seedy apartment complex inhabited by a punk-rock car thief and the Filipino drug dealers he worked for. I had been give permission to go to the movies with an older associate that must remain nameless and ended up getting to know his friends instead...I actually thought we were going to the movies when we left the house. I hadn't been told I couldn't hang out with car thieves and dope pushers...besides what was I suppose to say when the little dealers walked in carrying Domino's pizza and automatic rifles...."I don't think my momma would want me here"?

Despite the danger and the illicit stench of the affair...I can't say I regret it. The car thief turned out the be the genuine article (to this day he may the only actual punk I ever talked to)...he had a bleached pompadour and his arms were covered in tattoos...this was long before every Sunday School teacher had a sunburst or a lily tattooed on her ankle. The only people I knew who had tattoos were old men like my Grandpa or fishermen. He was from Los Angeles and he'd seen everybody...Minutemen, Black Flag, Husker Du and on. He knew Billy Zoom from X.

Of course when I asked about him some years later I was told he'd been killed by the cops. I wasn't sure how my...associate...had come to know these jokers, but if I had to guess it was probably at an all ages show :).

Anyway...

*I get what comfort I can by reminding myself that by this point Bob Stinson had been kicked out of the band...so it wasn't really the Replacements anyway.

One for the Sister

I just finished my dinner...soup and chips.

I spilled dip on my sweater and pants.

While she's trying to figure that out y'all can watch this...

The Conversation Continues

First of all, though I will be happy to do so...I have not accused you of judgment hate-crimes. In fact, I don't believe I've said anything at all about your judgment...far as I know you haven't made a falsifiable statement until this last post.

Secondly, you get no points for accusing me of trying to have it both ways...a) see above, b)the whole opening is obviously flippant...when did you ever accuse me of hating Muse?, c)even if taken at face value saying we have no problem with pretentious music is not the same as saying we have to make allowances for the pretentious people that listen to it.

Third, what I've been trying to do is establish a few philosophical points that we might be able to base some questions around.

I haven't crawled your *** for any of your opinions about rocknroll.

An imperfect example of what I've been trying to get at...A offers up a red box, a simple red box...then B offers up a red box with white polka-dots.

B may say..."I didn't like the red box."
or..."I thought the red box was ok but boring as it was."

What B may not say is that the red box "sucked because it was just a red box" or that he has "improved the Red Box".

B has done no such thing. He's created a polka-dotted box.

I'm not accusing you of any of these things...just trying to establish the point I've been trying to make.

Four..what you call boring and predictable others call a GROOVE. It's great for dancing and...other vigorous rhythmic activities. A couple of early Sunday mornings at The Subway could have straightened you out, but sadly it's been closed...you're just doomed.

Five, Cut. Three musicians just banging away in the same room? There's a statement we can examine...Wrong. Listen again. Mike Watt and George Hurley are connected at the hip...the base line runs up CRACK...runs back down CRACK
D Boon singing rides the rhythm while playing compact blues leads then dipping back into the rhythm...not unlike...



What am I missing? Hollow sounding...all I have to say to that is this...



I patiently await your abusive response. :)

P.S. Adam says we may be coming off as nasty towards one another...I can assure you that, while we do actually disagree on these things, it's all done with tongue in cheek. Y'all are free to jump in any time without fear of a gettin an earful. The only really mean-spirited poster around here is The Sister...and she only directs her bile at me.

We Don't Hate Muse

Sorry the video's out of sync.

Just Happens to be a Post

The following insanity is quoted from the description for Afro-Punk on netflix.

"Following four devout punk-rock fans who happen to be black, director James Spooner's thought-provoking documentary asks whether "Afro" and "punk" can go together."

Who happen to be black? Really? They just happen to be black...Spooner goes out to film some punk rockers...sits down to edit the film and realizes he just happened to film four black punkers. Maybe he went out to just film some people on the street...and they just happen to be punk rock fans...or maybe didn't intend to film anything at all but just happened to have a rolling camera in his hand...

Remember those hidden pictures...you know they looked like a set of geometric patterns, but if you stared at 'em long enough and held your mouth just right...a picture would appear.

Anyway, a couple of years ago I'm staring at one of these things when a picture starts to emerge...and it is clearly, clearly an African woman carrying water on her head...there's pyramids in the background for goodness sake...but, according to the description it was an "African-American Woman carrying Water."

Evidently this secret picture came with it's own narrative. A Black woman in the US...sorry an African-American woman takes a vacation to Africa where she wears traditional clothes and does chores.

Lord only knows why "African Woman Carrying Water" was passed on, but you know in the hall of mirrors that is peoples' thinking on race...it made somebody go wobbly.

Stop insulting my intelligence with this childishness...and paranoia about race. Can we not at least talk like a adults?

Below you'll find a link that just happens to be embeded on this blog...and happens to feature a punk-rock video, and happens..... to be awesome.



P.S. The cover does just happen to be subtitled in Japanese...it was the first cover that came up on Google images.

Pest House

The Boy went down at 8:30 tonight...worn out from a stomach bug that he's had for the last few days. His Momma's got it now and she went to bed right after tucking him in.

So that's left me out here on the couch...alone with my new netflix account (thanks Martha)...and the Minutemen.




We Jam Econo - The Story of the Minutemen



It was good. A lot like a Minutemen album...hit the essence of each moment and then move on. They didn't spend anymore time on Double Nickles on a Dime than they did Project Mersh...or D Boon's untimely death. It was as much about their process as anything else...



what a process.

Last Weeks Travels - North/Hill Country

On Monday I headed north to Southaven.

Goin north from Jackson you don't really get out on the road 'til you clear Canton which is about 20 miles from the city limits. Then it's another 20-30 miles to the Lexington/Pickens exit where I take my first smoke break at an old truck-stop...



oooops.

It's a cryin' shame too...one of the few honest truck-stops left on the road. The kinda place that sells bumper stickers and t-shirts, that say "I spent most of my money on women and booze..the rest I just wasted" or "It's not a Belly it's a Gas-Tank for a Love Machine"...little cedar boxes with a picture of Robert E. Lee on the lid...ashtrays and shot glasses decorated with Battle Flags, cut-glass figurines and dream catchers...rubber-band guns with clothes-pins for a firing mechanisms..

The bathrooms were down a long wood paneled hall...at the corner was one of those old cylindrical ashtrays, gun metal grey with a chrome top, under a pay phone...not much call for either of those these days. The bathrooms had cinder block walls and cement floors...no automated anything and it wasn't uncommon to find a bottle of dish-washing soap on the sink when the hand soap had run out.

Now it's gone. I'm sure to be replaced with another Love's or Flying J...fresh deli sandwiches, a mocachino machine, a Red Box and clean bathrooms. Yawn.
_________________________________________

Como Mississippi is a tidy little town just South of Senatobia and not too far from Southaven.



It was the home of Mississippi Fred McDowell and Othar Turner...both legends of Hill Country Blues...a more rythmic, driving, get-down form than the kind that comes out of the Delta. McDowell is the undisputed king of the slide (Womm?) while Turner led the Drum and Fife tradition.



That's from the Square at Holly Springs...another Hill Country Blues town. It's the home of Fat Possum Records, Junior Kimbrough and the irreplaceable, gigantic R.L. Burnside.



A man that looms larger in my own mind than William Faulkner and Elvis...both from the area.
__________________________________________

Those with a map may have noticed that we've skipped over Southaven and are half way to Tupelo.

Southaven is the Mississippi part of Memphis...there's lots of manufacturing and shipping because taxes are much lower in Mississippi. It's a pleasant livable place...there just isn't much to tell. There was work to be done and once I finished it I headed out...stopped in Holly Springs. Then on through New Albany to Tupelo.



Tupelo, Mississippi the birthplace of Elvis Presely.



That's the house where it all started...and they've turned it and a couple of acres around into a park. There's a gift shop and a museum, a chapel. Recently they brought over the Pentecostal Church he attended as a child. It's a lovely quiet spot in the same working class neighborhood where he was born.



Tupelo is also the home of...



There was trouble at the mall

And trouble with the internet connection in my room...
That's my perplexed to the point of irritation face...with shrapnel.

Y'all already know what happened the next day on the way back.

Flippin' Cops.

Road Trip - North Mississippi

This is all y'all really need to know...











I'll mess it all up with some pictures and commentary when I get back from The Delta today.

Radio Grown Folks

It's been pointed out on these very pages that the world has gone blues-dumb...well we'll fix that.