A tale of two pilgimages: From Elvis' house to Jack's

Recently got back from a weekend in Nashville full of cool stuff, starting out the night I arrived by wandering through the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood Art Crawl in order to see Th3 Anomaly, a hallway-spanning, floor-to-ceiling, wall-covering, sci-fi graphic novel featuring Nikola Tesla, Jules Verne, and Sarah Bernhardt (who knew Sarah was a science geek?). Very compelling, entertaining stuff, the scope of which was incredible both in size and the amount of imagination and effort required to create it.



The next day was spent visiting a pair of old cemeteries in Franklin, hiking through Stones River, one of the few preserved Civil War battlefields in the Nashville area, and hopping off of route 840 to find the road leading to a castle overlooking the highway.  But the first of the dual purposes of this trip began on Monday, with a smooth three-hour cruise along route 40 from Nashville to Memphis to visit Graceland.

As they say on the website, "For fans of Elvis Presley, Graceland is the ultimate pilgrimage", and I'm a big fan of both Elvis and pilgrimages. And, seeing as how it's been just over two years since I plunged purposefully down the Elvis rabbit hole, the timing of this visit also made it a late anniversary celebration.

Coming down route 51, I had expected to turn off the highway onto a side street or two to get to the house, but there it was, right smack on the side of the four-lane road. Should've realized, considering 51's been christened Elvis Presley Boulevard but, no, it was a disorienting surprise.  It might have been a smaller neighborhood road back in the day, but not anymore, not with all the traffic and gas stations and fried chicken joints and the Graceland visitor's complex across the street. So I girded myself for a schlock attack and headed in to buy my ticket for the Platinum level "Elvis Experience", plus airplanes.  

You apparently can't walk up to Graceland anymore, unless you go early in the morning when the grounds are open for free walk-ins to the meditation garden where Elvis and his parent are buried. At any other time, you have to grab an iPad and headphones and hop a shuttle for a ride across 51 and up the long driveway to the front door.

My favorite photo from one of the visitor center exhibits, snagged from here

The thing most people seem taken aback by right away is how small Graceland is. It's probably half the size of today's average McMansion, and even cozier considering the number of people who inhabited it and just plain hung out there when E was still alive. 

Borrowed from here. Follow the link and click on the image there to be taken to the
360-view images used in the Graceland iPad tour.

Only the ground floor and a couple of basement rooms are open to the public. Visitors are told before entering that the upstairs area, and Elvis' bedroom specifically, are kept private and closed. His bedroom and the bathroom in which he died have apparently been completely untouched since his death (though, of course, someone scrounged up before-death and after-death photos for the morbidly curious amongst us). The closest you can get is the bottom of the stairs.

Borrowed from here, where there are a lot more great shots

But his parents' ground-floor bedroom is viewable, complete with a few of his mother Gladys' dresses hanging in her closet. What was it about those modest dresses hanging there that brought tears to my eyes?
 

From here

And I began sniffling again when the tour got to the kitchen and I imagined his grandmother, Minnie Mae (or, as Elvis called her, "Dodger"), holding court and cooking for the family.
 

Another shot from here

The basement, with its mirrored-ceiling tv room and tucked-fabric walls and ceiling pool room, is where things began to get noticeably ostentatious.
 

From here. That creepy-eyed little white monkey had brothers on display elsewhere in the house. 

From here

And then, of course, you come back upstairs next to the jungle room. Doesn't everyone have a jungle room with a built-in waterfall wall?

From here

Then you're suddenly stepping out the back door, following the walk-way to the carport and E's father Vernon's office, then to the trophy building, which is a series of rooms displaying gold and platinum records, movie posters and memorabilia, and awards for everything from music to philanthropy. Then into the racquetball house, which has been filled with displays of those famous/infamous jumpsuits.  And then you're back outside and the walkway wraps around to the side of the house to Elvis' meditation garden. One of the things that I was most surprised to learn about Elvis was the breadth of his spirituality. I'd assumed he was raised deeply Christian, being from the deep south and all. He was, of course, but he apparently explored a vast variety of faiths, reading everything from Kahlil Gibran to very New Age-y sounding stuff.  The meditation garden was built during his lifetime for exactly the purpose its name indicates, and it's perfectly fitting that it would become Elvis' final resting place, along with his parents and grandmother.

From here.

And, yeah, I felt no shame in pulling a Kleenex out of my pocket and wiping my eyes repeatedly while I stood there reading the inscriptions on their graves.
 

From here

Then it's back onto the shuttle bus and back across Elvis Presley Boulevard to the visitor's complex, where there are a variety of exhibits of his cars, his clothes, his two private planes, and where every single exhibit space dumps you out into another gift shop. Hell, at one point, one gift shop led into another.  The gift shops are totally schlocky, but some of the exhibits are great. And it's all part of the Elvis mythos, all of it, the schlock and the grandeur, the tv sets in every room and the gaudy jumpsuits and the love he felt for his parents and grandmother and whatever his conception of God was. How many people in the history of this world have inspired the kind of joy and rapture that Elvis has? Certainly not many in recent decades. So many people seem to know of his legend as something cheesy, but what he accomplished, not just for himself but for popular music as we know it, was extremely powerful.  The tour of Graceland is definitely a must for anyone even slightly curious about Elvis, but it does not tell the whole story. It tells a lot about the man and the myth, but you need to go elsewhere to really learn about the music.  If the folks running Graceland were smart, they'd add another exhibit space focusing on that aspect of the man's deep and more-complex-than-you'd-expect legacy.

Back in Nashville the next day, I had my second pilgrimage, and a second anniversary celebration. Anyone who's followed my babbling knows I've been to Third Man Records in Nashville many, many times. But on this occasion, just a few days beyond the sixth anniversary of my original White weekend, I was allowed the opportunity to step "behind the curtain", as it were. Third Man has begun offering behind-the-scenes tours as an incentive for things like their annual holiday blood drives. Well, a pal of mine gave of his blood for the second year in a row and was rewarded with pulling a certificate for a tour for 6 people from TMR's pile of mystery gifts. And then he surprised the hell out of a few people, myself included, by inviting us to join him. And then... he got horribly sick and wasn't able to come for the tour himself.  But Third Man honcho Ben Blackwell graciously gave the rest of us well over two hours of his time and has promised a make-up tour for our incredibly generous friend once he recuperates.

Surprise! I have no grand revelations to reveal. Most serious fans know what's contained behind those black, yellow, red, and blue walls, beyond the store-front: Foremost is the Blue Room, a 150-or-so-person live venue for music performances, film showings, and art events; facilities for recording shows in the Blue Room to both tape and acetate; a warehouse/distribution center for the in-house and on-line stores; a photography dark room; the offices from which the entire company is run; and, last but not least, a temperature-controlled, fire-, smoke-, and bomb-proof vault for the master tapes of all of Jack White's music and Third Man recordings.



So for me, the revelation was not so much in seeing what was contained back there, but in how it's all contained, how it all fits within that really not very large complex, how the two buildings are connected (one tall hallway leading from front to back between the two, a second hallway crossing through the first from one building to the other with windows on each side looking out into the larger hallway), how the various design elements flow from one space into the next (matching desks on the loading dock-turned-office space, very graphic wall decor in the graphics dept, gorgeous over-stuffed sofas in the shipping dept...).  I had always imagined trick walls and subterranean chambers, but there were none (at least none that we were shown). There was just a shrewd use of every nook and cranny of space, an eye-boggling mix of seemingly jumbled clutter and and neat, sleek design. And incredible furniture. My eyes kept being drawn to the vintage furniture and light fixtures in every. single. room. Except the graphics department, but they had nifty wall installations instead. But it was everywhere else. The place is a vintage decor lover's wet dream. From Deco to Retro to Diner, it had me salivating. 
 
However, the fact that there was nothing really unexpected does not mean that there were no thrills.  The first was walking into the lathe room tucked behind the stage of the Blue Room.  That room is definitely no secret, TMR highlighted it in their video of the recording of the World's Fastest Record-- 


(Had to kick myself afterward that I forgot to ask for a peek inside the furnace elevator to see that incredible wallpaper. In an elevator, for crying out loud!) 

And you can see the lathe machine itself through a large glass window at the side of the stage.  But to walk into that room, to stand in it and have Blackwell describe exactly what they do there-- capturing live music as it happens, no second takes, no overdubs... I'll admit to bouncing a bit in excitement as we entered.  Because listening to live records cut there really is the next best thing to being at the show. You can watch YouTube video footage of all sorts of concerts, professionally or amateurly filmed, but as close as that seems, it's still two-dimensional.  The acoustics of the Third Man Blue Room are so crisply pristine and the recordings so immediate, that you can close your eyes while listening and really, truly get a feel for what it was like to be there.  It's a room in which technology and magic come together. 

The next big thrill came when Ben led us into the master tape vault (after leaving us waiting momentarily in the Blue Room while he unlocked the door  with its state-of-the-art keypad lock).  You can see this room in Dan Rather's interview with Jack, at 24 minutes in--


 
Let me say it again: The master tape vault. To actually be in that tiny room, to scan the jampacked shelves and read the names of much-loved records and performances on the spines of the boxes, to know that these were the original tapes from which all of every fan's records were created and could be re-created if necessary, all housed in Jack's "house" under his control... it was the mother lode, pure and simple, and my eyes were probably as big as dinner plates the whole time I was in there. And that's what meant so much to me about this tour-- It wasn't that any secrets might be revealed, it was the thrill of proximity, of being close to the literal sources of the music. Where Graceland focused on the man behind the music, this tour of Third Man focused on the music and how it's created and made available to us all.

Throughout the tour, it was nifty peeking into people's offices and meeting members of the staff. But, really, the biggest treat of all was hearing the stories told by Ben. Those are what made the tour unique and special.  In hindsight, there are so many things I would've liked to ask about if I'd remembered while I was there, but we could have ended up there all day, and having him answer questions might've meant he wouldn't have talked about other things (like the story behind the exceedingly rare White Stripes/Virgin Airlines poster on his office wall, which I found especially funny seeing as how my antiquated cell phone is a Virgin phone). And like every other Third Man experience I've had, the people I was fortunate to share it with added a camaraderie that warmed up that very cold day, especially after the tour was through and we huddled around the TMR Record Booth to record an appropriate tune for our missing benefactor.

But of course, tucked into a corner of the sitting area in the midst of the main building, between the store-front and the Blue Room, was one door that we were not allowed behind-- the door to Jack's office. Ben didn't even point it out to us as he ushered us past it on the way to his own office, or when we came back out and stood chatting for a bit longer before the tour came to an end.  But it was there, with "JOHN A. WHITE III, D.D.S., FAMILY DENTISTRY" emblazoned on dark glass. I can't help but think of it now as being like Elvis' bedroom, kept private and inviolate from the prying public.  

Though, thanks to J.D. Wilkes of the Dirt Daubers, I'll always envision Jack's mysterious room as looking something like this---

Full image borrowed from here.

Confessions of a Jack White junkie, part 10: The Jack'n'Loretta Love Fest

Photo by David James Swanson

 It's been a while since I've anticipated a Jack White show as much as I anticipated this one. Things have changed, the Lazaretto tour hasn't had the innocent excitement of 2012's Blunderbuss tour, there's been so much angst involved that the old butterflies in the stomach feeling hasn't overtaken me leading up to shows the way it did then. That doesn't mean I haven't had the same excitement during shows, no sirree Bob, it's just made the in-between-show experience different. But this one... Once Loretta Lynn was announced as the opening act, I knew this one was going to be special and I had moments during the days leading up to it when I wanted to just clap my hands and bounce around like a little kid. 

Jack and Loretta's love affair began back in 2003. The story goes that he and Meg used to listen to her music in their van, driving around from gig to gig in the early days of the White Stripes. They dedicated their third album, White Blood Cells, to her. She responded by inviting them over for dinner and then opening for one of their shows at the Hammerstein Ballroom. When she mentioned working on a new album, Jack asked if she'd consider letting him produce it. The result was Van Lear Rose, which won two of the five Grammys it was nominated for, helped introduce Loretta to a younger generation, and  showed anyone paying attention that Jack had as formidable instincts as a producer as he does as a musician.



 And that love and respect was still on display years later when Jack participated in a Grammy event honoring Loretta--



So here they were, a whole decade later, about to share a stage again.  It was gonna be a love fest and there was no way I was gonna miss it.  So determined was I that, despite a very generous new friend inviting me to be her plus-one when she won the early entry lottery in the Third Man Records Vault, I spent more hours in line for this show than for any other I've been to yet and was damned glad I did.

Loretta's opening set was preceded by a local Nashville guitar player named William Tyler, who's as good an example as any other contemporary young musician of the variety of directions the music in Nashville is going these days.  His set was totally unexpected and refreshing, just him and a guitar and a small pedal board. No singing, no words. Just really fascinating sounds.  I don't know how it played out towards the back of the arena, but from the front it was mesmerizing. A little taste from an in-store performance at Grimey's Records--



And then it was Loretta's turn. Unfortunately, there's only one video of her set on YouTube. But if you know anything about her, you can imagine the rest for yourself. Both the woman and her songs just as straightforward as can be.  She must've had a cold or something because she kept wiping her nose with a tissue, finally mentioning that she was sorry but her nose was "running like a freight train".  Totally disarming and charming.  And she sounded wonderful.  Her 45 minute set was over way too quickly, but I think everyone in the audience knew we were going to see her again that night.




Jack hit the stage with a triple punch of Dead Leaves, High Ball Stepper, and Lazaretto. He was immediately full of smiles. Over the crowd response?  Over having Loretta in the house?  All of the above?  A couple songs in, he stood briefly at the mic and just laughed out loud to himself.  At another point early on, he walked to the front of the stage near us and began to do the posturing thing I talked about from the Austin show, but he couldn't hold the deadpan stare, the corner of his mouth came up into a smirk that made it apparent he just couldn't contain his glee.  It was fucking adorable and highly infectious.













After a nicely balanced, high energy first set, the blue curtains were pulled shut to give us a break, though no one took a rest, we cheered our asses off for him to come back out even though we knew full well he was going to.  We knew that not only was he going to come back, but that Loretta was gonna come out at some point, too.  But I don't know anyone who was at this show who was prepared for the surprise we got when Jack's tour manager Lalo Medina stepped through the curtains again, just like he does at the beginning of every show to exhort the crowd to keep their phones in their (damn) pockets.  So what the heck was up now?  

Rather than a reprimand or chastisement, he instead announced that we should all "give it up for THE RACONTEURS!!!"  Talk about freaking the fuck out.  That entire crowd roared as the blue curtains swept open to reveal the stage bathed in a golden glow instead of the usual cool blue, with Brendon Benson to Jack's left and Little Jack Lawrence plucking bass next to Daru Jones on the drums (Patrick Keeler presumably wasn't available for drum duty because he's touring with the Afghan Whigs).  For two full songs, we were stunned and ecstatic at the same time. 






And then came the second surprise, the one that really wasn't a surprise at all because anyone who knows anything would have been anticipating it for weeks-- Loretta came out along with Brendon, Little Jack, and Jack's full band for a duet on Portland, Oregon and Whispering Seas, which was the b-side to her first single and a song she apparently never performed live. It's a song that Jack once told John Peel he loved, so for her to perform it with him had to have been a dream come true for him.  Leading into it, he told a story about calling her up to ask if she'd perform with him, impersonating her disguising her voice on the phone and how she called him "baby". 









It was so very sweet and funny to watch them together, her seemingly hesitant to get close to him for fear he'd knock her over with his bouncing about, and him wanting her close to sing with him and so he could hug her and kiss her forehead. Then Jack praised her as the most important female song-writer of the 20th century and Brendon Benson held out his arm to squire her off the stage.  Before she was even completely off, Jack maniacally launched into Black Bat Licorice and my brain exploded completely (and, boy, do I wish there was video of that).  




After Sixteen Saltines and then Ball'n'Biscuit, he surprised me yet again by having his tech bring out the Kay, which is normally the signal for Seven Nation Army and the end of the night.  It seemed so unusual for him to be done right after B'n'B, that song's usually used mid-set to amp the crowd up. But no, he was just teasing and gave us a heavy cover of Stones In My Passway, then handed the Kay back for two more songs before bringing it out again to finally, triumphantly, call it a night.




 This was the only show that's come close to being anywhere near as powerful for me as the one at the Masonic Temple in Detroit last summer.  And I'm not referring to what happened to me at that show, I'm talking about the whole thing, the energy the Detroit crowd fed to him, the joyfully ferocious way he responded to that energy, the surprises that night...  This one may even have surpassed that show, as I couldn't help but be empathetically proud for him when he announced at the end that the night had been one of his best moments yet in Nashville. As my pal Helen put it, "...by far my most lasting impression will be that everybody deserves, at least once, to look as happy as Jack looked tonight. It was one of the most touching things I've ever seen."   I'm still smiling over it now, almost a week later. 



Up next, Madison Square Garden and more surprises.  But here's where we've been so far.

Back to Tennessee, Day 4

We began our one full day in Nashville under rainy skies.  The day was set to be another busy one, with plans to include a tour of United Record Pressing, lunch at Arnold's Country Kitchen, and a visit to Third Man Records.  The evening was yet to be decided, but with the Americana Music Festival still going on, how could it not include music?

First stop was URP, which is down a couple of blocks and around the corner from the historic city cemetery I found on my last trip to Nashville.  Like anyone else of my generation, I grew up on vinyl records and then moved on to cassette tapes, then to cds, and now listen to a fair amount of digitally conveyed music in mp3 form.  The compactness of today's formats provides a convenience that vinyl just ain't got.  Can't lug a turntable on the subway, after all, and there's little I love more than flying along a curvy country road with the car stereo blaring my favorite tunes.  But you really can't be a true fan of Jack White without becoming at least a little curious about vinyl's place in today's music, so I recently went out and bought a record player and a few platters.  And, being that I've been on this journey of exploration since getting into Jack, there was no way I could pass up the opportunity to learn how records are made while in Nashville.  

The tour began with a reminder of yesterday's topical issue, when we were ushered into the upstairs "Motown Suite", a fully equipped apartment created in the 60's for visiting black musicians and record execs who found themselves barred from Nashville hotels.  It's a pretty sweet suite, maintained in its original 60's style--

Photo not mine, I snagged it from the URP website

Back downstairs, we got into the nitty-gritty of album production as we were led through every single step of the process.  URP is one of only a handful of pressing plants left in the U.S., as a large percentage of pressing these days is apparently done in the Czech Republic. But URP is not only conveniently located to Third Man, it also fits perfectly into Jack White's ethos-- that of quality work done with traditional methods, much by hand. And they really do everything, not only creating the record master from its lacquer and then pressing it to vinyl, but also printing the record labels in-house. They even have a machine shop in the building where they can build any part necessary to repair the specialized pressing machines. And I was very surprised to see that once the records are pressed, they're sleeved completely by hand. I had fully expected to see yet another decades-old, monstrous machine doing this bit. Instead, there was one woman swiftly and efficiently inspecting each album before whisking it first into its sleeve and then its jacket. She can apparently do hundreds a day. Amazing stuff, and seeing the process honestly did give me a burgeoning appreciation for vinyl.

Watch The Dead Weather watching the production of one of their singles:


Leaving URP in a pouring rainstorm, we headed directly to Arnold's Country Kitchen and queued up in a line that stretched out the front door.  I said it before and I'll say it again, the food here is. so. damned. good.  This time I had room not only for meat'n'two (side dishes, that is) accompanied by corn bread, but also for dessert: a Chess pie that had me practically moaning in pleasure.  Fortunately for my table-mates and all the folks crowded in around us, I was able to restrain myself.  But take my word for it, a trip to Nashville is just not complete without a meal at Arnold's.

Lucifer the Pony at Arnold's.  Photo taken the following day, when the parking lot was empty and the sky wasn't pissing down rain.

After lunch, we swung around the block to visit Jack's place-- Third Man Records in Nashville is the physical embodiment of a record label that apparently began in his Detroit living room almost a decade ago.  But, as seems to be typical of Jack, the idea mushroomed once he began working on it.  The place includes the offices of the label, a performance/recording space that doubles as a photography/video recording studio, a dark room for developing said photos, a distribution center, and a jaw-dropping little shop up front that's filled with White Stripes memorabilia and assorted taxidermied water fowl.  Having shopped in the shop and attended a show in the performance space around back, I don't know how the hell he fit all of that into the building.  It just does not seem big enough.  There must be trick walls or subterranean chambers or something.  Jack's Magic Hall of Mirrors and Music.  

In the shop, I picked up an album of the Dex Romweber Duo's "Third Man Live" performance from earlier this year along with both Raconteurs albums, then stepped outside to smoke a Djarum while my traveling companions completed their purchases.  It was a peaceful moment, standing on Jack's front stoop, watching what was left of the rain dripping from the eaves and listening to the tones of a wind chime hanging on the porch of the methadone clinic next door.  I could've easily hung out there all day, just soaking up the atmosphere from those black bricks.

Lucifer the Pony at TMR.  Photo again taken the next day, without the rain.

I've wondered a few times what the folks at the clinic and nearby homeless mission think of the goings on at TMR, what with all the fanatics who begin lining up in the wee hours of the morning whenever a new record is released or a show or some other special promotion takes place.  The recent performance by Conan O'Brien had folks showing up 24 hours in advance and lining up around two sides of a city block.  At one point while I was lounging against the wall next to the door, a guy walking across the street yelled over, "Hey, what is that place?"  I called back, "It's a record label".  He said, "Ohhh, a record company", and continued on his way as if that explained everything.  If the guy's around this coming Friday, he's in for a treat-- Jack's latest trick is sure to draw one of TMR's biggest crowds yet when its limited number is offered for sale:




The man is a mad freaking genius and, in a perverse way, I envy the hell out of the homeless folks who get to hang out near his crazy laboratory.

From one mad genius to another-- We followed up our visit to Jack's colorful world by wandering through an exhibit of Dale Chihuly's work at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts.  I've been a fan of his work for a few years after being enchanted by the ceiling of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.  Like the music created by TMR and URP, Chihuly's art requires hands-on, traditional techniques that are fascinating to watch.  Intricately simple, delicate and bold, composed of the most incredible colors, the finished pieces are only slightly more amazing than the creative process itself.   



The day ended with another visit to Mercy Lounge, then hanging out in Lyle's hotel room listening to Captain Beefheart and Two Star Tabernacle (featuring a very young Jack White, stealing the show already).  Three trips to this city and I feel that I've still barely seen any of it.  Perhaps one day I'll be able to go back and get outside of that few-block radius to experience more of what Nashville has to offer.  For now, though, it would seem that all roads lead to TMR.  And that's sure as hell not a bad thing.


Full album of photos here.

Nashville and Dead Weather, in more ways than one

Now that other things are out of my system, it's necessary to talk about another element that made The Dead Weather's live album preview performance so exceptional.  In the midst of figuring out how to get off from work and how to arrange the timing of my flights there and back, I was made aware of an additional potential complication--  the catastrophic flooding of Nashville and much of Tennessee.

  Photo borrowed from upressing.com

The weather was absolutely gorgeous when I was in Nashville on Thursday of my road trip.  By Saturday night, when I was simultaneously in the Third Man Records Vault chat room and on Expedia, Nashvillians in the chat were telling me to think twice about coming.  The highways were being shut down, and there were already news reports of one or two people being swept away and killed in the flood waters.  

   Photo from a May 3rd blog post at Bear Creek Ledger.

It sounded scary as hell.  How on earth could it have happened so quickly?  There was talk that the band wouldn't be able to make it into town from Louisiana, but no official word from their website.  So I charged ahead and made my plans.  The show was two nights away, things had to get better by then, hadn't they?  

It's obvious by now that both the band and I, and over a hundred other fans, all made it.  Not everyone was so lucky-- One Vault member's wife was still stuck in Texas as of Monday, after American Airlines canceled all of their flights to Nashville on Saturday night.  But knowing what we'd all gone through to get there made the bonding easier.  While no one in attendance that I know of was severely affected, some of us had flown in not knowing what we'd be dealing with, and some had come despite having no power in their homes.  It created a shared experience.  

And, in the midst of all the excitement, my heart went out to The Dead Weather and the staff at Third Man Records.  Jack White and his people live in and around Nashville and there was no telling how they might have been impacted by the disaster.  They seemed to be thinking only of us fans and putting on an incredibly electric show for us.  Knowing this added an emotional impact to the performance that made it doubly special beyond it's exclusivity.  I read one message board comment the next day that mentioned how quickly Jack left after the show was over, as if implying that he should've stuck around to sign autographs or something.  And yet this is what was going on in the town where he apparently lives:


Franklin TN Flood 05-02-10 May 2010 from Jonathan Melton on Vimeo.

Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't bolt directly from the stage to his car.

So forgive me for proselytizing, but this event has moved me.  Between the fact that it's Jack's chosen base of operations and that I was able to connect with a bunch of lovely people there, I've been touched by this part of the country and am eager to see it get through this.  

More importantly, Nashville is a beautiful city that figures prominently in Americana through both its history and music.  Much like New Orleans, it's been through hell and deserves our support.  The Grand Ole Opry House is closed indefinitely for repairs, though the heart of the Opry, the treasured section of stage salvaged from the previously destroyed historic Ryman Auditorium, was fortunately not severely damaged.  Many people lost everything they had because they never expected to need flood insurance.  And a friend in the Vault chat room told me last night of how his little girl's softball games are being re-scheduled to other fields because the local one is still under multiple feet of water.  Just because you don't see this in the news does not mean it's gone away.  The people of Nashville will be living with it for a long while, though their heart and determination are sure to get them through it.  That's something to respect.   

   Photo borrowed from Nashvillest.com

   My own photo, taken from the opposite side of the river from the one above, standing next to a restaurant that was trying to pump water back out into the street.  Seemed a losing battle, what with the river at the same level as that street. 


Ways to help, if you can and want to:

-  So Nashville is Flooded... How Can I Help? is probably the best source out there, with an extensive list of options for donations and volunteering.

-  Nashville Flood Tees, also available at Render Apparel    

   


-  And, if you're curious, here's what Jack's doing:  Jack White lending profit, hand to flood relief.

DC to Memphis Road Trip: Day 5, Getting behind Satan

Today's objectives were to get to Nashville for a stop at Third Man Records and then to get as close to the border of Virginia as possible.  Driving was hard, considering I was doing it on about three hours of sleep.  Spent much of the day feeling that I'd been rode hard and put up wet, yet still in good spirits.

I saw more cops in three hours on the stretch of I-40 between Memphis and Nashville than I've seen on the roads of Maryland over the last year.  Fortunately, the speed limit is 70mph, so I was only barely illegal.  Not so lucky were the dozens of bugs now smeared across my windshield.  Insects and the fuzz, that's how I'll always remember I-40...

Third Man is Jack White's little house of music.  For those not in the know, he does pretty much everything there that's involved in making records except actually press vinyl, but there just happens to be a place down the street that can handle that for him.  There's even a tiny little storefront to showcase and sell his wares, and that was my destination.

The couple of staff members who assisted me in the shop were so very friendly and helpful, Jack should be proud of 'em.  Though that seems to just be the way people are in Tennessee, which could be part of the reason he chose to re-locate here.  Pretty much everyone I've dealt with in this state has been pleasant and polite and conversational.  The folks at Arnold's Country Kitchen, just round the block from TMR, practically pulled up a chair at the table for me.  I'd read about Arnold's at roadfood.com and the high ratings at that review are no lie.  The food was so good it'd make you want to smack your mama for making you think she could cook.  Thank whatever's above that my appetite returned as of this morning.  It would have been a sad thing to not be able to finish the mouth-watering roast beef with au jus, greens, mac'n'cheese, and two kinds of corn bread that they served up to me.  Instead, I was so happy I could have hugged the chef.

And that was pretty much my visit to Nashville in a nutshell.  Though leave it to me to find the historic city cemetery en route to Third Man...

Part of the reason I was so tired today was that I played fan-girl after last night's concert and hung around for a while with my show buddies at the tour buses, waiting for The Dead Weather to come out and sign autographs.  I had mixed feelings about doing this.  I've done it before, eons ago, and found that getting a signature and babbling something that my idol has heard thousands of times already really wasn't that meaningful to me.  But I was caught up in the moment and tagged along.  By the time an hour had gone by, though, I came to my senses and headed off.  What was the point?  Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't see how any connection can be made in those brief, chaotic moments with dozens of other people all vying for a piece of the musician in question.  And I'm of the mind that connections are important.  I'd rather have nothing but the experience of the music than to have some rushed, illegible scribble on a piece of paper that means little more than that I stood in front of a distracted rock star for 5 seconds. 

And what can it mean for them?  I'm sure that the adoration is gratifying, but there have got to be times when it becomes too much.  Remembering last night during this morning's drive, it was pretty much impossible not to think of Take, Take, Take, from the White Stripes' album, Get Behind Me Satan.  Another example of Jack's skill at story-telling, it's a tune that also delivers a gentle yet firm message to his fans.  It's very obvious that he understands what it's like to be a fan, yet also just as clear that he expects his own admirers to behave better than that.

I was sitting there in a comfortable chair

And that was all that I needed
Then my friend offered me a drink for us to share
And that was all that I needed
Well, then I felt at ease
But then I'm not too hard to please
I guess you couldn't call me greedy
Then I was shocked to look up
And see Rita Hayworth there in a place so seedy
She walked into the bar with her long, red, curly hair
And that was all that I needed
And I said to my friend, "Good God, we're lucky men just to even see her"
Take, take, take
Take, take, take
Take, take, take
And I could not resist, I just had to get close to her
And that was all that I needed
I walked and loomed around her table for a while
And that was all that I needed
Then I said, "I hate to bug you, ma'am, but can I have your autograph?"
And that was all that I needed
She pressed her lips against a white piece of paper
And that was all that I needed
Then I saw what she wrote, my heart is in my mouth
And that was all that I needed
Then she handed it to me, and I think that she could see
That that was all that I needed
I started to walk away but then I remembered 'Hey, I forgot to get a picture'
So I asked her one more time, "Could I have another favor?"
That was all that I needed
She was kind and posed with me
Then I knew my friends would see my celebrity meeting
Take, take, take
Take, take, take
Take, take, take
She turned and said to me, "I need to go to sleep,"
And it seemed so mean
It was almost as if she could not appreciate how cool I was being
She said, "Good night" and walked away
And I didn't know what to say
I just couldn't believe it
Well, it's just not fair
I wanted to get a piece of hair
That was all that I needed
Or maybe a kiss on the cheek
I wouldn't wash it for a week
That would be all that I needed
But she didn't even care
That I was even there
What a horrible feeling

Satan was the second Stripes cd that I bought and probably had much to do with why it took me so long to connect with this band.  The songs are piano-heavy and lyrically dense.  Even Jack apparently didn't realize how little guitar was on the album until he was mixing it.  And he dives deeper into metaphor in this collection of songs than on other Stripes records.  But as obscure as parts of it are, it's also a plaintive album.  Written as Jack was coming to grips with the fame resulting from Elephant, it reflects a search for truths both personal and general.  He's talked about how he doesn't like to write about his own issues, that other people's problems are more interesting than his own, but the consistency of the theme throughout Satan makes it hard to believe that these lyrics aren't authentically heartfelt.  It seemed appropriate since I'd been thinking of Take..., so the cd played repeatedly over the miles as I drove between Nashville and Knoxville and my mind was somehow able to sink in to it and finally get something from these songs.

Like Elephant, GBMS begins with a song that pairs frustration with an infectious musical hook--

You need to do something

To keep the truth from showing up...

Truth and trust, loss and loneliness, come up in every song on this album.  From the regretful plea of Forever For Her (Is Over For Me), to pining for a love that doesn't exist in Little Ghost, to the wistfulness of I'm Lonely (But I Ain't That Lonely Yet), this makes for some melancholy listening.  And the one full-on blues number, Instinct Blues, with its nervous string-picking and the complaint of "...why don't you?" just adds tension to an already pensive situation. 

The idea of "verbal dexterity" in Jack's lyrics came up after I posted Carolina Drama on Day 3 of this trip. Denial Twist is one of the lightest moments on this album, though it's still about issues of trust.  But the metaphors are witty and the imagery adroit, and together serve to make this tune a lot of fun--  

One of the most metaphorically inscrutable songs that Jack's ever written is the moody White Moon. Having no clue to any of the meanings in this bizarre assortment of imagery, I pretty much ignored this tune until it was featured in the recent Stripes documentary, Under Great White Northern Lights. The inclusion of this performance in the film explains nothing about the lyrics, but there's no denying that it makes an enigmatic song doubly intriguing--

So while White Moon remains a mystery, the rest of this album has finally made an impression on me and I'm glad for that.  Nothing like hours on the road to help one achieve a long overdue breakthrough.