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.

Back to Tennessee: Day 5

What's that old cliché...?  Something about how all good things must end...?  It's so sadly true.  Today was a day of goodbyes-- to my traveling companions (especially my buddy Lyle), to Lucifer the Pony, to Nashville and Memphis and the land in between.  The only thing I'd be carrying home with me would be my memories and a growing love of the blues.

But perhaps I should just switch gears right now before I become too maudlin over all this...

After four days of cloudy and/or rainy skies, I stepped onto the balcony outside my hotel room to find the last day of our trip had dawned with breaking clouds and hints of sun.  Cruel irony, or Tennessee wanting to send me home with a smile?  Didn't matter.  Either way, I wasn't ready to leave.  But the morning called for two separate trips to the airport to drop off my traveling companions, so departure was staring me in the face. 

After dropping off the friend who met us Thursday night, Lyle and I swung back around to some of the spots we'd visited in Nashville for shots of Lucifer the Pony under the suddenly gorgeous blue sky (a few of which were included in yesterday's post).  Then, when we couldn't think of anywhere else to go or anything else to do in the limited time we had, Lyle very graciously suggested that I just drop her off early at the airport so that I could go ahead and get on the road back to Memphis, where I had to return Lucifer and catch my own flight. 

Having that extra time allowed me to pull out the map and figure out a route of back-roads to take instead of just getting back onto Interstate 40.  There were several roads I could've taken out of Nashville in order to end up on rural lanes but, just for shits'n'giggles, I chose the one that would take me down through Franklin, where Jack White supposedly lives.  Yeah, brand me a fan-girl if you want, but I don't know his address so I wasn't looking to stalk the man.  I had heard that Franklin is a historic town, so that was also a draw.  Anyone who's followed my blog for a while has probably noticed how much time I spend in such places in MD and WV as Shepherdstown, Frederick, Hancock, and Cumberland.  What I didn't expect was how rich Franklin seems to be.  There was one big gated house after another along the road down, a couple of strip shopping centers, a marker for an old Civil War cemetery, and then bam!, a "historic" downtown full of Starbuck's, fancy boutiques, and SUV's.  The place immediately reminded me of Middleburg, VA, except that the roads in and out of Middleburg are lined with horse farms and I saw nothing of the sort in the vicinity of Franklin.  I cruised through briefly, looking to see if there was anywhere besides Starbuck's to stop for a snack, but the yuppie factor began to turn my stomach so I pointed Lucifer back out of town and we went on our way.  For a moment I winced at the idea of Jack in the midst of such an environment, but then I remembered his house full of taxidermied animals and felt better.

What should actually make me wince is thoughts of that sort.  I've written before about my issues with "yuppies", but those issues really don't make much sense.  Jack White's weirder tendencies are one of the things I find appealing about him, yet I look down my nose at more "normal" folks such as those strolling the streets of Franklin just because they strike me as superficial.  Is this a result of the treatment I received in high school, when I was one of only three punk rockers in the entire town and was endlessly harassed by school mates and even by people on the street?  Shouldn't I have grown beyond it by now?  What is it that makes me so judgmental of people who are probably perfectly nice, but with whom I find it difficult to relate?

Another instance that again brought these thoughts to mind occurred at a convenience store at the intersection of routes 100 & 412--  I pulled in to snap a photo of a wildflower field across the way, then decided to take advantage of the facilities in the store.  When I turned the car around to pull it into a parking space, I realized that everyone pumping gas or passing through the parking lot was staring at Lucifer and me.  What must I have looked like, a lone woman stepping out of a jet black Mustang, wearing a t-shirt depicting a flaming baby carriage?  I walked in and was immediately addressed by a good ol' boy sitting near the window, who asked if I was looking for the bathroom.  When I answered in the affirmative, he informed me that it was broken and had been for several days.  I made a comment to the effect that that must make things difficult for the folks who work there.  His buddy across the table laughed and said, "Nah, we just go around back".  I started to ask what they did if they had to do more than take a leak, but then thought twice about it and instead wandered over to the snack aisle, feeling every eye on me as I went.  Heading back out to the parking lot, there was more staring from the area of the gas pumps.  So I decided to give them the show they seemed to be waiting for and goosed the gas pedal as I pulled out of the lot, making Lucifer roar as she sped down the road.

Just what was so intriguing to these otherwise perfectly friendly folks?  Was it the car?  Something about my appearance?  Or just the fact that I wasn't one of them, that I was somehow different?  We're all the same underneath our surface differences, but it can't be denied that it's those differences that make things interesting.  Yes, it's good to remember that we're all composed of the same sort of genetic code, all were born of a mother, all have the same basic needs in life.  This is necessary to retain respect for our fellow human beings.  On the surface, though, it's our different interests, habits, beliefs, and styles of dress that prevent the world from being one big homogeneous, boring blur.  The issue comes in how we treat others because of those differences.  Where is the line drawn between mild scorn at someone's yuppie tendencies or outlandish appearance, and scathing hatred over the color of their skin or religious beliefs?  At what point does fixation on those differences prevent us from remembering what relates us?

Despite the lapse in Franklin, I've carried things away from this trip that may very well nudge me to be more accepting than I currently am.  This theme of looking beyond otherness has been so much on my mind the last several days, and it's something that I think I will now always relate to blues music.  One of the moments that most struck me in reading Land Where the Blues Began is Alan Lomax's description of being hauled in to a police station in Tunica County, Mississippi, after being found in a country grocery store recording a performance by Son House and a handful of other black musicians.  When asked the names of the men he was with, he began by naming "Mister Son House..."  Lomax wrote:

... I knew I'd made a mistake before the words were out of my mouth.  The sheriff's red face turned beet color.  His eyes narrowed to pinpoints.

That a white man in the Delta region in the 1940's could have run the risk of being jailed, perhaps even roughed up, for referring to a black man as "Mister" is hard to conceive in this day.  That the black man in question is now revered by white people as one of the founders of blues music just makes the situation even more astounding.  But it serves as a potent reminder that there's no telling what people have to offer, that judging by surface differences can cause us to overlook qualities that we might actually admire and enjoy.

Speaking of Mister House, perhaps it's time to once again shift the gears of this post, this time back to the music that inspired this trip.  As mentioned, House is considered by many to be the "father of the Delta blues" and his music was apparently a wake-up call for a young Jack White.  In It Might Get Loud, Jack talks about House's Grinnin' In Your Face being his favorite song-



I can fully understand Jack's appreciation of this song and have come to share it. I ended up singing it several times along with Mr. House as Lucifer ate up the miles along route 412.



As Jack describes, it's the simplicity of the performance that gives it it's power-- Nothing but that moving voice and the straightforward message that it delivers.  And, despite the difference of Jack's distorted and amplified playing, it's very easy to hear House's influence in his music, especially much of his singing. 

Ironically, Jack doesn't consider himself a singer.  In an interview earlier this year, he stated that he doesn't feel he can carry a tune, doesn't have a good vibrato, and that he's more concerned with finding the character of a song and voicing that.  In his view, this distinction makes him more of a vocalist than a singer.  At the time I read this article, I'd recently picked up the second White Stripes album, De Stijl, which is full of beautifully tender vocals, so my knee-jerk reaction was to disagree with his self-assessment. 

A few months and a whole lotta bootleg live shows later, however, I think can understand his distinction.  In live situations, he does seem to lose a certain amount of control over his singing compared to studio performances.  But he's so obviously moved by the music he plays and that comes through in his delivery to affect the audience.  The performance in this video is the finest example I've found yet of this.  Son House's Death Letter was a staple of White Stripes shows over the years, and Jack often combined it with a segue into Grinnin' In Your Face.  In this instance, his pitch and enunciation are all over the place during Death Letter, but the moment he slings his guitar around behind his back and stands at the front of the stage with nothing but a microphone, belting out Grinnin', his voice suddenly takes on a depth and power that are riveting--



I finally got back onto the interstate near the town of Jackson and realized I was cutting it close to return the Pony and make my flight.  So I floored it and barreled down 40 in a manner that would have had Lyle punching the ceiling of the car over in the passenger seat.  Had to stop long enough for one last batch of photos, though, which got me to the gate just 10 minutes before my flight.  I can't help but think that I may've been subconsciously trying to miss it and stick around for just one more day...

Full album of photos here.

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.

Back to Tennessee, Day 3

Today was a full day, so this is going to be a full blog.  Started fairly early, grabbing a quick breakfast in the hotel lobby then wandering across the street to sit in Confederate Park on the Memphis bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River.  Only in a place like Memphis could you find such contrary memorials as a statue commemorating Jefferson Davis as a "true patriot" and the National Civil Rights Museum, built in and around the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated--  One dedicated to a cause that oppressed people, the other to a cause that freed them but that still has a ways to go in ensuring full equality.

After breakfast, Lyle and I headed to Sun Studio, the famed recording studio where Sam Philips had a hand in launching the careers of musicians such as Howlin' Wolf, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis.  Philips, like John and Alan Lomax, recognized something in the blues-inspired music of Southern black culture and felt compelled to shove it in the face of the masses.  Without him, that skinny little white boy with a curled up smile might never have recorded Arthur Crudup's That's All Right in such an engaging style, changing the world of music forever.





In the days leading up to this trip, I'd begun reading Alan Lomax's Land Where the Blues Began. Jack White said that when you begin to explore rock'n'roll, "you're on a freight train headed straight for the blues". Lomax's book takes that train even further, digging into the sources of the blues, going all the way back to Africa and up through the music of the levee camps and prisons of the Delta in the early part of the 20th century.  It's striking that the blues are a music born of rage and pain of the sort that very few white people have ever experienced, yet it was men like Lomax, Philips, and Elvis who integrated this music by filtering it through the more popular white styles of the day.  

This idea of integration of races and music was a recurring theme through this trip.  Land Where the Blues Began is also a powerful sociological and historical tract, describing first hand encounters with race relations in the Delta area.  As a U.S. Civil War "buff", the treatment of blacks over the course of this country's history is no surprise to me. I've read the autobiography of Frederick Douglass and other books on the subject, but Lomax's book and our visit later in the afternoon to the Civil Rights Museum brought the situation home.  And it was astounding to stand next to Martin Luther King, Jr's motel room in the preserved section of the Lorraine Motel, looking out the window at the spot on the balcony where he was shot, only blocks from the blues joints of Beale Street.  It's very interesting to be in a place like Memphis, where music inspired by black culture is celebrated on Beale and elsewhere, yet where the people have been so reviled, oppressed, and exploited.  Lyle and I talked briefly, as we stood transfixed before some of the exhibits in the museum, about how easily all of that horror could happen again.  If the wrong person were to gain enough influence, it would be all too easy to imagine such outrageous violence directed towards the present day population of Muslims in this country.  It gave me a chill to think of it, standing there watching footage of people being attacked by police dogs and bowled over by water cannons in Birmingham, Alabama, less than 50 years ago.

After the sobering experience of the museum, we again hit the road, this time heading all the way to Nashville.  Interstate 40 was crawling with as many cops as it was when I drove it back in April, but they were fortunately all heading the opposite direction on the other side of the highway.  We got to Nashville in time to pick up a third compatriot, doll ourselves up, and head over to Mercy Lounge to meet yet another friend (who took all of the photos below) for a highly anticipated show that was part of the Americana Music Festival--  Wanda Jackson and the Dex Romweber Duo.  Wanda, who is no longer the hot mama portrayed in that linked video but who still puts on a rocking show, was presented earlier in the evening with a 2010 Americana Lifetime Achievement Award by none other than Jack White, who recently produced her upcoming album, The Party Ain't Over.  And Dex Romweber has been a tremendous influence on Jack's music, specifically within the context of The White Stripes.  So you can understand my anticipation of this show.  With both artists having such a strong connection to Jack, and with the venue being a block away from Third Man Records, who knows?  Perhaps he'd even be there.

The show was opened by alternative country singer, Dale Watson, who I was surprised to enjoy as much as I did.  Great voice, great look, and a great guitar covered in quarters.  

Photo by Jeremy Richerson

He was followed by Wanda, who was sprightly and sassy and I hope to hell I have as much vitality when I reach her age.  The woman's voice seems, if anything, even stronger than it was in her early rockabilly days.  Lyle noticed that there were several very young folks at the front of the audience near us who sang along with every song in Wanda's set.  I couldn't help but wonder if they'd gotten into her music because of her connection with Jack.  He talked in a recent article about how there are no "tastemakers" in the music biz in this country anymore, such as DJ's who promoted local acts on the air.  He ironically makes it sound as if he doesn't realize how he himself is filling that role with what he's doing at Third Man.

Photo by Jeremy Richerson

And he was indeed there that night.  I caught a split-second glimpse of him over by the sound board during Wanda's set, grinning as he leaned over to talk to someone.  When he stood back up, though, he disappeared behind a support beam at the side of the stage and I saw no more.  Still very cool to know he was there, having a good time and enjoying two fellow artists with whom he's been so involved.

The evening was capped off by Dex and his sister, Sara.  I was very surprised at how much of the crowd disappeared before the Duo hit the stage.  They put on one hell of a show.  I could hear immediately what elements of Dex's music had been absorbed by Jack into the Stripes--  much of the guitar style, the sparseness of only guitar and drums, the rawness, the passionate, abandoned delivery.  It's all there, and as he did with the blues, Jack's now led me in another direction and I will be listening to a lot of Dex Romweber in the near future.  Dex's music is incredibly overlooked, though I couldn't help but feel that perhaps that's the way he likes it.

Photo by Jeremy Richerson

Photo by Jeremy Richerson

Photo by Jeremy Richerson

Photo by Jeremy Richerson

Full album of photos here.

Back to Tennessee, Day 2

Began the day in Mississippi by rolling up the legs of my jeans and walking barefoot through the wet grass from my Cadillac Shack (pictured below) to Lyle's Tinth Shack. 

Our plan was to visit the Delta Blues Museum in downtown Clarksdale and eat tamales at Hick's, then head back up to Memphis to check into our hotel there and hopefully collect Lyle's wayfaring luggage.  Accordingly, we piled into the Pony, which Lyle christened "Lucifer" after the pony in Bob Dylan's song as covered by The Dead Weather (we certainly had no plans to shoot our Pony).

I had a pony, her name was Lucifer

I had a pony, her name was Lucifer

She broke her leg and she needed shooting

I swear it hurt me more than it hurted her

Sometimes I wonder what's going on with Miss X

Sometimes I wonder what's going on with Miss X

She got such a sweet disposition

I never know what the poor girl's gonna do to me next

Everybody say you're usin' voodoo, your feet walk by themselves

Everybody say you're usin' voodoo, I seen your feet walk by themselves

Oh, baby, that god you're prayin' to

Is gonna give ya back what you're wishin' on someone else

Come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you

Come over here pony, I wanna climb up one time on you

Well, you're so nasty and you're so bad

But I love you, yes I do

 

Clarksdale's a fairly bleak place, with a history as rich as the local Delta soil but way too many empty store fronts to make it a truly going concern.  Even Morgan Freeman's Ground Zero Blues Club has apparently failed to make it the successful destination that it could, and perhaps should, be.  It's still a necessary visit for anyone looking to understand the blues.  The Delta Blues Museum is basically one room in the old train depot, filled with photos, instruments, costumes, and information about the musicians that put this place on the map.  The largest exhibit focuses on Muddy Waters and includes a portion of the shack where he was living when discovered by John and Alan Lomax.

We wandered from there to Cat Head, Inc, then over to the town cemetery which is unlike any other I've visited.  I've seen a lot of cemeteries in my time, but never one quite so stark.  It's obviously maintained, but only at a bare minimum.  The crabgrass is mowed, but the dry mowings are left piled at the base of the headstones.  And there are no other plantings aside from decades-old trees.  Many family plots are completely bare dirt, not even graced with crabgrass.  A favorite motif was apparently what I call the "bathtub" style of grave marker, in which the area above the casket is marked with a marble rim that would have been filled with flowering plants and greenery.  The sight of so many of these markers in one place indicates that the Clarksdale cemetery must have been beautiful at one time, very different from the poor place it is now.

Lyle and I decided that we weren't yet getting a good feel for the blues, so we climbed into Lucifer and headed for Tutwiler, which is where W.C. Handy supposedly heard the first true blues but which is now more known for the nearby prison (and traditional quilts made by local women).  This is no surprise.  A bunch of small homes and an empty downtown in the middle of vast, flat cotton fields, Tutwiler appears even more rundown and decrepit than Clarksdale.   

At the time, I think we were too busy looking and talking and taking photos to be able to sink into the moment and feel what was around us.  Thinking back as I write this, though, it's clear that we were surrounded by the atmosphere that birthed the blues.  It's easy now to imagine W.C. Handy in that lonesome train station all those years ago, waking up to the sound of that unidentified musician with his knife sliding on the frets of his guitar and his song of "goin' where the Southern meets the Dog".

 
Back up in Memphis, Lyle was finally reunited with her luggage.  We cleaned up a bit and drove down to Beale Street, where we ate ribs and more tamales, then wandered down the block and listened to local street musicians including Big Jerry, from whom Lyle had to buy a cd before he broke her heart (go to that link and buy some of his music, he's good).



Afterward, I re-lived the experiences of my April trip by dragging Lyle past Minglewood Hall (where I first experienced The Dead Weather), C.K.'s 24-hour coffeehouse, and the cemetery behind the Piggly-Wiggly. Settling into bed in the Sleep Inn later on, I found myself missing the less homogeneous but much more comfortable Cadillac Shack out in the middle of those dark cotton fields in the Delta.



Full album of photos here.

Back to Tennessee, Day 1

So I went back to Tennessee.  The trip(s) in April/May were just too good, I'd been thinking about the place ever since, especially as I've kept in touch with some of the people I met there the first time around.  And, because my infatuation with Jack White has not only continued, it's expanded to encompass the blues music that inspires him and that I first began exploring on my earlier trip.  Memphis and the Delta area of Mississippi are the cradle of the blues and I wanted to go to the source, get a feeling for the place this music came from.  I've been reading about the blues, but words-- dates and names and anecdotes and such-- can only convey so much.  So I picked a week, talked it up to a compatriot (my buddy, Lyle, who got me into the Dead Weather performance at Third Man Records back in May), and planned an itinerary.  To allow the most time possible to see and do, I decided to fly in this time and rent a car there--  A Ford Mustang, of course.  What else would I drive on a road trip if finances allowed?  Lyle and I put together a thoroughly blues-oriented expedition that would begin in Memphis, swing down for a side-trip to Clarksdale, Mississippi, back up to Memphis, then over to Nashville. 

I got to Memphis with no problems, but Lyle was not so lucky.  The first of her two flights ended up diverted by Hurricane Hermine, leaving her first stuck on the tarmac in Austin, Texas, then finally arriving in Houston and having to scramble for a connection to Memphis.  As she was going through all of that, I had the task of wrangling our Pony.  I almost came to blows with another woman when the rental company gave it to both of us as the same time.  But I got it, a sleek black beauty with beige interior and a 6-cd changer on which I planned to rotate Jack, Son House, Blind Willie McTell, and Robert Johnson, with a little bit of Black Keys thrown in. 

Once the Pony was saddled up, I headed in to Memphis to find a way to occupy the hours until I had to head back to the airport to pick up Lyle.  I ended up on Beale Street, where I perused the aisles of A. Schwab's, once an honest-to-goodness five-and-dime, now a combination five$-and-dime$ and museum.  The bins contained everything from open leg underwear (that's what the sign said, I swear it), to cowboy hats, Memphis souvenir mugs, and voodoo candles.  They also had a pretty fantastic selection of blues cds, so I picked up a couple of compilations, adding Leadbelly, Blind Willie Johnson, Charley Patton and others to the week's musical assortment. 

A few doors up from Schwab's was Tater Red's rock'n'roll clothing/etc.  I walked in and immediately recognized the White Stripes' Effect and Cause coming over the sound system.  I grinned big and picked out a kitschy little voodoo doll to hang from the rearview mirror of the Pony as a mascot.  Landed next in Blues City Cafe for the first of what would be many sweet iced teas consumed over the course of the week.

It felt so good to be back in Memphis, even on touristified Beale Street, but I kept also getting twinges of guilt for enjoying myself while Lyle was stuck somewhere on an airplane.  After a while, I headed back to the airport and her flight finally arrived, but sans luggage.  She was promised that it would make it into town the following day and be delivered to the hotel we'd booked in Memphis for the next night, so we hit the road for Clarksdale.  Our destination was the Shack Up Inn, a place I'd read about and been intrigued by in It Still Moves.  Before getting there, though, we made a stop at the Blue & White Cafe, where Lyle had her first taste of fried catfish and I had a B.L.T. made with fried green tomatoes.  And my second sweet tea of the day.  Having been born & raised in Virginia, sweet tea is one element of Southern culture that I embrace with gusto.

Arriving in Clarksdale, we got turned around while hunting for the Shack Up Inn in the dark and instead ended up at the famed "crossroads".  I use quotations because there is some debate as to whether the intersection of routes 49 & 61 is indeed the place where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for miraculous guitar-playing skill (Lyle insists it actually occurred in Rosedale, but we didn't have time to drive that far), and because the atmosphere of the place gives anything but an impression of dark magic.  The spot is marked with a cheesy pair of crossed blue guitars and is surrounded by a Church's Fried Chicken, a donut shop, and a beer & wine store.  Though perhaps that's fitting.  The blues originated in African-American culture, which since the days of slavery has apparently been nothing if not resilient and adaptable.  Blues is based in a feeling, one that can exist regardless of the setting or atmosphere in which it's experienced.  And who knows, perhaps Robert Johnson wished that there had been a beer'n'such shop there while he waited alone in the night for the devil to appear.



We finally found the Shack Up and collected our keys from the lobby mailbox.  We had no idea what to expect and arriving in the pitch dark left us clueless until we actually walked in the door of Lyle's Tinth Shack.  The place is great.  The shacks are beautifully restored, retaining a wonderfully rustic feel while being completely clean, cozy, and convenient.  Lyle, stoic Brit that she is, settled in with a bottle of wine while I steered the Pony back around to my Cadillac Shack.   The day came to a close on the front porch, where I sat in the dark smoking and listening to a soft rain fall on the metal roof of the nearby converted cotton gin.

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.