It’s funny to think about how little I know. Maybe funny isn’t the right word… I’m often shocked when I’m reminded how little I know. The other night at Eddie’s Attic I’m talking to a new-found friend about our upcoming travels and I’m asking him if he’s ever heard of Vicksburg , Mississippi (our next stop). He looks at me funny and responds “yeah, I MIGHT’VE heard of it… something about a battle?” I tried to play it off, but my knowledge of American history had just been exposed as spotty at best.
And so, when we finally get into town I try to act all knowledgeable and like OF COURSE there’s a billion early American military monuments scattered around the place! We drive into town with a couple of hours to kill before our show and discover a sleepy town on the verge of coma, almost everything closed… but the most beautiful light you could possibly imagine reflecting up off the Mississippi River. The whole town is painted in reds and reflected oranges and shimmering hues of the beginning of the rainbow. Even the tacky over-sized modeled-to-look-like-an-old-steam-powered-river-boat casino manages to pull off a stately Southern facade with the aura of stately Southern sunset.
After wandering around and peering into windows and taking pictures and veering into porches and taking pictures, Heather and I return to the Highway 61 Coffeehouse with kind of low hopes for the evening.
Well, our hosts – Daniel and Lesley, the owners of said coffeehouse had been hard at work promoting us over the past several weeks and we eventually played to a small but very rapt audience. The highlight of the night, however, was the coffeehouse itself and the gallery that stretched for the two floors above it. One of the best gallery spaces I’ve ever seen – and by that I DON’T mean “oh what fabulous white walls and elegant lighting”. Someone with a real eye put these things together all in one space, and someone with real soul chose where these things fell. It’s useless to even try to describe it, but it was incredible to see a gallery space that ANY and ALL of my friends’ artwork would be appropriate for. From Will Schaff’s twisted Scheile-sque figures to his cut paper to his embroidery, from Amy Law’s intensely introspective watercolour fantasies to her whimsical bugs to her magnets, Heather’s jewelry or even my own work, Sonny’s wire-fu… all of it could’ve found a home amongst Lesley’s vast collection of folk art and fine art and craft and kitsch.
The gig was good. Going home with the owners was better.
After seeing the venue, I repeated a tiny prayer in my mind: “Please let them have a cool house, please let them have a cool house”. I was not at all disappointed. An old Southern manor from the front with white pillars and ivy, a garden and greenhouse from the side with moaning bottle trees and stone walks… We slowly unpack and disperse ourselves and our belongings into this amazing sprawling structure and I know I’m going to be up for hours yet simply exploring.
The art collection is even more refined and eclectic inside their home, everything from fat smiling men carved in laminated wood to original plates from Dave Simms’ “Cerebus” to sheep and tiny carved dogs to paintings done by the owners and prints and photographs and a LOT of mannequins in all states of dress and undress… the house just went on FOREVER. The bathroom was a work of art. And I am a bathroom snob.
Eventually, Dan and I end up at the kitchen table eating tomatoes and talking about the blues – Vicksburg is the Southern tip of “the” Mississippi Delta as defined in several histories of American blues music (I spent several guitar solos that night reading a poster on the wall about the geographical history of early blues players). It’s not a genre I know a lot about, and it’s actually something that Dave’s just really beginning to get into as well – but I know enough to know that I don’t really like bluesy rock (like Stevie Ray Vaughn) and I don’t like really jazzy blues (which seems to be what you run across in most Maryland bars) but I LOVE blues as played by old black men who’ve been playing their electric guitars in dark bars for decades and I LOVE blues as played on ripped apart old resonators with slides made of filed down beer bottles… the real rural roots stuff. I guess that’s Mississippi Delta and Chicago Blues, but I’ve got some research and some listening to do. Dan and I talked about the art and the passion and the ignorance of it, and the beauty of that ignorance. Not caring about what made it what it was, just the longing and the ferocity and the vibration of it. I feel like it’s very similar to what I’M plugged into as a musician. I don’t know what it is, but I know I need to do it.
I guess that makes me folky.
The morning came far too early for our tastes, but we had to get up early to let our hosts go to work. Lesley explained about how even the most hardened night-owl can’t stay that way once they decide to run a coffeehouse. I had one of the most exquisite showers of my Life and I was loading out to the car when it came time to be Lesley’s turn for conversation. We talked about art and sculpture and what we did to satisfy our souls. It was good to talk to people a couple decades further into their Lives who seem very happy, very pleased with where their Lives have led and where they are leading them. It’s crazy to think that this woman, who seems so much my contemporary in so many ways, has a 42 year old child.
I feel it’s all too rare that we get into conversations with our hosts, and yet that was one of the founding ideas of the Trip – storytelling. I feel like this particular leg has had a lot more of that so far…
Who’d’ve thunk I’d be so very happy with Vicksburg , Mississippi. Morning finds us back at the 61 Highway Coffeehouse getting some work done and fighting with wireless signals and eating bagels and smoothies and dreading the drive yet eager to drive… it’s 11am and it’s already been a good day.
