Gettin' Schooled

Through no planning of his own, Jimbo Mathus has been one of my greatest musical teachers.

Jimbo live with Buddy Guy

Back during heady college days, I discovered a band called the Squirrel Nut Zippers (SNZ), where Mathus was a leader, sometimes singer, sometimes writer, musical arranger and more. This was IT, I thought, the thing that made people love music. Suddenly, I had that feeling too. I started exploring, discovered Storyville, Jelly Roll Morton, early Armstrong.

But then Jimbo released Songs for Rosetta, a solo project, in 1997, and suddenly, I was introduced to the Delta Blues. To the source I went, and waiting for me was Charlie Patton, Son House and all the others, standing in a dusky doorway of a juke joint on the edge of a cotton field.

Then Andrew Bird played with SNZ. Whoa! I thought -- violin. And so I discovered him. And then to The Jazz Squad with Katharine Whalen, and there was Billie Holiday. Mathus played with Greg Humphries, and Hobex and the jam-band sound came in to focus, along with North Mississippi All-Stars.

As he explored his varied tastes, I expanded mine. He's spent part of the past 12 years or so touring and playing with Buddy Guy, and then the rest getting back to his own roots, back in the land of his birth, Mississippi, and playing for the sheer fun of it.

He's coming out again, bringing us new stuff, this time the Tri-State Coalition, and we had a chance to catch up via phone in advance of his show here in Charleston this Saturday at The Pourhouse and his 6-song vinyl EP, Blue Light set to release later this summer.

When you started playing the blues, it wasn't as trendy as it is now. How is playing live the music you love different from when you started?
I think I've been such an underground performer for the last 10 years, that I haven't really noticed the change. I've always been exploring my Southern roots. Back in the SNZ days, when we were having that success, the Songs for Rosetta album was just kind of staking out my claim.

We were having great fun with that band and people were digging it, but I let it be known that my heart was for the Deep South Country and Blues. My heart is in Mississippi.

How has moving back to Mississippi informed your music?
Well, I was proud of what I did with the Zippers, and I haven't been in a real rush. I've been very patient about it.

Moving back here has put me back in the land of my heroes, the land of my constellation, my musical heroes, my literary heroes. I'm living in the county where I was born, and it's very meaningful, to put my thing [the new band] together. Our music resonates here, and we stay busy gigging. We've been entertaining a hell of a lot of people, and we are immersed in it, the music, the land, the nature.

The songwriting has come to a point that is going to get people's ears.

How do songs come to you?
Really one of two ways.

The first is at the Taylor Grocery. It is a catfish house open here a few days a week, and they always have a live entertainer for the catfish eaters. It's great fun, and I play there often. You play for tips, and I'll play some folk songs, get people enjoying themselves, and then I'll just keep playing, playing a song so long that it turns into something else. I write a lot of things up there.

The second is really driving, driving the backroads by myself, those low one lane roads, and just ruminating, looking at the land. I'm geared to remember stuff, and composing, assembling, and getting inspiration for songs has always been second nature to me.

Do you write all the music for Tri-State?
Yes I do. It's Southern rock with a telecaster, a pedal steel, and great harmonies, so we can do the different genres we like to do. But it's 100 percent original material.

Buy your tickets here and get your education. See you at the show!

Why does everybody always reference Alfred Hitchcock to me?

You know, certain types of things just build up. Like an aversion to Steve Carell.

Steve Carell. I am not discussing his off-screen personality, just that suddenly he was so smarmy-ily everywhere.

Or getting tired of Robert's Chicken Salad. Or, of course, a fear of birds.

What? You don't have a fear of birds? Well, have you really looked??! These things are unpredictable, erratic, they have sharp beaks, and well, did you even see Jurassic Park? They are descendants of the crazy scary raptor dinosaurs, remember?

Anyway, I guess I should explain myself. It really all started with this one parrot named Petey. He lived in the pet store next to my university campus, and I occasionally visited to look at fish or figure out what the hell a chinchilla was. Well, Petey had it out for me. It wasn't that I was that special, it was just that he could smell my fear. Why, you ask? Well, he swooped. He would fly the aisles if he felt like it and buzz you like a plane from Top Gun.

End school, end association with Petey, right? Well, no. Years later, interviewing a couple who had exotic birds in their home, once I got past their converted dining room floored with poop-coated paper, we made it outside to discuss birds on the deck.

The husband came out with a parrot on his shoulder and sat down at the deck picnic table. I swear I could almost feel that parrot's eyes narrow at me like, Do we know each other? I continue on with the interview, and, yes, Petey, keeps sidestepping my way, closer, closer ...

"Hey, that reminds me of a parrot that was in a pet store near UNCC," I say casually.

"Oh, Petey, yes, he IS that parrot. We rescued him!" the husband answered triumphantly.

"Well, I think I've got all I need for the article, " I say, closing my pen. "It was great to meet you," I say over my shoulder as I head for my car.

But I know that crotchety parrots don't populate the world. And so I visit a friend's house who has an urban henhouse. I really want an urban henhouse, and I want those fresh, gorgeous eggs. She says, "Pick one up, they're really sweet."

I already have crusty sand in my cute sandals, and these things flap a little as I lean down. "Oh, I can't, maybe next time." We go in and never speak of the recent awkwardness. It. Never. Happened.

Then there was a few months ago when I was housesitting for a dear friend and a female cardinal got trapped in the screened in porch. Armed with a bath towel, broom, and lots of screaming, I attempted to  not injure the poor thing while help her out the door. I failed, went back in the house and tried to telepathically communicate to her the way out. Hours later when I checked, she had received the message. Thank God.

I want to think that I can whisper the birds in an empty church into calmness, like the sexy Jude Law in Cold Mountain.

Just imagine this mug, but holding a scared dove. Better than Steve Carell, right?

But I just can't. I am often in White Point Gardens in the early morning, and I hear weird bird noises and flapping in the live oak trees above. I try not to look, but one day, I did. I noticed a full-grown egret taking off from his low-built nest. Have you seen their spearfishing beaks??? Well, I am sorry for the screaming ... I got a hold of myself by the time I reached Water Street, ok?

Fitz and the Tantrums and a Saturday Night

Fitz and Tantrums played the Music Farm on Saturday evening, and I was there with my vodka-tonic and strappy heels. Both efforts were worth the outing.

Walking in, there was already a band playing. Large drums, great musicality, and suddenly, I was listening more to The Royal Teeth than I was wondering who this was. They were mesmerizing. They were young, They interacted with the crowd. They sounded vaguely like someone I'd heard before, but of course, I hadn't. But that was OK. The hook was already set. I liked them.

But when ZZ Ward hit the stage, I quit making small talk. I quit worrying about people cutting in front of me on the way to the bathroom. She was blues in the backroom, energy, tight lyrics, but an old soul.

ZZ Ward playing The Music Farm. Photo by Holly Thorpe

I've added her to my playlist -- in fact, she's playing right now as I write this. She is my new personal theme music. Don't act like you don't know what that is. You know that soundtrack you have in your head that plays as the movie that is your life plays? Yep. That's the one.

But finally, the crowd favorite came on. Fitz and the Tantrums took the stage, and the capacity crowd was ecstatic. People around me knew every lyric to every song. They held their hands up; they waved their beer bottles in the sky; they cheered at every ending.

The band had just come from Bonnaroo, straight from actually, and while they were musically on their game, there wasn't a lot of small talk, but everything sounded like studio quality -- or better. They are not a movement, or a scene, or anything else. They play music, and lots of people liked their music.

Their sounds is at once modern and retro, and beyond just their hit "Moneygrabber." It's out of space and time, really, the sound of Saturday night when the moon is high and you're ready to leave the house. There is a chemistry there, a promise of something more, something you can't help but notice. It may be shouting or it may be kissing, but there's really not that much difference between them. It was Saturday night after all.

Music for Writing

I have had a lot of people ask me about my music collection. Or lack thereof. Or just in general, when something is blaring from my phone or computer or -- yep, even boombox -- "What is this?"

Well, you can blame writing.

There was a time when I listened to Dave Matthews, Paula Abdul, and basically anything on Kiss 102 in Charlotte. There was the same time when I was getting those cds for 1 penny (remember that?) and I checked Dr. John and Enya and even Bjork.

Fast forward a few years: I was working on a huge, semester-long writing project in my first semester of grad school, and I discovered writing to music. I had done that before. A bit. But for this project, I looped The Last Temptation of Christ soundtrack. Has anyone heard this work by Peter Gabriel? Does it sound like literary criticism of The Great Gatsby to you? Well, me neither, but for some reason it did at the time. I can still see the color of the carpet of that computer lab when I hear it.

Maybe I've revealed too much, but let's keep going. I wrote a huge paper on Wordsworth and I remember playing "If I Had a Hammer and a Nail" by Simon and Garfunkel for hours on end. On repeat. It reminded me of a 19th century English fair day, for whatever that is worth. My new husband at the time eventually knocked on the office door and said, "Really? Again?" (Amazingly, that romance did not last.)

But mainly what I've learned over the years is that I need either music without words or words not in English. If I listen to too many things in English, I start typing the lyrics instead of what I need to be typing.

So what this sounds like in my day to day life is a lot of jazz, which I will ALWAYS love, and is, to me, the go-to writing music, or music with foreign language singing. You'll hear these often if you come to my abode. I've recently discovered recorded opera (I've as of yet not enjoyed live) and Fado. Oh Fado. You melt my heart.

The best tool ever for all of this is now Spotify. They have not paid me to say this -- I am just that obsessed. Discover. It's worth setting up an account.

The Sweet Life

Sometimes you don't know what you did to deserve the good luck you have.

That's the way I feel about working with the editors of The Local Palate. Not only are they communicative, supportive and quality-driven, the assignments from them are my version of a free Ferris wheel ride. In other words, it feels like fun a lot more than it feels like work.

Case in point: my latest feature article in this month's issue. It's on tea. That's right. The stuff I receive for gifts, that is in my SIGG bottle instead of water, that pretty much fuels my day.

This assignment was to write specifically about Sweet Tea (capital letters required). And no, not sweetened tea. Sweet Tea.

Bill Hall drove me around the tea plantation on a golf cart one early spring afternoon, my pulse already slowed by the drive out to the island through live oak shadows and sun on marsh reaching almost to the asphalt. Bill was generous with his time, had the most fascinating way he rolled his own cigarettes, and fed two farm cats while we visited. We looked at baby tea leaves and talked about London in the early 70s, and it was a good day.

It made me dream of warmer weather and summer and sipping in the sweetness. And look, it's here -- drink it in.

Writer Admiration

People who write often talk about work from other writers they admire. Usually, these are fiction writers, at least for most of us. I'd list Faulkner, Hemingway, Lee Smith, Toni Morrison, and many more on such a list, and give us some time, or at least don't stop us, and we'll tell you exactly why. Until you feel you're in the worst version of talking shop:

"The way he builds the character is so subtle that you don't even notice he's drawing you in."

"I like his use of the color descriptions to illustrate the mood of the antagonist."

"Her work is so multi-layered that it requires more than one reading."

But for me, I admire many others in my field, which, at least for now, is not fiction. One such person is Julia Reed, a writer who used to write profiles for Vogue, but who've I have been reading in Garden and Gun. Her writing is personal, funny, truthful, and well put together.

But more importantly, she has a distinct voice, which in non-writer speak, means that you can "tell it's her." Case in point: I pulled out an old copy of Conde Nast Traveler recently and got involved on a story on Rio's fashion scene. The writer was self-depreciating yet still very knowledgeable, and I liked her take on things. Flipping back to the byline, it was Reed.

Well done, Miss Julia. I look forward to reading more.

Protecting Your Pain

We like to think that we protect things/people that we care about. Kids. Households. Jobs. Reputations. But pain? We hate pain, right, so why in the world would we want to protect it? Right?

Actually, for most us, there is pain that we don't want to let go. We pet it, ruminate on it, repeat it, check it again and again like that sore tooth that we just can't stop touching with our tongues.

For writers and other people who define themselves as "artistic," this is especially dangerous. For one, we're defining ourselves as something. And two, that definition becomes our story, the fences, the borders of our lives (there's no way I can do x ... y or z). I remember reading about writers' lives in graduate school, really digging into their bios, and thinking, wow, I might not be that good of a writer because I would rather be happy.

Uh .... but then life happened, as it always does. And suddenly, I had my own wounds. Now, before you think that "Nope, this couldn't be the norm. Protecting pain is stupid! Why would I want to hurt?," ponder this. You've been out with a person (person #1) who says they're over someone but just can't stop talking about that person.

Or you're with a person (person #2) who seems to have a deep sadness. They don't want to talk about the past, but they allude to that fact. Instead of it not coming up, they avoid it, keep things surface, etc.

Both of these tactics protect pain.

Person #1 rereads the script over and over, creating a habit, a history, a story that eventually becomes a belief. It's the guy at the VA hospital that grosses out the Candy Stripers by showing his nasty scar and repeating in too much detail how it happened. Note: This is different than processing pain, working through it, sharing with those close to you in order to form stronger bonds. But eventually, those relationships need to grow past the pain, or they will wear out.

Person #2 keeps a bandage over the old wound. There is possession. This is my pain -- you couldn't possibly understand. Note: This is different than "going there" and really looking at something in your quiet time, really shining the light on something in your mind in order to clear out the cobwebs.

Now, if you noticed such a person, well, more than likely you've been  that person. I have.

I've been writing a Story of Me for years -- something I repeat to people, highlighting things, but more than that, repeating it to myself. And I have cared about the pain, even though I would've dismissed you if you'd pointed that out. I didn't know I cared about it, but in certain corners of my life, it was still hanging out. And like watching Dirty Dancing for the 71st time, I'd play over that pain again, remind myself of the feelings, the specifics, the whole thing down to the credits.

Here's the real deal. You don't have to drink yourself to oblivion like F. Scott Fitzgerald to be a writer, kill yourself like Sylvia Plath, be depressed like Hemingway, cut off your ear like Van Gogh, or fire people routinely to show your leadership like Steve Jobs. There is no story you have to fill in the blanks to to be a writer or create anything.

Pain is natural, and actually pain is good! It is telling you "Danger! Something is wrong here!" Why would you keep listening to the fire alarm instead of putting out the fire??