Dustin
Despite spending a youth obsessively, slavishly devoted to music, I never actually followed a musician on tour. I did fly to Phoenix to see Tool and Primus together (I mean, come on!) but otherwise, I’d not done any significant travel to see a concert, either. Jim White changed that.
Funnily enough, I wouldn’t have even recognized the name before the beginning of this year. It was a cruel twist of fate that brought his light into my life. After emerging from another Christmas in the photofinishing world, barely unscathed, I learned with horror that SecondSpin was joining Media Play in the graveyard of the record stores that raised me. I made time to comb for final treasures, of course, and happened upon a long-sought grail: Searching For The Wrong Eyed Jesus. This odd little documentary—for which I had been on the lookout for some time due to its inclusion of Denver music icon, David Eugene Edwards—was better than I could have possibly expected. It captured my aesthetic yearnings perfectly; the little room in my heart had found expression through the efforts of the BBC and some obscure artist named Jim White.
After the first of many viewings, I immediately looked for the soundtrack on eBay. I was still mostly in it for the 16 Horsepower connection, but I guess I liked that “Still Waters” song. Fortunately, I happened upon a fellow human selling a three pack: the soundtrack, along with Jim White’s first two albums. “Well,” urged the inner addict, “that’s obviously the one to get. Even if you only listen to them once or twice, it’d be interesting to explore this little detour to the fullest.”
Oh, what an enriching time to be wrong. I listened to one album. Then the other. Then I bought another one to give to a friend, but ended up keeping it because it was the EU version of the album and had different disc artwork. Then I bought every album and single I could possibly track down. I listened to “Static On The Radio” every day to wake up. I listened to “Heaven Of My Heart” when it was sunny. I listened to “The Way Of Alone” when it was gloomy. In a few short weeks I had absorbed this new catalogue into the basal fabric I know only as “soul” as deeply as others on which I’d spent years. I even thought—and was proud of the fact that—we had the same birthday, though I’d learn from the man himself that the internet was off by a day.
Good stuff, in short. Macey went through something similar.
The point is, when Macey reported to me that not only would he be embarking on a small East-coast tour in support of Waffles, Triangles, & Jesus but that one of the dates was a free show in a church in some unknown town, we went very quickly from “this could be possible” through “that’s only six hours away” to “this MUST be done.” And while we were there, why not go to two shows? One never knows if an opportunity will come again, and our little home for now is less than a day’s journey from the center of all this light.
Thus resolved, the time to leave on the superquest snuck up on us, as these things often do. We left late, and got as far as the Walmart in Yulee, GA, before we got to finally test out the efficacy of my truck’s newly-enclosed bed as a mobile hotel room. Every night we didn’t have to go to a hotel, I knocked another $60 off of the cost of that pretty blue topper, and it sure was satisfying. With an air mattress and a delightfully toasty sleeping bag perpetually at the ready, it made for quite the effective little home.
The morning’s drive brought us the first of many photo gifts almost immediately. At the corner where we turned Northward from our near-coastal detour, I spotted a grim little building called Pot Of Gold. Obviously a gas station in another life, I was taken by the stark contrast between the impotent, pumpless awning and the zero-budget glamor promised by the sign announcing “Las Vegas style games.” We flipped a hard U and Macey indulged me by waiting as I tried to capture the vision.
“What are you taking pictures of?” Uh oh. I grew concerned that I had miscalculated; many gambling establishments are sensitive about photographs. The woman to whom I explained was perfectly agreeable, however. It turned out that someone had been stabbed to death some time prior, after which the family of the victim bought the place and “turned it into something else.” I chose to avoid prying and kept the mystery intact.
Shortly thereafter, we found a beautiful spot by a river with a dilapidated boathouse and had to stop for more photos. The state line was so close after that we actually missed it and had to turn around again.
Next we drove through Darien, GA, a town founded by Scottish immigrants that proudly advertises their opposition to slavery well before the Civil War, but which vehemently opposed the government’s legalization of allowing female heirs to inherit property. What a world! Our final stop between Darien and Savannah was the Smallest Church In America. It was well worth it, as you can see.
Savannah, aside from being an obligatory “I’ve heard of this city, what’s it all about?” stop, beckoned us with the promise of plentiful WiFi. With a much-anticipated product launch happening at 11:00 AM MST, I had to be available to help smooth the internet proclamations. We stopped at Savannah Coffee Roasters for a quick taste of what our future travels will probably be like. Parking was a Thing, but we got it figured out in time. While I monitored marketing efforts, Macey observed a woman making bizarre notes on her phone (writing a story? listening to one and annotating?). Afterwards, we went on a bit of a walkabout. The train museum looked great, but we didn’t have quite enough time to take it it, so we contented ourselves with watching the kids dressed up for some sort of Civil War-obsessed history day, walking by SCAD, and stopping in at Peddler Jim’s Antiques to buy a couple choice curios from a man who claims to have retired on the day he was born. Jim recommended that we visit the Crystal Beer Parlor, and we loved it. Their crab soup tasted like Chicken Lisa, and the drink menus led with the statement that “THROWING OUT GOOD BEER IS A CRIME.” My kind of place! The kicker to the whole experience is that once we got back on the road, we learned that Savannah really did get its name from the landscape. From the harbor all the way past the South Carolina border, waving, dry grass and stubby trees made it easy to imagine we were cruising around in the African plains, though the wildlife was more non-existent than exotic.
The marker for South Carolina brought to mind Jim White “countin’ bullet holes in state line signs” and ramped up excitement to the next level. The night was finally upon us! The fall-like feel of the coastal forests put us outside reality, watching for palmettos in a place I never particularly thought I might be. Late afternoon brought us to Bluffton at last.
The Roasting Room was hosting a private event and wouldn’t be able to let us in until shortly before the show, so we passed the time walking the idyllic streets of Bluffton, watching kids from another era playing from a swing at DuBois park, and ultimately camping out excitedly at the balcony railing of the Roasting Room. We saw a golden eagle, met a few members of the Savannah Folk Music Society, the organization that set up the show, and spied Jim himself walking in from his van. The Roasting Room is an extremely small, intimate venue occupying a spot over a coffee shop; we greatly appreciated our front-row seats among maybe a dozen other guests, not counting Gretsch and Daddy (Daffy?), the two guitars with discernible names. In light of how we met the very first time (Macey enraged about people talking over a mutual friend’s heartfelt, quiet songs at The Glenn), the announcement that the venue was a listening venue—silence requested during songs—was extra-special. Sylvie Simmons played a great set, singing and playing the ukulele herself and accompanied by a member of a local band on a keyboard who had not practiced with her or even prepared in any way whatsoever. Much respect!
Jim’s set was magical, as hoped, and I attempted to record it on miniDV, to be paired with audio recorded on a proper microphone. Watch this space for that one, once I process it! Afterwards, we talked with him for quite a while. He was gracious as we could have hoped, which was fortunate as I imposed quite a bit by bringing a solid dozen CDs to be signed (thanks for shipping them in time, mom and dad!). Not only did he sign them, but he gave me the two disc live set he burned as a last-minute effort to have something extra to sell on the tour: “I’ve never seen a completionist before. I’ve got something you don’t have!” Jim didn’t know where exactly Leesburg was, but after we described its location, he noted that it “sounds like some God-forsaken country.” (I replied that, if anything, it was excessively God-filled.) He recommended some books and movies (Finding Florida, Killing Mr. Watson, Slava’s Journey…) and told us about how, when …Wrong Eyed Jesus! was put on vinyl, Wordmule was omitted without his consent due to space considerations. In a bit of karmic retribution, shortly after the vinyl was released, Breaking Bad featured the very song that had been removed from the tracklist. Perfect Day To Chase Tornadoes was a bit more spiritually important. He described one event at which someone told him about how it helped cure their cancer; they were followed by a man who said that he learned to play it on guitar and that he’s seduced someone every single time he’s played it. I’m not sure how the Freemasons came up, but when we told Jim that Munly (with whom he is evidently, not surprisingly, friendly) was a 32nd degree Mason, he noted that the knowledge “puts some things into focus.” Finally, he gently told us that he had obligations to attend to (sorry, Jim) and we promised to actually buy something the following night. He seemed pleased that we’d do the ol’ Deadhead routine for his act. Off we went, then, to spend another unexpectedly cold night in the parking lot of the Ferguson plumbing and lighting showroom.
Titled Far From Mississippi (which was accurate!), the live stuff turned out to be incredible. We had plenty of time to listen, as we decided to go to Charleston to catch a couple Gary Geivett photos before doubling back to catch the second show. In another outburst of my diner compulsion, I insisted that we eat at the Huddle House which was sort of on the way. It probably cost a lot of time, but it was a good opportunity to clear space on the time-lapsing memory card (see video at the end of this post) and I’ll be darned if those stuffed hash browns weren’t gooooood.
I didn’t have any specific expectations for Charleston, but whatever vague idea I had was nothing like real life. Like the old part of Philadelphia, the grandeur of the main drag rivalled that of some of the lesser cities of Europe. (Nothing we’ve got comes close in terms of the sheer weight of history, sorry.) The first building I saw upon exiting the car was built in 1726; the next was from 1718. Wow! There was a certain level of comfort, of course, in seeing that even the centuries-old governor’s mansion had a broken doorbell with a janky paper sign taped over it. People will always be peoplin’, I suppose. The more time I spend outside of large cities, the less I enjoy being in them, but I found the 18th-century facades and bright, airy street design exceptionally calming to the mind. My a6000 was less comforted; taking photos of a charming little postage stamp of a graveyard behind the church that we were not looking for, my flash suddenly emitted a troubling popping sound. It lasted a few more (ill-advised) flashes, but it was toast. (The post-script to this part of the saga is a good example of Sigaty Luck: when I got back home and went to send the camera in for repair, it turned out that my Mack warranty was set to expire about a week later. Now that’s just-in-time delivery!)
After a decreasingly-leisurely stroll along the battlement of Battery street, two more photos in the bag for Macey’s grandfather-homage, we rushed off to make the trek across most of South Carolina and a good chunk of Georgia. With precious little time to spare, we pulled up to the historic Beth-Salem Presbyterian Church in Lexington, GA, along with the rest of the gathering crowd. Fortunately for us, “crowd” in this context meant a group of somewhere around 50 people, and we easily secured front-row seats: optimal not only for enjoyment, but also for recording this very special hometown-ish show. The setting was ideally suited to Jim White’s brand of crypto-Christian anguish-folk, and posterity deserved a record of the event. Speaking of crypto-Christian, after completing the sound check, Jim got up and told me to come out to his car. “I have something for you.” What could it have been but a large and somewhat aged Masonic Bible? It would seem that he found it at some yard sale or other and, based on our conversation the night before, determined that the universe was sending it my way. Later, when I had more time to examine it, I found that the book was stuffed with a variety of important paperwork—marriage certificates, photos, and so on—and even more strangely, that it had originated down in Florida. That was by far the strangest gift I’ve ever received, and also one of the most exciting. Thanks again!
Sylvie Simmons—did I mention she was Leonard Cohen’s biographer, or that she conducted the last interview with Johnny Cash over 5 days at his home?—rocked the house again, accompanied this time by a long-time collaborator of Jim White’s, Claire Campbell, and built up to a climactic cover of Space Oddity (you can watch that here). The main event, of course, can speak for itself. I’d recommend setting aside some time to watch it hooked up to a proper sound system with a stiff drink in hand, but if you haven’t the time, suffice it to say that it was as hoped.
After the show, Ms. Campbell showed off her singing saw for a curious sub-group; while I waited to buy merch Macey tried her hand and found it to be a surprisingly strenuous instrument to play. We learned a little more about humans that night, too. Hoping to avoid the blind parking-lot hunt that night, Macey asked the people standing next to us whether they knew somewhere we could park and sleep. “How about our driveway?” was not the answer we were expecting, but it was the best answer we could have hoped for! The couple—let’s call them the Awesomes—told us they lived in Comer (another little town in the extremely charming and rural “suburbs” of Athens) and that we were welcome to not only park but shower, or even use the guest room. We declined the room, so as not to dirty any sheets, but we were ever so grateful for a shower and to meet such wonderful people. (The house was also decorated in a style somewhere between that of a flea market and Victorian museum. We had a blast just absorbing the ambiance.) We mentioned where we were staying to Mr. White as we left the church, and he made the earnestly paternal suggestion that we drive by Comer Elementary School so we could see where his daughter, the imminently-famous Willow Avalon, went as a child. In another coincidence, although the Awesomes were more interested in patronizing the local music scene than Jim White fans, they told us they realized during the performance that Mr. Awesome had been to Jim’s house before. Visiting Pensacola, the Awesomes had bought some art from Panhandle Slim (moderately famous in recent times) but weren’t sure how to drive it up to Georgia. By pure coincidence, Slim had a friend visiting who also lived in Georgia and who offered to drive it up for them to pick up upon their return…
After a sound sleep, soothed by rainfall on the topper, we set off to explore the area. The Awesomes were clearly people with whom we shared a great number of interests, and Mrs. Awesome had several suggestions for us which proved delightful. We kicked off the day with a little fresh air at Watson Mill state park, then headed down the dusty trail to check out the “Spring Doodah” at Neat Pieces. (Go see them if you’re anywhere nearby! It was one of the coolest antique/curiosity stores I’ve ever seen. There was an ominous feeling in the air, however, as a result of the newly-opened bypass and fears of losing traffic.) This brought us to yet another moment of bizarre significance.
For reasons not entirely known to her, Macey felt the need to gift Jim White with a small print of her grandfather’s art along with a description of a dream she had featuring that piece. It was a dream that culminated in an alleviation of guilt, and it was a dream that took place in a labyrinthine antique store. As you may have predicted, as we started to move through Neat Pieces, Macey stopped, looked at me, and said, “this is the store from my dream!” Moments later, her heart shot up through her throat and did a loop around her brain when she thought she saw some of Gary Geivett’s art for sale. It wasn’t him, of course, but the actual artist’s name being Kathy Strange and the piece being from 1993 (her birth year) left the aura of mystique completely intact.
Suitably primed for the supernatural, we then moved on to suggested destination number three: the Georgia Guidestones. Placed a little ways outside Elberton, “granite capital of the world,” these monolithic stones were financed by an unknown collective via a go-between with a fake name and seek to provide guidance for the world with ten rules (translated into eight modern languages) under a heading heralding an “Age of Reason” in four ancient languages. They seemed alright at first—especially the one execrating “petty officials”—but became more disturbing the more time we took to ponder them. Sticking to the theme, we went to visit a tree that caught our eye as being Carnivale-esque across the way and found the remnants of a tragedy. Who knows when or why the house burned, but there was a cross nearby painted with “1991”…
We made an obligatory tour of Athens, though we didn’t have much time, perking our spirits up at the Manhattan Cafe (only half a block off the main drag and infinitely calmer!) and paying homage to a tree which, thanks to quirky legal events of days gone by, actually owns itself and the land in which it grows.
We got up relatively early to say goodbye (and thanks again!!) to our hosts and went to check out the local religion at Comer Baptist Church. The content implied by the sermon was rawer than I would have expected, and it left me wondering about the personal history involved. Everyone lived up to the stereotype of “hospitable Southerners” and we enjoyed chatting with old man Jimmy about his gorgeous ‘56 Bel-Air. We even got a warm recognition at the gas station, for no other reason than because we were recognized!
We took our leave quite slowly, visiting the Rowdy Rooster (Lexington’s local art collective and gathering place), a park full of monumental stones (graciously covered in graffiti by the local hooligans), and driving through Jim White’s little town to complete our pilgrimage. Though sorely tempted to drive up to Asheville for a third night, we decided not to push our luck and headed back home to Florida.
Don’t worry: we took plenty of photo breaks—for wildflowers, miles and miles of pine trees, incredibly accessible abandoned buildings (we actually saw some vandals making a getaway right before our visit to a wrecked house), and, most excitingly, a carefully preserved pre-Civil-War plantation. The family’s ancestors first settled in the area in the late 1700s, and had recently moved many historic buildings into a single area and turned it into a public museum of sorts. It being Sunday, we couldn’t go inside anything, but having the exteriors all to ourselves was a special experience. I noticed that the signs all scrupulously avoided mentioning anything whatsoever about slaves and wondered if the tour would have followed the same practice. The unexpected favorite attraction? A small, especially fuzzy caterpillar, which we watched walking around and around on rusted farm equipment for a significant amount of time.
…too much time, of course, as is our wont. As the sun sank lower, we started a quest for dinner that was more desperate than we Westerners had anticipated. We got snacks at a gas station to tide us over, but I was not allowed to sample the regional cheap hooch because, as the clerk all but spat at me, “we don’t sell beer on Sunday.” It all worked out, as things tend to, and Macey and I had a romantic meal of Chinese takeout, watching the sunset in a church parking lot in the back of my truck. We thought about sleeping there, but we still had the kind of nervousness about upsetting anyone that comes with inexperience (plus, we could still make some distance!) and decided to play it safe in the Walmart in Baxley, GA.
Our final day on the road was foggy and beautiful. Deep in logging country, we stopped to admire the beauty of the forests and be thankful for this kind of freedom.
Love hearing about your travels and seeing your photos. Always brings a smile to my face and heart. Love you two!