All The Big Spots

Once again I find myself sitting in a ridiculous bar in a ridiculous town in the south, exultant that they have a wireless internet connection. This one happens to be in Sheffield, Alabama. I have no idea what the population is, but it resembles where my parents live in Sanford, NC. The bar is dark, smells terrible, and is in an empty stretch of "downtown," yet has wireless internet, an ENORMOUS HD tv, and the coolest jukebox ever. We've also been told that there's going to be a huge crowd tonight.

The crowds so far have been well above expectations. The people in Jackson, Mississippi, couldn't have been nicer. Every single person was polite and interested in what we were doing (and willing to buy us free drinks). Fenian's is a really old-looking Irish pub that was packed. We played for 3 hours, it was hot, people were drunk, etc etc etc. Raucous again.

Dylan and I actually got recognized in Little Rock by some dude in a coffee shop the next morning after the show. We felt special.

The night before was a much more tame show at Proud Larry's in Oxford, MS, which is a really really great venue, but we played very early to a smaller crowd. That left much time to explore the town, including roaming around the the "town square" with about 10,000 drunken U of MS students. One of whom saw my UVA sweatshirt and is actually good friends with Matt Lucas, who is the little brother of my friend from middle school Chris Lucas. My mother is probably the only person who will remember Chris Lucas, but I thought my head was going to explode. She showed me where the best spots in Oxford were, including the Chevron station. At 1am when the bars close, it's just about the only place that serves food -- so she insisted that we go there to eat "chicken on a stick" which is a GIGANTIC piece of fried chicken (on a stick). So you walk into the Chevron station and there are 50+ people milling around eating massive sticks of fried chicken. The upstanding gentleman in line in front of us treated us to ours. It was possibly the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life.

The next morning before leaving town we stopped by William Faulkner's house in Oxford. We felt very intelligent and studious. The house was surprisingly homey and uncreepy. Except for the walls in his office where he wrote out an outline for "A Fable" which apparently is an unreadable novel. The man working there -- the only other guy in the place -- told us that he's read every single thing by Faulkner except "Fable" and that he's failed three times to try to do so. Neat. The outline on the wall seemed enjoyable enough.

Hot Springs, Arkansas, was bizarre. Lots of weird, wacky people. We played at this really cool "loft" upstairs that had a big stage and lots of seats. We actually drew a great crowd, but I've never met more strange people in a span of a few hours. Dylan and I left town to spend the night again in Little Rock. Hot Springs prides itself on two things - being the birthplace of Bill Clinton (who the locals "thought was a real jerk when he was growing up") and this. I think 7 people mentioned it. Wow.

Today we drove for four hours on The Natchez Trace Parkway. I wanted to stop about every 3 minutes to explore. Farms, enormous fields (we couldn't tell what they were used for), swamps, trails, campgrounds -- it's like a very long, skinny national park.

Too much to mention. Or remember. I hope to have pictures soon, when we can figure out the cord on Dylan's camera.