nyc

Here’s The Thing (update)

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I’m lax in posting because I’m working on a way to make The Road Southern a podcast. Interviews are my aim. Specifically, interviews with Southern transplants here in NYC. I’m looking to chat with anyone, not just musicians, which this blog has largely been focused on, about why they left the South. I’d like to hear what they miss/love about it, what they do not miss about it. How do they feel here in this the yankiest of cities? Nah mean?

This takes money & time. This may read like I’m about to ask for donations. I’m not. Not yet, anyway. Maybe if I ever stumble into NPR quality sessions. Let’s face it, my last post was me playing a video game. Which, sure, have another helping of that below. I talk Texas Hold’em in it. Anyway, I should have me some bare bones audio recording equipment around the New Year, & I will be interviewing plenty of musicians & artists, but also some regular Southern folk that have made their way to NYC. I hope you look forward to it as much as I am.

 

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Sick Day. So, Vidjagames!

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Here’s a thing. Since I’ve been sick I haven’t been out & about to see anybody play or do anything. It’s just a stomach bug, so no need for worry there. However, I have been able to sit at home & play video games. Namely, Red Dead Redemption 2. That’s southern/country enough to post. So, here’s me playing a mission in Rockstar Games’ new release Red Dead Redemption 2. Enjoy. Or don’t. Too sick to care, really. And, yes, my Xbox gamer tag is J-Thrill.

 

My Interview With Mary-Elaine Jenkins

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It’s finally here! My first ever audio interview! & with the venerable Mary-Elaine Jenkins, no less!

She recently released her debut album “Hold Still”, which I wholeheartedly recommend that you get your very own copy. Her music is also available at all these places to stream or download.

20181018_195742MEJ was generous enough to let me into her home for this. So, over tea & under the eye of Elvis (an overseer who I imagine would let a great deal slide under his watch) we spoke of album making, our respective deals with the South, & what’s next for Mary-Elaine as she proves to the world she can leap & bound as good as any.

Enjoy!

You’ll Be Hearing From ME

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MEJ at barI met with Mary-Elaine Jenkins last night for the first ever TRS audio interview. Everything went swimmingly–I do not know why things going swimmingly is a thing, but will not look it up because productivity & discipline. If I leave this page for a Google search I just know I’m going to wind up with a new pair of shoes & one of them fancy blankets with the sleeves they got nowadays.

Anyway, I’ll be chopping up & editing our little talk this weekend to post early next week. So, everyone try to just go about your business & live your lives like normal until then.

Hugs,

J

Vox Jody

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I’ve been thinking about the upcoming Mary-Elaine Jenkins interview & how this is going to be the first time my actual voice is heard, & it’s got me weirded out. I’m not shy, though I think plenty of people would assume that about me, so, it’s not that. I think it’s because I’m best, as in the best me, is represented in text. Because, I have edits & rewrites & I’m as comfortable on a keyboard as a, what? Pig in slop? Bug in a rug? Point is, writing me good at.

In conversation I’m a goofball, though. Not that I’m not going to let MEJ speak her mind & bless us with her formidable mind. It’s just that you’re probably going to be wondering why the intelligent & talented singer/songwriter (Mary-Elaine) is in conversation with mealy mouthed fool (Jodykins!). You’re going to be all, “Did Jody haphazardly save her life despite his dim wits & utter lack of grace, & now she owes him some sort of life debt?”

But, like most fears of ways things will go, I’m sure it’ll play out in real life fine just fine. At any rate, it’ll be more of MEJ’s voice in the world & that ain’t no bad thing.

Spaghetti del Alma

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So, you guys digging The Road Southern’s renewal? I know, I know. We’re only, like, two posts in, but they’re good ones, no? I’ve decided in its new incarnation I’ll be doing some journal blogging (j’ogging?), because this site is my wall & I got all this spaghetti to throw at it. Spaghetti that’s inside me. Soul-sketti.

Wow, I had this idea of doing an epic stream of consciousness post, but it turns out I just wanted to justify the term soul-sketti. Shit, what else?

My after thoughts of the last installment, that being about Mary-Elaine Jenkins, are these. I didn’t recognize anybody at Rockwood save for MEJ & her mama. I thought I’d feel uncomfortable, but I  enjoyed it. Perhaps because most, maybe all, of the South Slope, Brooklyn singers & pickers I used to write about are gone. In my mind the community, as it were-as it was, had come to an end. This isn’t true, though. Roots Cafe‘s new operators are wonderful people: artists, photographers, & poets. The packed house at MEJ’s showed me the Americana scene is plenty strong & enduring. Good things.

It does not do to bemoan loss & vacancy in this city for too long. If I haven’t written before that this town is like a river, well, let me do so now. All that rushes out is replaced by all that rushes in.  All the good people I seen go are duly missed, but here come some good people around the bend. That’s comforting. Know what I mean?

Jeepers, I got a little deep there. What else?

I got a new bicycle!

Love, love, love,

J

cropped-cropped-test-header.jpg

One of the first pics I snapped when I moved here. These bikes & the one I’ve had for all ten years in Brooklyn are gone now. It’s cool tho, I got a new one. It’s better. Because rivers.

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The Road Southern Breathes Again

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Jesus. It’s been a couple of years. Sorry. After a very long time of riding the fence on what I’m going to do with this WordPress account I keep paying for, I finally made a drunken text to TRS’s fearless photog, Andreea, that we’ll be back on these NYC streets making record of its country folks & Americana scenes.

ME Album release flyer

To solidify this promise, I also drunk texted Mary-Elaine Jenkins that we’d be there to cover her album release show this Saturday at Rockwood Music Hall.  Needless to say, The Road Southern is as happy as we can be for her! Did I normally use exclamation points in these posts? Looks weird. Whatever. Show’s at 9pm! Tix here.

I first heard Mary-Elaine’s smokey voice & spooky tunes a lifetime ago, at least 4 years feels like a lifetime in this city. The venue, Goodbye Blue Monday, doesn’t even exist anymore. Nor does the Super Collider where I’d write of her & others while I sipped a beer or two or three; however many it takes to get the job done. A semicolon? I haven’t bothered with them in so long they look weird & probably wrong, too. Anyway. Just about everyone else I’ve covered in this blog has moved away, packed it up for some place “easier.” But not Miss Jenkins. Too much grit. She keeps marching right the hell on. That’s my favorite thing that people do. So, I’ll march myself over to Rockwood & hear me some great music by the well practiced but still wild Mary-Elaine Jenkins.  Why not go see my NYC-lifetime friend kick a lot of ass with a lot of people who’ve come to get their asses kicked by her? No reason to not. I mean, we’re still here, too.

The Drunken Text: “First, me & Andreea will def be at your Rockwood show. Second, but also first, grats! ‘Proud of you’ seems condescending. I’m glad to know you. I’m glad 4-5 years ago I stopped to listen. Your stick-to-it-iveness was inevitable. So, I’m proud I’m intuitive enough to make you a friend. I’m grateful that you, as far as I know, call me one, too.”

 

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The Girl on the Balcony (short fiction)

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            It’s stopped raining, and with that I take the last beer in my fridge to my apartment’s small balcony. I like the earthy aroma that rains kick up, which I’m told is from bacteria spores lying dormant in the ground until a summer storm churns them into the air. In Brooklyn, you don’t always get such a natural delight, especially in smells, but my tiny balcony overlooks Greenwood Cemetery, which is old and larger than most of the city’s parks. The brief afternoon storm has driven everyone off the grounds. Usually, at dusk I see art students in groups with their sketch pads and charcoal, tourists, neighborhood walkers, and, here and there, one or two folks paying respects to the deceased.

The dead are not in the well-kept ancient graveyard, either. But, they wouldn’t be. That’s not where they horribly died, if they died horribly. I’ve been privy to dealing with and studying the dead for nearly twenty-five years. They don’t hang around cemeteries.

Click here for full story

 

Holy Shit, I Have Something to Post!

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I wrote a short ghost story! Soon I will have edited it! Then, I’ma gonna post it here! I’ma gonna post it here so good, y’all are gonna lose your natural minds! So, all 1 to 0 of you that catch this post, get rapt. Get rapt, y’all!

To be clear, this is a short story with a ghost in it. Not a story about a short or otherwise diminutive ghost. Damn it, it is in fact about a ghost of someone who was short, but that isn’t what I’m talking about when I say “short ghost story.” You diggy?

Stay rapt?

How Long’s It Been?

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A year and a half-ish. That’s a long time for a blog to go quiet. Most of the people I’ve written about in these pages are gone. Nearly every one of them. You’re all gone now. It makes sense. This was mostly about Southern and/or country-ish music. I don’t really get out to see anybody play anymore. No time.

I write now. I’ve been working in earnest on a novel. I think I’ve mentioned it a couple of times in previous posts. It’s a ghost story. I like it so far. Maybe I’ll make this blog about that. Is that interesting? To talk about my wannabe writer life? Maybe I’ll comment on some shit I see out there in the world and on the news. I’ve decided not to let this blog die, even though with everybody gone I feel like it should.

We’ll see.

Here’s a Southern gent I can’t get enough of right now.