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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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The Monster & Mary-Elaine

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I’ve always been afraid this blog might be taken for a fansite, since (early on, at least) my reporting has largely been of praise for some of the same people.  Having said that, I’m writing this piece the morning after the Mary-Elaine Jenkins record release show at Rockwood Music Hall while listening to her debut album Hold Still, &, muh dudes, I am sporting a Mary-Elaine Jenkins t-shirt (I really wasn’t planning on writing anything today & laundry is overdue). I’ve only my pleas to you all to not take me as a fanboy though I’ve currently no evidence to the contrary—which might make Mary-Elaine wary of me had we never met. The point is I don’t critique art & culture here. My aim is to support it.

So, let us breathe deep & take for granted that what I’m about to say I would have said anyway, regardless of current playlist & band tee. Mary-Elaine’s show was pretty fucking great!

I’ve seen MEJ play quite a few times since this blog’s early days. The more I’ve watched her, the more I’ve seen something grow in her. Not from an unblossomed bud or tiny spark. It doesn’t feel like it originated in her at all. Whatever it is it wandered in & not as some pretty, wispy unhurt thing. I can hear it in her smokey voice. You can see it in her steely eyes. Whatever it is it’s older than she.

ME touched

ME4Her music has evolved since I first spotted the singer/songwriter four years ago. It’s not just her & an acoustic guitar anymore. This gives that ineffable monster inside her room to bang around as it does in the album’s opening track “Rooster.” Mary-Elaine’s patience & diligence in finding the right producer has paid off. The songs on her album are robust without bloat. She’s picked up an electric guitar, as well, turning her song “Iggy” into a juke joint classic. The title track “Hold Still” would be just a sweet & pretty song as it’s slowed down with pining strings & tinkling mandolin, but there’s too much of an ache, & it’s here I feel that the monster has found solid shelter in Mary-Elaine Jenkins. The muse is not a beautiful pixie that comes to bless us with divine inspiration, that’s your stupid ego. The muse is the unquelled beast inside, tired, broke down, & fightin’ mad. But neither monster or gal linger in anger or ache as they pick themselves up to clown around a bit with “Six Skinny Toes,” an ode to her guitar.

Mary retouchedIt is due to this symbiotic relationship of beast & singer that I recommend MEJ’s record. The first thing I wrote about MEJ was in part an apology for near dismissing her. I could have written about her during different iterations of her musical life, as she’s acquired more experience & upped the number of members in her band as required by a growing monster. But I was worried about being mistaken for a fansite. Hold Still is a fantastic & rewarding reason for you to get up, check out some new music, & for me to begin again this blog that aims to support the impressive southern talents in this most yankiest of cities.

You can still see Mary-Elaine Jenkins live AF, & you should, the first Sunday of every month during her Pete’s Candy Store residency!

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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.

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