Nearly every summer for the past 16 or 17 years I spent the third Saturday in July at an all-day blues picnic in Morrisville, PA. The picnic is sponsored by The Bucks County Blues Society, which claims to be the oldest, continuously operating blues society in the country. It’s not a terribly old organization – they’ve been around since the 70s. Given how long the genre has been around, I’m surprised that they are the oldest (hence the continuously operating qualifier). But… much like the songs, the genre itself has witnessed plenty of hard times. It’s never been as commercially viable as some other genres, and it lacks the erudition of Jazz and Classical (which makes those two genres almost protected national treasures elevated above commercial viability).
That Saturday in July became an almost sacred day for me. I looked forward to it every year. It was always stupid hot, the music was always good, the food was ehhh, the people were fun, and it was a great way to spend a day. I usually drank too much in the first half of the show and then spent the second half eating and drinking water and sweating. One year I had a kidney stone the day before… I wasn’t deterred (probably wasn’t the brightest idea). Last year (2019), the heat index was 114 degrees. Very few people went. I still wasn’t deterred (probably another not so bright idea). Sometimes my friend Tim went with me, more often than not I went solo. I invited lots of people lots of different times (my wife, and some of my friends). None of them took me up on it. I suppose for a lot of people, sitting in the blazing heat and listening to musicians moan about the troubles they’ve seen and how they’re baby done them wrong isn’t the hallmark of a good time. My ex-fiancee went with me once. We had a blast. It poured down rain and we got up and danced in the rain like two goofs.
When my engagement ended, I felt like I had lost my sense of home and that needed to get away. I applied for jobs in at least a half dozen different states – mostly California and North Carolina. I was looking for a slower lifestyle combined with things that I like (music, hiking, ocean). I was looking at the south as a way to lower my housing costs and get that slower lifestyle. Falling in love again was out of the question and I was committing myself to this journey of trying to “add” to myself. Trying to see if I can really be alone. Trying to see if I can follow some of my interests. While most of the jobs I applied to were charity positions (helping the poor), there was an outlier or two. One of those outliers was to head up fundraising for a blues organization here in Memphis. I had been to Memphis once before, I liked it. I loved that it had this rich tradition of blues music, and was the BBQ capital of the world. When I was offered the job, I made the decision that if I can’t have love in my life, I’m going to surround myself with music and food.
Unfortunately, the job didn’t work out. That still ticks me off. At the same time as the job not working out, COVID became a thing and our country, including music venues and restaurants everywhere, shut down. I moved to Memphis for the job, the music, the culture (food), and the cost of living. I’d be remiss if I said that my ex-fiancee living in the state didn’t both motivate me and de-motivate me. For the most part I avoided jobs in Tennessee, but once I had a lead on two positions, I started to think maybe fate was trying to tell me, tell us, something. It wasn’t. No, for the most part, I was trying to turn that special Saturday in to a lifestyle. Now, unemployed and with everything shut down, very few of the things I came here for are accessible to me.
Yesterday, I got a taste of normalcy when my friend Stacy and I headed to a small ranch in the north Mississippi hill country to listen to some live blues. Hill country blues – is my favorite style. Junior Kimbrough (and later R.L. Burnside), a legend of the hill country style, is the blues artists that first got me hooked on the genre. Another one of my favorite bands, The Black Keys, were so influenced by the style that made an entire album of Kimbrough covers Both Kimbrough and Burnside were from Holly Springs, MS. Both had kids and grand kids that went on to become musicians. In 2017, I specifically came down here to go to a weekend blues festival in north Mississippi. There were several Kimbrough and Burnside kin playing in different bands that weekend. It’s a family thing down here. The Juke joints were known for their parties that lasted all night. The ranch Stacy and I went to, Foxfire Ranch, has been in the same family for over 100 years. Southern roots tend to run pretty deep. Yesterday at Foxfire, not too far from Holly Springs, I heard one of Junior’s grandsons Cameron play. I had heard him before – his band Memphissippi Sounds carries on the hill country tradition… and for a few hours on a hot July weekend day I enjoyed beer, barbecue, and blues… and taste of why I moved to Memphis.