Lately when my partner and I plan “someday” trips, we head south. Joh wants to return to Memphis, her mom’s birthplace. She hasn’t been since she was a kid. I want to check out zydeco music in and near New Orleans. Someday plans heighten the best days and help us breathe when things are slipping. We were daydreaming again the other day. I proposed adding Como, Mississippi to the current itinerary. Como lies between Memphis and New Orleans, and it’s home to the RL Boyce picnic.
***
We live on a rural route, one neighbor on each side of our house in Putnam County. There aren’t enough people to constitute a neighborhood, but there’s too much change underway. The neighbors on the right are moving next month. For the past twelve years, we’ve shared a driveway and split the shoveling when it snows. We’ve watched each other’s kids on the swing set. I’m going to miss them. It’s even harder for my kids. They feel like their siblings are leaving. There was an open house the other day. My daughter stood in our yard and glared at prospective buyers. She wants our current neighbors to stay. She doesn’t want anyone else to move in. She’s pissed. She wants people to know.
***
Boogie w/RL Boyce Live is a single disc containing highlights from the 2019 RL Boyce Picnic. At least six bands played that autumn day, amps and mics set up in Como Community Park. The bands played on a portable platform, long and low to the ground making it easy for friends to step on stage to sing back-ups or play tambourine. You can hear passersby talking. There’s such a big tent, open door vibe.
Each band has one track on the CD except the RL Boyce Band who close the disc with three songs on which they’re joined by Lightnin’ Malcolm. I skipped straight to the Boyce cuts, which melt into a blissful half hour, an extended exhale. The songs are in the same key and their tempos are similar with vocals that are few and faint. The band either stretches time to its limits or dissolves the whole concept. The band nestles into a trance boogie groove, firmly and perfectly, especially on “Jumper on the Line” and “RL’s Boogie.” The enveloping flow reminds me of Jessie Mae Hemphill, who hails from the same region.
It feels like Boyce and company could drive these songs forever. My son nailed it when he said they’re so loud and so calming. No sudden lurches, no sudden changes in direction or velocity, steadily heading for the horizon. You can see what’s coming your way from a distance and have plenty of time to adjust if and when needed. It’s like taking a walk on the road in front of my brother’s house in central New York, a long stretch of straight, flat county highway. We can see passing cars a mile away and move over, and vice versa.
***
Our neighbors to the left haven’t moved in yet. I hope they never do. For months they’ve been clearing the long vacant lot and building a monstrous house. Much of the work involves metal machinery scraping rock. They like to start early on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Seven-thirty or eight suits them best. Our neighbors-to-be have also been cutting and burning about three acres of trees. Turns out the burning part isn’t so kosher because the fire department has put out unattended fires four times in the past month, which is terrifying. I tried talking with the neighbor-to-be. I called 911. I spoke with the fire department who sent me to the fire inspector. Things were easier when no one was living next door.
***
RL Boyce isn’t the only source of light in the constellation of contemporary Como. Guitarist Garry Burnside sparks the backdrop behind vocalists Beverly Davis (covering Roy Hawkins’ “The Thrill Is Gone”) and Greg Ayers (covering Bobby Rush’s “She’s a Good ‘Un”). Guitar Lightnin’ Lee and His Thunder Band motor through “Amsterdam,” the original version of which goes back at least ten years to the Rare Traks CD. Lee balances humility and ambition. On the one hand, he repeatedly credits his teacher, Boogie Bill, for encouraging him to tour overseas. On the other, Lee is focused on making a name for himself: “We’re going to Amsterdam / They’re going to know who I am.” It’s more song-oriented than the Boyce tracks, but I still lose track of how many times they run through the verses and chorus.
Totally unexpected was “Shimmy” by the Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band. Shardé Thomas plays fife with a drum corps of Chris Mallory, DeMarcus Bowden, and Michael Wooten working a pair of snares and bass. Thomas’ fife floats atop the driving, hypnotic drums paralleling the guitar/drums dynamic of the blues songs. It’s a different path to a similar destination. It’s also the tip of the iceberg in terms of family history. Thomas’ grandfather, Othar Turner, first recorded “Shimmy” with the original Rising Stars Fife and Drum Band. Turner started performing in the 1920s and hosting his own Labor Day picnic in the ‘50s. He was featured in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York and The Blues back in 2002. Later that year, Turner died just a week before a recording session and Shardé Thomas, then twelve, filled in for her grandfather. Someday plans that came on too soon, but deepening the roots nonetheless.
***
Work also has its share of upheaval on the horizon. Until last month I wasn’t sure I had a job for next year. Then my boss announced her retirement. She’ll be missed for a lot of reasons, and it’s stressful wondering who will replace her. In twenty-two years of teaching, I’ve worked well with all of my bosses except one. The exception was a doozy. She was unpredictable, kind one day, cruel the next. She randomly targeted my colleagues. Nothing official, nothing documented, but she dished out mistreatment that bordered on harassment. We were left guessing which side of the fence we were on. Our collegial atmosphere quickly turned tense.
A group of us went to human resources. They listened and said the right things, but did nothing. They didn’t believe our claims and sided with the principal. I left the next year. Three years later, the principal had moved on. She was fired from two subsequent jobs. The second one made headlines in a neighboring state. She was caught breaking into a former lover’s house in order to retrieve sex toys. Perhaps not the judgment I wanted applied to my performance evaluations.
***
So Wrong They’re Right is a 1994 documentary about 8-track enthusiasts directed by Russ Forster. There’s footage of Michael Hurley clucking and yodeling while strumming an acoustic guitar. I couldn’t connect his performance. Later in the movie, David Greenberger talks about Hurley’s fondness for listening to John Coltrane 8-tracks while painting. He relates that Hurley loses track of time while painting and listening to 8-tracks because the cartridges loop endlessly and don’t have to be flipped over like a cassette or a record. That’s always stuck with me, and left me wondering whether or not I’m a Michael Hurley listener.
***
Cynthia Rylant’s The Relatives Came captures the rose-colored memories of a family reunion in the mountains of (West) Virginia. The food, the music, the dawn-till-dusk fresh air and absence of scheduled events, the collective decision to be done with time and crumple it up like a napkin. During the day, “You’d have to go through at least four different hugs to get from the kitchen to the front room.” And at night, “It was different, going to sleep with all that new breathing in the house.” It’s a window into the warmth and comfort of being surrounded with loved ones.
***
Hurley’s latest album, The Time of the Foxgloves, captures a similar vibe. The eleven songs sound like a rotating cast of friends hanging out on a porch filled with instruments and glasses of homemade wine, wandering through an evening of recalling and creating songs. Each tune a portal to some past I’ve yet to learn about or a window into an experience I’m not yet able to see clearly. I figure Hurley and friends will keep singing and thumping until I catch up.
When change rains down, roots music can absorb the excess, keeps things in place, make sure the inevitable flow doesn’t feel like a flood. In hindsight, the Covid shutdown led me to seeking out more blues, reggae, and zydeco, catching up with classics and checking out up and comers. Michael Hurley, closer to folk and blues than anything else, slipped into that stream.
The opening song, “Are You Here For the Festival,” resonates like a song that’s been in the family for generations. I relish singing along despite the lyrical content—even pre-Covid I equated music festivals with too many people and too-distant stages. The balance of the record is a beautiful scrapbook, simple and elegant. For a while my ex got into buying old black and white photos at yard sales. I never understood the appeal, couldn’t appreciate such personal artifacts with which I had no direct connection. All the images just looked like uptight white folk to me. Hurley and friends bridge that gap. The literal meanings of the lyrics can be opaque, but the words consistently feel within arm’s reach, if not closer, and the band’s choice of instrumentation feels like one welcome embrace after another, from Nate Lumbard’s bass clarinet sidewinding through “Se Fue en la Noche” to Hurley’s Wurlitzer A200 keyboard bubbling in the background of “Little Blue River” and the sweet vocals of Kati Claborn, Lindsay Clark, and Betsy Nichols flowing from start to finish.
***
Boogie w/RL Boyce and The Time of the Foxgloves help me drift, not in flight or escape, but in ways that ground, absorb the toxins and release something breathable. They’re like open fields on a sunny afternoon, someone’s dog off the leash, or sipping rooftop beers and watching the stars emerge. Joh and I haven’t figured out when we’ll be able to act on those someday plans, but RL Boyce and Michael Hurley will help us maintain in the meantime.
Follow Vol. 1 Brooklyn on Twitter, Facebook, and sign up for our mailing list.