The lights went down and the full house at The Barbican roared as Rateliff energetically declared his arrival with Suffer Me. Not missing a beat, we were through three songs before he paused to acknowledge the crowd and give the first of his heartfelt thanks for everyone coming out; he was quick to point out it had been a long journey from his modest start in Missouri to sell out tours in Europe. Now fêted in americana circles it was clear that his appeal was to a crowd that liked to dance and wanted irresistible rabble rousing choruses. I can confirm that once exposed to his irrepressible charms then resistance is futile.
Like continual starbursts the eight piece band played a storm of rock n’ roll, old fashioned R&B with flourishes of Stax soul and gospel. The fact that Rateliff records on the latest incarnation of Stax brought to mind the Memphis Horns with saxes (baritone and tenor) working the audiences’ hips and feet like puppeteers and a trumpet for good measure creating some true highs. I’m On Your Side, also from his 2021’s The Future, confirmed, if you’d had any doubts, that here was a mesmerising master craftsman at work, often pacing the stage and switching between piano, acoustic, electric rhythm and lead guitar.
Songs from four albums made up the set list with a debut, for the British audiences, of tracks from his latest release South Of Here. If the audience were less sure about these new songs due to their lack of familiarity then on the remainder including Intro,Love Don’t, Hey Mama, You Worry Me and a cover of Springsteen’s Dancing in The Dark the joint jumped. Young and old alike leapt around with hands in the air, spilling beer and being transported whilst joining Rateliff on the choruses.
Returning for a couple of encores S.O.B. was the most animated I’ve ever seen the venue over my regular attendances; I’ve never seen such a consistently high energy set. It was one of those gigs where you just had to be there. If there was ever an artist who probably released great albums but was best experienced live then he’s the epitome. I implore you to make sure you get a ticket for his next UK visit. I will.
So, to complete our odyssey we left Spartanburg and headed north to the Great Smoky Mountains. This is a National Park with mountains/hills, rivers, waterfalls, a wide selection of wildlife (especially bears and deer), trails, history and, in places, lots of tourists. The Appalachians are a vast area stretching to Canada but I think it would be fair to say that when the name is used it registers in people’s minds as the rugged countryside of North Carolina and Tennessee. In the 19th Century there were Cherokees, early white/European settlers, thick forests and wildlife. The people living there seemed to eek out an existence by subsistence farming. Appalachian is also often seen as a variant in certain music genres, whether, americana, folk or roots music (acoustic).
We stayed a couple of nights in Bryson City, the proverbial one horse town comes to mind. It is however home to a heritage rail line. This ran into the park and along the Fontana Lake. This is a reservoir that at one end feeds a hydro electric power station. It looked idyllic with a lot of properties (house boats) floating on it as well as boats. The train ride was a run up the line and back again; why there were so many passengers in the 12 carriages will long remain a mystery as when I alighted I felt it was five hours of my life I’d never get back.
On leaving the town and saying goodbye to the horse we found a hiking trail. After all our city time we were yearning for some greenery away from the crowds. This was a complete tonic. The walk reminded me of strolling beside the River Wharf at Bolton Abbey.
We started to experience crowds when we drove through Cherokee and arrived at the fascinating Oconaluftee visitor centre that graphically explained the history of the park from the time that the Cherokees were the sole inhabitants until the European settlers arrived. Following the Europeans arrival then the loggers came and a major industry was established in the clearing and selling of timber. When this eventually fizzled out in the early 20th Century the area was turned into a National Park and is today a major resort area.
We drove the Newfoundland Gap, which was full of traffic but everywhere you looked the scenery was sensational.
We arrived at Gatlinburg. A place that has a little romance in it for me after it’s the town that “Sue’ found his father in the song A Boy Named Sue. The town blights the image of the Park in the eyes of many as it’s a resort with stacked hotels, fast food, child friendly entertainments, fairground rides, intense congestion and nowhere to park! We drove straight through and onto the other blemish, Pigeon Forge.
This bigger town was full of cheap accommodation, restaurants and some entertainments including the opportunity to dress up in 19th Century garb for a photo! One of the major draws is its proximity to Dollywood. This is a theme park owned and named after Dolly Parton. Despite my affection and admiration of the country artist then wild horses wouldn’t have dragged me in there . After some lunch and a visit to a supermarket we headed to the attractive and quiet Townsend. Our property back up in the woods was a base.
One day we drove to Cades Cove. The advice was get there early to avoid the congestion. This single track ride around a large wooded area was very popular and there were many visitors, even at 9am, cameras with long lenses snapping at anything that moved. I was initially a bit indifferent to the experience in a slow moving traffic jam until we actually spotted several bears. The clue to where the wildlife was, as you proceeded slowly, was the sight of volunteer marshalls in hi-viz , they were usually near bears and attempting to manage the cars. People leapt out of their cars to snap them (and in true US style left their cars running with the aircon working.). All in all we saw eight black bears.
For Anna who visits the North America seemingly in pursuit of wild bears it definitely ticked a box.I was so inspired that I procured one to take back for Isabella.
In Townsend we continued to explore with walks, visiting a local heritage museum and I even found a country club to use their static bicycle in the gym.
As my thoughts turned to home a worrying thought entered my head: the hire car was contracted to be returned to Savannah and not Nashville where we were headed. (The bland Hyundai Tuscon was underpowered and not much fun; I was surprised to see it’s sold in the UK.) This ‘return’ worry was well founded and eventually I spoke to Avis and they, for a fee, allowed me to return it to Nashville. This is what we did and found the airport easily and flew back to Blighty having had a wonderful time but looking forward to a rest!
To complete and continue our May and June 2024 American adventure I have written a couple of posts, this is the first.
From Memphis we drove to Nashville and took an internal flight on Southwest Airlines to Savannah, Georgia. This internal carrier slightly excited me because 40 years ago when I was doing my MBA they were a case study as a low cost airline taking on the established, larger players. Clearly they’ve done well to be still hanging around as some of their competitors have gone such as Pan Am and TWA. One notable part of the experience was being told by the air hostess to sit wherever there was a spare seat on boarding.
From here we went to stay with my niece, Victoria and her husband (Ben) and son (Henry). They have been here for some time as Ben works as an expat for a large UK company that manufactures and sells in the USA. Victoria works in interior design and young Henry, complete with American accent, goes to school in the town. Savannah is lovely as a coastal resort, university town and the home to the third largest container port in the USA. On this latter point you can see ships coming and going but otherwise the town seems quite separate.
The weather continued to hot and very sunny and we had a grand time with some family neighbours out and about on a pontoon in a sail to Little Tybee island.
In fairness the shirt was a Christmas present
Ben and Victoria are keen cyclists, who wouldn’t be on flat pothole free roads in sensational weather? I went out with their club on Saturday morning and as Ben disappeared to ride at 21mph I hung grimly onto Victoria’s wheel for 47 miles. It reminded me of Australia but a lot faster!
After our busy schedule in Nashville and Memphis (and lots of driving) it was nice to chill in luxurious surroundings before leaving to pick up a car and drive toward the Great Smoky Mountains. (Yes, the ‘e’ disappeared sometime ago, very troubling to a grammar pedant like what I am.)
Leaving Victoria we drove north to Spartanburg. This was a couple of hundred miles, it’s here that rain fell, about time (!) although it was still warm. We’d switched between eating out or catering for ourselves in apartments for breakfast or evening salads. After a few days on the road eating out starts to wane. On this night we slouched out to the magnificent Waffle House, a well known nationwide cheap greasy spoon. I do worry that the ingredients are full of all sorts of chemicals but it does the job and I always console myself that I’ll eventually be back to a less toxic diet. When we did shop there was often an ‘ethnic’ aisle in supermarkets mainly humouring the large Latino diaspora and Brits. Frankly the further north we got into the Smokies the ethnic aisle had a further reach around the store as some of the products could have been expanded from Latino and British to Hill Billy and Red Neck!
A Barnes & Noble store in South Carolina. I wonder how J K Rowling pays the rent?
The next morning we were promptly up to the nearby BMW plant for a tour ($10 each). Here they make the X Series from the X3 upwards. It’s a vast assembly and paint plant where they ship over 400,000 cars a year with 60% exported including back to the UK. They’ve invested $12 billion here since the plant was opened in the 1980s. We were lucky enough to see the fixing of doors, rear hatches and bonnets to the car all by robots. The lifting, placing, alignment and fixing was done by these massive arms that swung around with precision and grace. There were several lasers ensuring the component was a perfect fit. We also had a video, a look at the paint process and then were given a medallion. Sadly this didn’t come fixed to a gold chain for me to wear with an open neck shirt.
BMW X3A big lecture on not taking photos on the plant despite employees, on the plant, wandering past us on their mobiles!
From here in North Carolina it was back to Tennessee and the Smokies and maybe a bear or two?
Thanks to the App for UK’s sports radio channel TalkSport I was able to listen to some of the Championship football Play Off Final. The rest of the match I followed by looking at the BBC Sports website. I never had any serious conviction that Leeds would win, and they didn’t. After the result I was comfortably numb. Leaving Nashville we had a brief stop in Franklin before arriving in sleepy Memphis in our Subaru Outback.
A turkey sandwich not completely dulling the pain of another season in the Championship
In a straight line on the Interstate the car was fine but worryingly redolent with all sorts of baffling safety features that flashed up with irritating regularity on the dashboard. Lane control alerts, a speed pegging back cruise control if you got too close (100m) to a car in front, nasty bleeping if the car was switched off and you hadn’t restored the gear stick into ‘Park’, bleeping if the door was open when stationary, only opening one door when you pushed the button on the key fob; not all the doors. I came to hate it. On my own car at home I’d managed to switch all this Nanny State crap off. I would still be in Nashville had I attempted to fathom out how to do this on my Subaru.
Object of hate
I say ‘sleepy’ Memphis, the Downtown area was deserted and this was Memorial Day weekend. It should be jumping. This day commemorates all the fallen military. It was nine years since I’d been here and I thought it was going to be buzzing like Nashville: I was wrong. Also Anna had read that personal safety due to robbery and violence was something to concentrate on. The violence statistics were awful for the city. I’m not cavalier about what I wear or carry when out. I’m never anxious but thoughtfully aware. However, on an early stroll along the Mississippi we cut away from the river and climbed up toward a plush housing estate.
Anna and the mighty Mississippi
As we’re wandering along Glen and his wife Vicky greet us. He’s 83 years old (he told us twice) and a long term resident after a military career, a colonel no less. As we exchanged pleasantries and we say we’ve come from Nashville and music is our reason to visit. In a flash he’s onto his iPhone and produces a clip of a song by Glen and the Graduates, a sixties pop song. Glen apparently turned down a record contract to pursue a military career when a fledgling pop star. Who knows if he’d have made anything of himself but it was a great tune. As we’re digesting this he goes on to recount a recent local tragedy where a man is walking with his wife and small child nearby when they’re held up at gun point. The man was shot and lost his life. He talks of America in chaos with divides in society. Another vote for Trump, especially when you read the back of his calling card.
They depart, to continue their walk, urging us to be careful. Gulp!
I have to say the weather has been beautiful but hot and the evenings delightful. This led us to visit Beale Street. The history of music and important careers being nurtured here are part of blues folklore. The street has a few bars, a lot of gift shops and not many punters. I recollect it was a lot more vibrant. We did venture into the most famous bar, BB King’s Blues Club, to dine and listen to the band. The bands were sensational but they didn’t play any blues, I think the audience, all tourists, liked the rock covers they played. The vocalist could really sing with a great delivery.
We visited the National Civil Rights Museum. This is one of the most impactful collections I have ever visited, it was my second visit. It merits a compulsory visit in my not so humble opinion. Outside was a lady protesting about the museum gentrifying the area and masking so many troubling issues for all the Memphis residents. She’d been there for 36 years and on establishing my nationality proudly advised she’d been in The Guardian and met Harry. (Neither of these events ticked my box!) We had a back and forth about her point of view and I quickly felt I had got in a discussion with the local loony and was trapped. As I walked away she broke into God Save The King. Cuckoo.
A must visit. A world class museum.
Despite the poor press Memphis seemed fine and again all the folk were deferential, courteous and kind; so much for threats. Anna had checked out concerts to discover that Lionel Richie and Earth, Wind and Fire were playing at the local arena. At $58 for two tickets how could we not go? Break Wind and Fire were a 10 piece with now only three original members.
Earth, Wind & Fire
They had the crowd up from the get go. It’s quite a sight to see the heavy frames* of many of the 19,000 audience gyrating. For me the sound mix was terrible with the voices and horns sounding muted and tinny over a steady thunder of over amplified drums.
Lionel, a mere 74 years old. All the hits!
Lionel Richie fully adopted a Southern persona, a little different to when we saw him in Sheffield! He, and his sound, were magnificent. You should see him. Toward the end he went into a philosophical muse about the world post Covid and everyone getting along. The black woman behind us repeated his words, like a call and response in a church. When he finished she turned to leave the concert and reached down put her hands on each of our shoulders said “I love you” and was gone. Only in the South, only in the South.
Ample
In a cafe in a chap asked me about my shorts. Clearly he was impressed with my sartorial elegance. I told him the brand and we parted only to bump into him later with a couple of his pals. They advised us they took their vinyl to the Crosstown Concourse to listen to them on an immense hi-fi system. The building was the former Sears catalogue building that once serviced a nationwide mail order business. Clearly we all know how that ended. This listening room was donated by a Memphis luminary and in comfort you could listen to your music. We said we’d meet them there. We did and heard some Black Sabbath, Lemon Twigs and Elvis Costello with Burt Bacharach. One of the chaps started somehow on politics and started to vent about Trump. I changed the subject but I only mention this to confirm how vocal and public people are about their views and there’s little accommodation of their opponents.
Other museum visits included the Stax record label museum, the original home of legends like Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes and err… Lena Zavaroni. This is a terrific stop.
Nice shoes and socks, I know. Even sadder is that I wore them here in 2015!What??!
As part of a pilgrimage I again visited Sun Studios. Here Elvis Presley got his break and we got a number plate! We’d parked up outside a garage and Anna, concerned that we had parked in someone’s spot ask an employee if we were allowed? James Dean (Moss) not only confirmed it was but regaled us with his Mancunian heritage, something personally I would have kept secret, and then dived into his car to give us a number plate off a recent car wreck. As with all these older blokes we got a life story… 78 years old, had retired, had got bored (as not enough to do around the home or at his church) and so he’d found another job. Reluctantly he released us to visit the museum!
Unexpected gift!
When not absorbing culture we had a less frenetic time and I’d managed to find a couple of second hand record stores to spend paltry amounts on records by Billy Preston, Sharks and Blood, Sweat & Tears.
I like my history and we went to the Cotton Museum. Cotton was a vital 19th and early 20th Century crop that provided a great living to all but the black slaves and their descendants. The museum dwelt on this, its demise and move to California where technology and mechanisation make it a very different affair today.
From here it was back to Nashville to fly to Savannah, GA to see our niece and husband. It is, as they say, ‘all go’.
We asked the air hostess where we should sit as it wasn’t clear on our Boarding Pass. ‘Anywhere!’
*Obesity is commonplace here ranging from overweight to morbidly obese. It would not be uncommon for a couple in their 50s to pay $20,000+ per annum as a premium for their health care insurance. The high cost must, in part, be driven by the health issues that this weight contributes toward conditions such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease.
Tony Ives’ Blog 