Nashville has a store called “Everything Diabetic.” Let me repeat that: Nashville has a store called “Everything Diabetic.” Next to several fast food places, of course.
(June 20, 2012) NASHVILLE, TN to KNOXVILLE, TN — I think I need to stop doing The Jazz Session and start making The Greyhound Session. Today’s bus ride was an adventure involving the cops, chugging beer, a woman just released from jail, and a whole lot more.
The day started innocently enough. I interviewed Evan Cobb (with whom I stayed in Nashville) about his new album, Falling Up. Then I interviewed Rahsaan Barber about his record, Everyday Magic. Evan and I watched a bit of the Yankees-Braves game (I’ll be watching the Braves from the organ booth in a week) before he took me to the bus station.
The bus loaded about 25 minutes late to begin with. That was the first time that’s happened to me on this tour, I think. I sat across the aisle from a woman with an impressive smoker’s laugh and cough. If morbid obesity and smoking are any indication, the South won’t be rising again anytime soon. I direct your attention to the photo above of a store in Nashville called Everything Diabetic. There are a bunch of stores like it in the city, all within feet of fast food restaurants.
It’s been quite an eye-opener to come south from Brooklyn and see the incredible difference in the general health of the people. And believe me, this is being said by a guy whose BMI reading places him in the “overweight to obese” category. I know it’s a problem for me and it’s an even more serious problem for a large percentage of the people I see around me every day down here.
Anyway, I spent the first part of the bus trip working on an episode of The Jazz Session until my laptop’s battery died. Greyhound makes a big deal of touting its buses with wifi and power outlets. In very small print on those posters are the words “Only available on certain schedules.” Unfortunately, the long route between Texas and Virginia isn’t one of those schedules, which means that all my trips in the past week or so have been on buses with no outlets or wifi. Which is a drag, given the amount of work I could otherwise accomplish on the bus.
Shortly after my laptop died we stopped at a gas station that serves as the Greyhound drop-off and pick-up point in Cookeville, TN. I went into the gas station to get a snack. While I was in line, a guy came up to me holding a six-pack of beer. “Let me get in front of you, dude, so the bus driver doesn’t see me buying this.” He was about 50 or so, wearing a white baseball cap and a Red Cross backpack.
You can’t take alcohol on the bus, so the clerk asked the man if he was getting back on the bus and the man said no. He asked him again and the man said no. So the clerk sold him the beer. Then the man ducked down a couple feet away and starting slipping the bottles into his Red Cross backpack. The clerk noticed and called the bus driver over. The driver asked the man if Cookeville was his destination and the man said yes. The clerk wasn’t convinced, though, and asked the man again. Within seconds they were screaming obscenities at one another. The man took his backpack and left the store with the clerk yelling at him. The guy got on the bus and the driver told the clerk to call the cops.
I paid and went back to the bus. A few seconds later another guy who’d been in the store came onto the bus and said, “Whoever bought that beer, you should know the cops are coming.” The guy with the beer got off the bus and started chugging the beers. He drank three, threw the other three under a bush next to the bus, and got back in his seat just as three police cars arrived. (As he boarded the bus he shouted, “No evidence.”)
The cops and the driver came and took the guy off the bus. They starting questioning him against the wall of the station. Eventually he pointed and one of the cops went to retrieve the other three beer bottles from beneath the bush. They kept the guy there and the bus went on its way after a long delay.
Perhaps the best part of the story is that overwhelming sentiment on the bus was on the side of the guy. The woman sitting across from me (a different woman from the one I mentioned above, who’d already disembarked) had just been released from jail that morning and wasn’t all that happy about the cops being there. In fact, her conversation alone on the course of the ride was something not even Flannery O’Connor could have written. One example: She’s a hunter. So she got a tattoo of the logo of a bow-and-arrow maker, sent them a photo, and got to test their hunting bows free for two years.
We did finally make it to Knoxville. For the last few miles, a woman at the back of the bus was shouting out every road sign and mileage marker and landmark to someone on the other end of a cellphone connection. Every. Single. One.
And then I was back at the Knoxville Greyhound station for the second time this week. It was still a hole.
I was picked up by the girlfriend of a friend of a friend. Amanda took me to The Bistro, where we heard a band featuring Wes Lunsford on guitar, Clint Mullican on bass and Hunter Deacon on drums. They sounded great, particularly on a gorgeous Bill Frisell tune called “Gimme A Holler.” It had than Jarrett-y country/jazz/twang that sounds so good.
I also met Alisha O___, whose last name I’m omitting for her own protection. She was possibly a sociopath, but also the first person on the tour that I’ve really had a chance to exchange barbs with. It was a blast and really made me feel at home here. There’s nothing like some snark to make you feel welcome. (And on a serious note, I really liked Alisha a lot. Even if she’s dangerously amoral.) (OK, perhaps the latter part of that note wasn’t that serious.)
Then it was back to the house that the band shares. Clint was rehearsing with a funk band featuring his brother Chuck and several other musicians hailing from the University of Tennessee here in Knoxville. We sat on the porch and I got the tables turned on me as they quizzed me about people I’d interviewed and asked me for stories about musicians they like whom I’d met and spent time with. It was fun to share my first-hand experiences and made me remember that not everyone gets to do what I do. Their band was super funky, too.
Tomorrow I’m interviewing Donald Brown and maybe someone else. And I have a bunch of work to do for the next couple stops on the tour. For instance, I need to figure out what the next couple stops on the tour will be. Details, details.
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