Travel Diary: Hip Hop At The Taco Truck

(September 28, 2012) JACKSON, MS to AUBURN, AL — I’m sure Birmingham is a lovely town, but seven hours in the lobby of its Greyhound station didn’t make much of an argument in its favor.

I left Jackson, MS, just before 11 p.m. on Thursday, arriving in Birmingham just before 3 a.m. the following morning. To get from Jackson to Opelika, AL (the closest stop to my destination, Auburn) meant a 6.5-hour layover in Birmingham in the wee hours of the morning. Needless to say, there wasn’t much to do and nowhere comfortable to sit. I ended up sleeping on a metal bench for two hours with a pair of my shorts balled up under my head for a pillow. But first I used my TV-B-Gone to shut off CNN on the one TV blaring in the lobby. No one seemed to mind, given that everyone else in the room was also trying to sleep — or at least relax — on a metal bench.

I spent a couple hours of my layover watching Stop Making Sense, Talking Heads’ concert film from 1984. Dear All Bands, if your concert performances aren’t this good, it might be time to rethink.

The small connector shuttle from Birmingham to Columbus, GA, arrived just before 10 a.m. It stops in a bunch of little towns, including Opelika. In a gas station at one of the stops, I saw this for sale:

Needless to say, it was very hard not to buy this shirt.

I arrived in Opelika right on time and my friend Patrick McCurry picked me up. We stopped at The Gnu’s Room on the way to my temporary home so I could see my friends Tina and Maddie. Then it was off to the home of the wonderful Rachel Sharpe, a relaxing little hideaway she calls The Sharpesonian. Rachel’s in Texas, so at the moment I have the place to myself.

I showered (huzzah!), changed my clothes and rode my bike back to The Gnu’s Room to work on a freelance project for a couple hours. Later that evening I met up with Patrick again and we went to a taco truck on the corner of Gay Street and East Samford Ave. Those of you reading this is New York City or other major metro areas may be saying, “Ho hum, a taco truck,” but in a place like Auburn, this is not a common sight.

We arrived in time to catch a short set by singer/songwriter Katie Martin, who had a great whiskey-and-cigarettes voice and a muscular, bluesy guitar style:

At the end of the set, Katie was joined by singer/songwriter Marie Robertson for an unusual performance. I caught a couple minutes on video:

It was hard to top this performance, but Patrick and I headed over the Piccolo’s, a jazz room that’s part of The Hotel at Auburn University. The room was packed to hear Roman Street, a band that I guess can be best described as Django-Reinhardt-style jazz. They were obviously sincere, but I was underwhelmed by the too-loud set list, which included everything from a very slow version of Django’s “Minor Swing” to instrumental, two-guitar covers of “My Girl” and Pachelbel’s Canon. There were some decent moments of improvisation, though. The best part of the evening was the conversation Patrick and I had with three other musicians — Alina, Nicole and Lisa — who were also there at the show. All three are classical musicians and educators with often acerbic senses of humor.

I’ve been keeping an early-morning schedule to prepare for Upaya. That, coupled with the two hours of sleep I’d had the night before, meant that by 11, I was fading fast. Patrick took me home, where I meditated and went to bed. I decided to turn off my early alarm so I could catch up on sleep.

I really love Auburn. I could definitely see myself living here.