Myth, Legend, Dust: The 2011 Bonnaroo Documentary

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Myth, Legend, Dust: The 2011 Bonnaroo Documentary from American Songwriter on Vimeo.

Editor’s Note: American Songwriter, July/August 2011

It’s late May in Nashville, and Justin Townes Earle is back in his hometown amid a short break from touring. For the first time in a long while, he finds himself walking the streets of Music Row – ground zero for a type of music he certainly doesn’t consider “country.”

Earle’s own songs possess a strong sense of location, and he appears to be an artist inspired by the spirit of a place. Music Row clearly isn’t one of them. “Should have waited to take my shower ‘cause now I just feel dirty!” he posts on his Twitter feed.

Justin’s father, Steve, developed his own allergy to Music Row in the mid-70s, where he moved in and out of a series of publishing deals, before finally releasing the critically-acclaimed Guitar Town in 1986. The elder Earle never considered Music Row to be a nurturing place for a songwriter. “Me and everybody like me … we have to take what we’re given,” he told American Songwriter in 2007. “Songwriters, especially the kind of songwriter I came to be, have to live in the margin.”

And live in the margin he did. In the late ‘80s, Earle released a handful of albums on MCA Records that moved from country to heartland rock to a sound he termed “heavy-metal bluegrass.” Today, Earle considers himself to be a folk singer more than anything else, a songwriter with the chops to make a living busking in the subway if push came to shove.

New York currently serves as the adopted home of both Earles. Steve pulled up stakes in Nashville several years ago and settled in Greenwich Village, paying tribute to the neighborhood’s folk music heritage on the album Washington Square Serenade.

For this issue’s photo shoot, Nashville’s Joshua Black Wilkins caught up with father and son on the boardwalk of Coney Island, that carny section of Brooklyn that was home to Woody Guthrie in the decade after World War II. Woody even wrote about the boardwalk, describing it as a place where “the prettiest of the maidulas, leave their leg prints in that sand/ Just beneath our love-soaked boardwalk, with the bravest of our lads.”

It was a fitting locale for our cover shoot, given that Woody is a guiding light for both songwriters. Steve paid direct homage to the legendary singer in the song “Christmas In Washington,” at once a prayer and call to arms for left-wing activism that also summons the ghost of Joe Hill, the songwriter and labor-activist for the Wobblies. “The Gulf Of Mexico,” off of Steve’s new album I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, also invokes Woody’s spirit. A modern day folk-ballad with a strong Irish lilt, the song traces the lives of three generations of workers who made their living on the water. The song’s denouement comes in the form of the oil spill, and we’ve seen a Gulf that has turned from blue to green to blood red.

Guthrie served as one of the touchstones for Justin’s album Harlem River Blues, an impressive song-cycle that imagines a cross-section of southern music through the prism of big city life in the 21st century.

“When Woody Guthrie was around, he wrote about what was around him,” the younger Earle tells AS. “He wrote about all these amazing new inventions, like the Grand Coulee Dam. He was taking an old form of music that he had learned in Pampa, Texas, and was translating it to a modern time.”

Earle’s most Guthrie-esque tune on Harlem River is “Wanderin,’” a roustabout tale that casts the protagonist as a sort of latter-day Huck Finn.

Now, my father was a traveler and my mama stayed at home
And she cried the day that he walked out and left us on our own
But now I’m older than he was when I was born and I don’t know
Which way is home so I’m wanderin’

In our story, the younger Earle says he’ll always consider himself “white trash from Middle Tennessee.” Buried beneath the wanderlust of his songs is the search for a home. Here’s hoping he keeps searching, at least for the sake of his songs.

Buy the issue.

Editor’s Note: November/December

It’s early October, and Nashville is still reeling from the moveable feast of music and madness that was Next BIG Nashville. For two days, the city hosted a music industry conference that attracted some of the best minds in the business. Top that off with four nights of music at venues throughout the city, with more than 150 bands from across the country that ranged in style from country to indie rock to hip-hop and electronic music.

It was a success on all fronts.

Music City, of course, has always been about more than twin fiddles and steel guitar. Anyone who lives here knows that. But, thanks to events like Next BIG Nashville, the city is emerging on the national stage as a hotbed of talent, for music and entrepreneurs of all stripes.

Kings of Leon, our cover subject and one of the biggest rock bands in the world, just happen to call Nashville home. Though they spent much of their youth traveling the byways of the South with their dad, an itinerant preacher, the band cut its musical teeth here, recording its first EP in Nashville, in 2003, when bassist Jared Followill was a stripling of 16. Buy the issue to read more.

Saints, Vampires and That Room on Carondelet

If the gods are just, the New Orleans Saints will be crowned NFC champs by day’s end. I am not an avid NFL fan, but I’ll be glued to the tube tonight and rooting for them.

When I was growing up, the Saints were perennial losers, a circus of a team that could barely execute a quarterback sneak. They stunk worse than Bourbon Street on a Sunday morning in August.

I got to meet Saints quarterback John Fourcade when I was about ten. No. 11 was in Mobile to sign autographs at a one-star barbeque joint called J.R’s. My mom took me and my brothers. We were the only ones who showed up, so we sat at a booth with Mr. Fourcade for about an hour and talked about his experiences on the gridiron. I felt bad about the turnout, but he seemed to enjoy chatting with a random middle-aged woman and her three kids over a plate of pulled pork. (According to Wikipedia, Fourcade played on more teams in more leagues than any player in the history of football. The man has been around.)

Before moving to Nashville, I considered putting down stakes in the Big Easy. As much as I love New Orleans, it would’ve been the coup-de-grace of what some coaches might term a “rebuilding year.”

One weekend in April I drove to New Orleans on a reconnaisance mission. I’d tried to go a week before but blew a tire on the Interstate somewhere in Mississippi. I got a room at a hostel on Carondolet, just off St. Charles in the Garden District. If you’re looking to test your faith, or prepare for a role in a David Lynch film, spend a night at a hostel in the United States. I’m still recovering from the experience.

I did meet some very nice people that night, including a talented young vampire named Ronnie. While I was in the bathroom at a bar in the French Quarter, a man with a blond pony-tail and black cape walked in. As I was walking out he flashed me a smile, at which point I noticed two prominent fangs.

“Are you a vampire?” I asked.

“Yes, but do not be alarmed. I’m not sanguine.”

“So you’re not gonna suck my blood?”

“Finally! an intelligent tourist,” he said.

Later that night I chatted with Ronnie over a round of French Whore cocktails. He was not a sports nut, but still rooted for the home team. Let’s hope for a Saints victory, which would bring a little light into Ronnie’s world.

Felice Brothers, Justin Townes Earle Rock Big Surprise Tour

After the sun went down at last week’s Big Surprise show in Nashville, Gillian Welch strode onstage to join Ian Felice in singing “Saint Stephen’s End,” a Felice Brothers song about the saint’s riverside stoning.

Wearing an antique gown, Welch looked like a vision in white at Riverfront Park. Midway through the song, the General Jackson Showboat rolled down the Cumberland River, looking like some ancient city adrift, all lit up behind the massive stage.

It was a cinematic moment that encapsulated the throwback feel of the evening. Featuring Old Crow Medicine Show and the Dave Rawlings Machine, the Big Surprise show recalled an old-time jamboree, with the cast of musicians constantly popping up during each group’s respective sets.

Nashville homeboy Justin Townes Earle kicked off the evening, playing tunes from his two solo albums, including “Midnight at the Movies,” a Kerouac-inspired portrait of loneliness.

Donning a pink button-down shirt and checkered bow tie, Earle looked like a cross between Pee Wee Herman and Jimmie Rodgers. (Sobriety does wonders for the wardrobe.) His country-boy banter between songs seemed to befit his retro sound.

“Jump into the water if you need saving,” Earle told the crowd. “That water will test your faith. I promise you.”

Up next were the Felice Brothers, the neo-folk rowdies from upstate New York. The band got the crowd moving when they broke into “Frankie’s Gun!,” one of their many tunes about artillery.

Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch followed, playing Dylan’s “Queen Jane Approximately,” as well as tunes from their forthcoming album. Ketch Secor of Old Crow joined the duo for “I Hear Them All,” an apocalyptic Old Crow song that Secor co-wrote with Rawlings. The two weaved “This Land is Your Land” into the number, throwing in the pro-Marxist verse about the “No Trespassing” sign that is so often omitted from schoolbooks.

Old Crow rounded out the show in the form of a backwoods revival. An ensemble rendition of “Wagon Wheel,” the Americana anthem that Secor created out of a discarded Dylan lyric, capped the night. The spirit of the night seemed to constantly hearken back to a young Dylan, who, when recording the Basement Tapes, imagined an alternate past for rock and roll.

Bull in the Ring

The Crimson Tide rolled over Virginia Tech Saturday night, grinding them into Conecuh County sausage. I had trouble focusing on the game. My concentration problems stemmed from a severe concussion I suffered during my freshman year of high school football, in a drill called “Bull in the Ring.”

“Bull in the Ring” was popular in the ’80s and ’90s, and is now verboten in the state of Alabama. Here’s how it works: one player — the bull — stands in the middle of a circle that is made up of the entire team. When a player’s jersey number is called, he sprints into the middle of the circle and locks horns with the bull, delivering the harshest blow he can.

“Football is not a contact sport!” our coach would yell into his megaphone, his voice crazed with rage. “Ballet is a contact sport. Football is a COLLISION sport!”

That fateful afternoon I was appointed to the position of “bull.” I had received a grade of “C+” on a Geometry test that afternoon, having failed to grasp the finer points of Pythagoras’s theorem. I was seething. I hit each player as hard as I could. I went balls-to-the wall.

I knocked the starting right guard on his ass and took the wind out of the place-kicker — he keeled over and began making sucking noises like a pig. The drill usually lasted two or three hits, but the brigade kept charging, like the bayonet assault at Little Round Top. And I kept laying licks.

Two hits later coach called 57, the number of Sage Arnold, the pillar of our defensive line. Arnold was a hulking brute of a nose guard. He’d come up in Mims Park’s vaunted football league, where for years he’d swapped blows with some of the biggest hicks in town.

Sage stood less than 5’6,” and his facemask extended below his neck, giving him extra protection. I can still see him charging at me. He came at you low and hard, with a bit of a waddle reminiscent of the Penguin from Batman.When we collided his facemask hit the underside of my jaw, jolting my brain into the base of the skull ….

I got my start playing Little League football for the Cottage Hill Rams. We won two games that season. We got our butt waxed (twice) by the inimical Municipal Raiders, then the juggernaut of the Mobile park league. The Raiders were coached by an arch-villain named Lamar Waters. He chain-smoked Marlboro Reds and sported mirrored aviators on the sidelines. He was a badass.

He once commanded his biggest linebacker to dive over the line of scrimmage and spear our quarterback before the ball was snapped. It knocked our star player out of the game, and the Raiders were penalized 15 yards. But it was worth it to Lamar. His point had been made.

The Raiders had it all, back then. The bedrooms of each player were lined with trophies of plastic little football men, and cheerleaders accompanied them arm-in-arm when they snuck off in the woods for cigarettes. The future was not as bright. Most of those players are either washing cars and/or selling Oxycontin. Their brains were damaged by one too many sessions of “Bull in the Ring.”

That season I was forced to take ballroom dancing lessons on Monday nights. The rest of the team snickered when the three preppies had to leave practice early for the dance floor. In three short weeks I mastered the Fox Trot and the Cha-Cha-Cha. Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” was played so many times I still hear it in my sleep. Afterwards the dancers rolled over to Colonel Dixie, a fast-food restaurant off Old Shell Road with the best chili dog in town.

Years later, high school football provided more fireworks. Friday afternoons were marked by pep rallies and all manner of fanfare. We wore our jerseys to school and laid off the Mello Yello. We ate pre-game meals at Shoney’s, where we were limited to two yeast rolls and one serving of ice-cream.

During my sophomore year we got our butts kicked by Grand Bay, after the entire offensive line overdosed on caffeine pills. The hogs looked great in warm-ups, bursting with energy and bravado. By the second quarter the pills had begun to wear off. I can recall our right tackle lumbering around the field after missing a critical block. His legs had turned to jelly, and he was moving like he’d just come down with a dose of the clap.

Grand Bay was one of the worst teams in the region. The combined IQ of their starting defense did not break 1000. “You got out discliplined by Grand Bay,” our coach said after the game, amid the sweat, tears and lunatic ravings of our senior fullback.

The bus ride home after a loss was always a dreary affair. Talking was not allowed. Just sit quietly and think about how you let the school down. Maybe bum a dip of Copenhagen from Tolbert.

We rebounded from that loss. The next year we reached the state finals, where we battled Colbert County at Legion Field. We lost a heartbreaker, in overtime. But that is a story for another time.

We always partied after games, usually at Staple’s Lot, a deserted piece of acreage off Dauphin Island Parkway. The parkway, all aglow with the lights of the petro-chemical factories, seemed worlds away from the cool, blue lawns of Springhill. The Lot saw the occasional fight, as well as a lot of fondling in the backseats of Ford Broncos.

We bought beer on the Parkway (if not there, then from a Vietnamese man in Toulminville), with fake IDs that were meant to replicate those issued by the state of Florida. This was back in the days before the Patriot Law, when holograms were not required on licenses. Any fool with a Commodore 64 and a roll of Scotch tape could make one in hours. It was a great time to be a teenager.

Hippie Beach

Hippie Beach is not on any map. Tucked away in the woods along Halls Mill Creek, this small stretch of sand is a place where folks beach the boat, ride jet skis and kick back with friends.

The waterside area, about a mile northwest of where the creek meets Dog River, made headlines the weekend of July 4, when a Mobile man critically injured himself after falling from a tree.

Wade Findley, 32, had intended to jump from the tree into the creek, Mobile police said. A rope swing, which dangles from one tree, is a favorite pastime at Hippie Beach. But Findley slipped while climbing and landed headfirst on the ground, police said.

Findley was taken by helicopter to the University of South Alabama Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition the day of the fall. The hospital declined to release updated information. Attempts to reach family members were unsuccessful.

Greg and Chris Motes, who live close by near the Cypress Shores community, harbor fond memories of afternoons spent on Hippie Beach. Greg, 19, recalls the time he and his girlfriend swam with manatees, the endangered marine mammals that have begun cropping up in Alabama waters. “A family of five came up behind the boat,” Greg said. “(My girlfriend) said, ‘Baby, I want to go swimming.'”

Last week, the brothers rode their four-wheeler though a network of dirt trails behind the beach. To cool off, Greg performed back flips off the rope swing into the creek.

Hippie Beach has long been a haven for local river rats. Faye Haas, who visited the beach with her family last week, said she had been coming since the mid-1970s, back when people called it Hippie Hole. “Because we was hippies, ” she said.

“We used to come and camp out and stay here all weekend,” continued Haas, 52, who soaked up rays while her daughter and granddaughter splashed about in the water. “I remember a couple of friends skinny-dipping.”

A few years ago, Hippie Beach was a well-known party spot for high-school students, said Krys Bolton, visiting last week with her family.

Bolton, 18, spun tales about female mud wrestling and frequent fights. Broken bottles, trash and a burned couch testify to the bedlam she described.

As high school students, Alex Joy and his friends said they partied at Hippie Beach many a night. Last week, they beached their boat and went swimming, if only to reminisce.

Colin Hartery, 18, remembers seeing a shiny brand-new Ford Mustang parked on the beach one night. That was not the case when he returned a week later. “It was burned from top to bottom,” he said.

The parties drew patrons from several area schools, said Joy, 19. The revelry would begin in August, he said, and continue through the school year.

Then the cops caught on. But that didn’t immediately put a stop to the partying, Joy said.

“You could get a few hours in before the cops came,” said Joy, adding that several of his friends got arrested there.

The police drove four-wheelers and SUVs back in the woods to catch those fleeing on foot, Joy said.

Mobile police have made arrests in the area after responding to calls complaining of disorderly conduct and minors in possession of alcohol, said spokesman Officer Eric Gallichant.

Gallichant said police could not specify how many arrests have occurred on Hippie Beach, because the spot does not have an address. He said police consider the beach private property but don’t know who owns it, adding that the beach is largely inaccessible by car.

Source of Pride

It was 1934, and the Depression was in full tilt in Alabama. Roosevelt’s New Deal, enacted just a year earlier, had yet to make itself felt. Amid the desolation there was one great hope for many Alabamians: the Crimson Tide football team.

“It was your source of pride,” said Ben W. McLeod Jr., who at 95 is the Tide’s oldest living former football player. “There was no money then.”

McLeod played on the fabled 1934 national championship team that beat Stanford 29-13 in the Rose Bowl. That squad included names now etched in Crimson Tide lore: Bear Bryant, Don Hutson, Dixie Howell and Riley Smith.

“The state of Alabama didn’t have a whole lot to be proud of back in those days,” said local author Winston Groom, who wrote The Crimson Tide: An Illustrated History of Football at the University of Alabama. “The football team was a great source of interest.”

A three-star athlete at Alabama, McLeod earned eight varsity letters in his time, winning one conference championship in basketball and three in baseball. A retired career Navy man, he lives in Pensacola, in the same house he bought upon arriving there. Tide memorabilia adorns the walls, and scrapbooks teem with old newspaper clippings.

On this recent morning, McLeod, whose wife of more than 60 years died just two years ago, sits in his living room, surrounded by family, including his son Ben W. McLeod III, who played defensive end and nose guard on Alabama’s 1965 national championship team.

As a football player on the 1934 team, McLeod played end behind the famous Hutson-Bryant duo, seeing only eight minutes of action in the Rose Bowl (though he became a starter the next season). Still, he said he walked tall on campus, like all the other football players.

“Yeah, I became a prima donna,” he said. “You better believe it.”

Historians have called the 1926 Rose Bowl – in which Alabama defeated the University of Washington, 20-19 – one of the most important college football games of all time. The game marked the first time a Southern team had ever competed in the Rose Bowl. Prior to that, the game usually pitted a Pacific Coast Conference team with one from the East Coast.

Alabama’s victory in 1926 famously is known for lifting Southern pride, said Wayne Flynt, an Auburn University professor emeritus and Alabama historian. But Flynt said the 1934 win had the same effect.

In 1934, Southerners were still reeling from comments made by U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, who a year before had called the region “an untapped market for shoes,” suggesting that most folks below the Mason-Dixon walked around barefoot, according to Flynt.

“It (the Rose Bowl) was yet another way of responding to what Alabama had perceived was a putdown,” he said.

Howell, an All-America halfback and punter who had a brief career with the Washington Redskins, dazzled the 85,000 in attendance that New Year’s Day, catching two passes for touchdowns and completing nine as well.

One of McLeod’s most vivid memories involves the three-day train ride from Tuscaloosa to Pasadena. Along the way, he recalls meeting Johnny Mack Brown, a halfback on the 1926 team who had since become an actor in cowboy films. (Hollywood and college football were the only two U.S. industries that did not decline in the 1930s, Flynt said.)

The team stopped in Texas and Arizona to practice, McLeod said, and stayed in the Pasadena Hotel. “Everything was first class,” he said.

On the return trip home, McLeod and others on the basketball team stopped in New Orleans for a game against Tulane, which was followed days later with a game in Baton Rouge against LSU.

McLeod’s memories of Tuscaloosa in those years evoke a hardscrabble existence. He recalls waiting on tables as a freshman, which was part of his basketball scholarship. McLeod said he lived on $48 the next year.

But McLeod was lucky, compared to many young men of his time, according to Flynt.

“For a whole generation of white kids, football and baseball were two of the most important ways out of poverty,” said Flynt, adding that blacks had no chance of scholarships and held little interest in college sports as a result.

Born in Leaksville, Miss., McLeod and his family moved to the small mountain town of Geraldine, Ala., before he received a scholarship to Alabama.

While at Alabama, McLeod was tapped into Omicron Delta Kappa honor society. After graduating, he coached football at T.R. Miller, spending his summers playing semi-pro baseball in Alabama and North Carolina. As football coach, success did not come immediately. “I had a terrible first season and was almost run out of town,” he said.

But McLeod battled back. The next year T.R. Miller went undefeated, with the defense giving up a mere seven points the entire season. Tide football coach Frank Thomas visited McLeod in Brewton and recommended he pursue college coaching. “He kind of half way put me on a pedestal,” McLeod said.

The next day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and McLeod was soon stationed in Pensacola, where he’s lived ever since.

In the ensuing years, McLeod followed Alabama football closely. Ben III said Bryant would occasionally ask him how his dad was doing. “Bryant never did get close to the ball players, except the quarterbacks,” he said.

Bryant would stop by the house during recruiting trips to Pensacola and pay a visit, according to the elder McLeod. “Listen, there weren’t many people in the world better than Bear Bryant,” he said.

A picture of Hank Crisp – who served as head basketball coach for 19 seasons, not to mention athletic director and line coach under four different Alabama football coaches – still hangs on McLeod’s wall.

“I didn’t let him down,” said McLeod, recalling the time Crisp asked him to start in place of teammate Zeke Kimbrough, who’d suffered a broken cheekbone.

Up until eight years ago, McLeod drove to Tuscaloosa with his wife for home football games. “All I know was that Alabama was good to me,” he said.

(Press-Register, July 2008)

“Revenge”

Originally published in Richmond’s Style Weekly. May 2008.

Last summer Wayne’s granddad gave him a vial of poison. The bottle was small and green and featured a skull and crossbones on the label.

“I think you’re old enough to have it now,” his granddad said. “I stole it off a German at the end of the war. Maybe you can use it one day on one of your enemies.”

“Thanks, granddad. Are you sure?”

“Of course,” he said. “I know you will use it wisely.”

Aside from his Rambo survivor knife, the poison was Wayne’s most cherished possession. He kept it hidden on the top shelf of his chest of drawers, along with his Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.

Wayne never told anyone about the gift. His grandfather had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a few months earlier, and Wayne had been told to report any unusual activity.

“If he does anything weird, like complain about spies in the attic, let me know,” his mother said.

Wayne had the chance to use the poison a few weeks later, after his friend Jerry betrayed him. Jerry was one of the most popular kids at school. He was charming, athletic and excelled at Cub Scouts. He was also the first boy in class to put his hand down a girl’s pants.

But Jerry, for all his strengths, was insecure. One afternoon he began telling classmates that Wayne’s mother worshipped Satan.

“She and a bunch of other kooks go to City Park every night and make fires and praise Satan,” he told them. “Then they have sex with each other and do drugs.”

In recent weeks Wayne had begun selling chewing tobacco on the playground. Every Thursday Wayne stole all the chew he could from a drugstore, selling it to his classmates the next day for two bucks a pouch. The new business made Wayne the most popular kid in class. At least until the rumors started.

A kid named Pete finally told Wayne what Jerry had been saying.

“He says she wears a black robe and leads them through chants,” Pete said. “It’s scary stuff. I sometimes get nightmares.”

“Jerry’s a dead man,” Wayne told Pete.

The next week Wayne decided to put several drops of poison in Jerry’s pouch. Wayne sold it to his foe the next morning. Before class, Jerry had a chew on the basketball court. Nothing happened. “Why was it taking so long?” Wayne thought to himself. In the movies they died instantly. Maybe he didn’t use enough.

Jerry lived. He even had another chew that day at recess. Wayne went home that afternoon and tasted the poison. He didn’t die either. He had seen fake poison at the magic shop. This was probably the same stuff. He was pissed at his granddad. He decided to leave the bottle on his granddad’s nightstand. He wanted to humiliate the old fool.

Richmond’s Difficult Legacy

Originally published in The Washington Times – Saturday, May 3, 2008

On April 4, 1865, just two days after Union forces had taken Richmond, President Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Confederate capital with his son Tad. The city’s black residents gave the Great Emancipator a hero’s welcome, while the city’s whites greeted him icily.

Today, a bronze statue of Lincoln and his son sits at the Richmond National Battlefield Park Civil War Visitor Center. The president, who wears a melancholy expression, has his arm wrapped around his 12-year-old boy. Behind him, etched in stone, are the words: “To bind up the nation’s wounds.”

The unveiling of the Lincoln statue in April 2003 marked a turning point in Richmond’s attitude toward the historic conflict. “We in Virginia are glad to claim him as one of our own,” said then-Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine. “Abraham Lincoln is one of us.”

Richmonders, of course, have not always considered Lincoln “one of us.” Any visitor to Richmond recognizes what seems to be the city’s preternatural obsession with its Confederate past. Monument Avenue, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, boasts monuments to four Confederate generals, including Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

However, a new museum in Richmond is taking on the conflict in a different way. The American Civil War Center, which opened in 2006, approaches the conflict from three perspectives: Union, Confederate and black. The museum offers a more balanced interpretation of the war. “No side offered a monopoly on virtue,” a video tells visitors at the beginning of the exhibit.

James M. McPherson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author at Princeton, was one of several historians involved in the planning. Mr. McPherson, whose scholarship has dealt with all three perspectives addressed by the exhibit, says the museum is unique on the national stage. “Most of the other museums that deal with the Civil War have a particular perspective,” he says.

Though the museum opened in 2006, the foundation has been around since 2000. H. Alexander Wise Jr., a former director of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, got the ball rolling back in the late ‘70s. Mr. Wise created a national board and enlisted the support of historians from different viewpoints. Those involved collaborated in a “harmonious and creative” manner, Mr. McPherson says.

The center’s founders felt it was important to have the center in Richmond. Also, the center is located on historic ground, atTredegar Iron Works, an iron foundry that was the largest munitions factory for the South during the war. Across the James River is Belle Isle, a former Union prison camp that has become a public park.

At the beginning of the exhibit, visitors have the opportunity to vote on what caused the war. The exhibit concludes with a look at the war’s legacy. Adam Scher, the center’s vice president of operations and interim president, says one of the primary goals is establishing a connection between the war and contemporary life. He adds that the legacy portion of the exhibit strikes the greatest emotional chord.

“We talk about issues that still linger,” he says.

The museum also has worked with several schools in the area as part of an effort to foster civic engagement and explore issues of race and reconciliation.

“Students are our most important audience,” Mr. Scher says, “and in many cases, they have not formulated a perspective about this story. It allows them the opportunity to see the story from different sides.”

Less than 1½ miles away from the American Civil War Center is the Museum of the Confederacy. Founded in 1890, it is one of the oldest museums in the nation, but it has struggled in recent years. Attendance is down, and funding has long been a problem. Not to mention that the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center has practically eaten the museum, making it nearly impossible to locate. Next to the museum stands the White House of the Confederacy, which is open daily for tours.

Waite Rawls, the museum’s president, acknowledges that the museum has suffered an image problem for some time. “There’s a big gap in the reality of what the museum is today and the perception the public has,” he says.

During the 1990s, Mr. Rawls says, the museum began an effort to change its image, offering exhibits on the struggle of blacks for freedom in the South and the role of women in the war.

Mr. Rawls insists that the museum is not in competition with the American Civil War Center. In fact, he says, Richmond as a whole is in competition with other historical cities. However, he thinks his town comes up short when it comes to marketing its historical offerings.

“If you look at Northern cities, particularly modern, progressive cities, they put [historical legacy] at the forefront,” he says, citing Boston, Philadelphia and Washington as examples.

Richmond, Mr. Rawls says, has an advantage in that regard. Cities such as Charlotte, N.C., he says, aren’t so fortunate. Still, Richmond is unique in that its history is sometimes considered an albatross, a fact that is often chalked up to race.

“Twenty-first-century racial politics have used the Civil War as a political football,” Mr. Rawls says. “Blaming that on the Civil War is a peculiarly local phenomenon.”

Nevertheless, the conflict is still a big draw for tourists in the Old Dominion. One out of every 10 visitors goes to some Civil War site, says Richard Lewis of the Virginia Tourism Corp. “There’s so much to see,” he says. “You’d be hard-pressed to do all the Civil War stuff in Virginia in one day.”

There has been a move recently by city officials to pay greater tribute to the role of blacks in the city’s past. Last year, the city unveiled the Slavery Reconciliation Statue in the historic Shockoe Bottom area. Identical statues have been erected in Liverpool, England, and Benin, in West Africa, representing three prominent focal points of the slave trade.

Virginia is planning its Sesquicentennial Commemoration — or 150th anniversary — of the war, beginning in 2011 and running through 2015. That will likely set the tone for Civil War tourism in the former capital of the Confederacy in the 21st century.

“We’re looking at this as an opportunity to improve the way Richmond has been marketed,” says Jeannie Welliver, director of tourism for the city of Richmond.

Rising Son

Jay Farrar has always been known as a songwriter’s songwriter. Even during his salad days with the seminal alt-country group Uncle Tupelo , the Belleville, Ill. native was writing world-weary, poetic songs that belied his young age.
Farrar formed Son Volt shortly after Uncle Tupelo called it quits in 1994 (with Tupelo band mate Jeff Tweedy starting Wilco). The group’s first album, Trace , was a mostly acoustic affair that now ranks as one of the musical high-water marks of the ’90s. The band released two more albums before going on hiatus in ’99.

After two experimental solo projects, Farrar resurrected Son Volt in 2005. But this time around, the band had a new lineup. Their first comeback album, Okemah and the Melody of Riot , found the group moving away from its signature traditional sound into more rock-oriented territory.

With their latest effort, The Search , Son Volt continues to plow new ground musically. With frequent looping, horns and the occasional sitar, it sounds far more like The Beatles circa 1968 than any neo-traditional band you’ve ever heard.

But despite the new sound, Farrar’s lyricism remains the band’s hallmark. His surrealistic evocations of the American road on The Search affirm that he is, first and foremost, a songwriter. Richmond.com recently spoke with the Son Volt frontman, who comes to Richmond this Thursday with his band “Groovin’ in the Garden.”

Since your first solo album Sebastopol , you’ve been a lot more experimental with the instrumentation and the arrangements. Was that a natural evolution for you, or more of a conscious decision to break free from the alt-country pigeonhole?

It felt natural. So I guess it was evolution. Coming off a period where the instrumentation was fairly static but it remained the same, I think the solo records just sort of represented a challenge to see where things could go.

Are you listening to completely different stuff than you were listening to, say, 10 years ago?

Probably. You change over the time. I think there was maybe a song on the first solo recordat that period, I was even listening to jazz. That was something that I definitely wasn’t listening to [in the past], and trying out some jazz time signatures and things like that. I try to keep an open mind and learn from whatever I’m listening to.

Other than yourself, the current Son Volt lineup features none of the members that were on the first three albums. Why did you keep the name?

I felt like there was unfinished business. I felt like Son Volt had more to offer, so I stuck with it.

Your lyrics have always been more impressionistic than narrative-driven. I’ve always heard a strong Townes Van Zandt influence. Who are some of your guiding lights, in terms of songwriting?

Townes Van Zandt would be one of them. I didn’t actually hear Townes Van Zandt until ’94 or something like that. I’d been doing a fair amount of writing before I came across him. He definitely left an impression. Maybe even certain writers have even as much of an influence, whether it was Jack Kerouac, who had more of a stream-of-consciousness style that I could really relate to and learn from, I think, as far as the idea of just getting your thoughts down on paper and not editing them along the way. I could relate to that and I’ve done a lot of that. I feel like that’s a good way to create.

A lot of the songs on the last two albums decry conservative, Middle America politics. Yet you still live in the Midwest. Can you explain that?

In the Midwest, I guess you can keep your finger on the pulse really. I prefer to live in a place where, in like St. Louis especially, it’s primarily a more working-class city. There’s more realism there than there is, sometimes, on the coasts. Anyway, that’s my take. I never really considered living anywhere else, except maybe during the period of making the Okemah and the Melody of Riot record, and that only lasted a couple of days.

In the press release you say the Beatles were the first band you were really into, though you suppressed the influence for a while. Any other influences you’ve consciously suppressed, like ABBA?

Reggae was probably one that I consciously suppressed for a long time. In our live shows we sort of adapted an Uncle Tupelo song, “Life Worth Living,” that has some reggae overtones now. I think it just took me a long time to be able to actually appreciate reggae in a certain way. I think a lot of it is as a result of finding out more of the history of it.

Many of the songs on The Search draw inspiration from the road. Is the American road still romantic, in the sense that it was for artists like Kerouac and Woody Guthrie?

I think there’s still a lot of Jack Kerouac and Edward Hopper out there. Especially in the west, in the middle and the south. I shouldn’t leave out the north. It’s out there, especially late night. You find it in the truck stops, the diners. They’re still there.

You’re often labeled as the godfather of alt-country. Is that a title you’re comfortable with, or do you find it ridiculous?

I see it as more of a continuum where you’re inspired by people that came before you. You give some, you take some, and that seems to be the way that it all works. I don’t see that anything’s starting at any one discernible point. I guess that’s looking at it from more of a historical perspective. It’s hard to really say that anybody really started anything.

What can we expect next from Jay Farrar more Son Volt albums?

I guess we’ll see. That’s the focus for now. We’ll be touring through the fall anyway. I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’ve been in contact with Anders Parker some, and we’ve done some demo work towards another Gob Iron record. It could be Gob Iron. I’ll just have to wait and see.

(Richmond.com, June 2007)