Nashville Blues

You know most times I can't sleep at night, I just drive the highway up and down
Sometimes I can't bite at all, sometimes i bite off more than I can chew
Sometimes i just sit by the phone at night in pain waiting for the telephone to ring
You know I been up on the hill looking down, I been out in the graveyard
I watched em put my best friend in the ground, Then I washed my feet in blood
My mind is overloaded friends, Sometimes I don't know if I can overcome
But I gotta be strong, I'm gonna tell ya all about it right now
I hope you're listening friends right now

Can I get an amen?

I saw Scott H. Biram in Nashville last Saturday. It was a quasi religious experience. I generally don’t like going to concerts anymore as they are ridiculously expensive and the artists now typically play their songs note-for-note like the recording. Neither of those were major issues with Scott H. Biram. The ticket was cheap and Scott H. is definitely loose.

Of course memories of rock concerts tend to be hazy, but I don’t remember ever seeing a better guitar performance than his take on the Mississippi Fred McDowell classic "Goin' Down to the River." Biram learned to play guitar from listening to Delta Blues and unlike most all the other white guys playing the blues, he feels totally legitimate.

I’m not any kind of expert on what constitutes great guitar playing, so real experts may point out that I’m full of shit, if that is indeed the case. I’m curious. Once I had an enlightening conversation with a professional guitar player. At one point he said that Lou Reed wasn’t a great guitarist. I asked if he’d seen “Songs for Drella,” which I thought showed Reed doing perhaps the best guitar work I’d ever seen. The pro said, yea, but any accomplished guitarist could easily play the notes Reed was playing. I said something along the lines of “seriously?” He said, yea, anyone could play those notes, but only Lou Reed could think them. I realized that for me the ability to think notes that nobody else could think to play was more what constituted a great guitarist than technical ability. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was like, duh. So maybe it’s that way with Biram? Dunno, but I suspect he’s both great technically and thinks of notes nobody else thinks to play. Either way, dude can play guitar. I tell you whut.

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Again, I’m not a music expert, and I’m aware my opinions are often outside the mainstream, to put it mildly, but as far as I can tell Scott H. is the greatest Rock artist of this century, at least so far. He’s much more likely to be labeled Country, and he does play a lot of Country, but he also plays several varieties of Rock, Blues and Gospel. It’s like The Rolling Stones. They play a lot of Country, Blues, and some Disco, but no one calls them anything but a Rock band. Same with Scott H. Not sure who would be the second greatest rock artist of the century? Jack White, perhaps? They have a few things in common. Both are top notch blues guitarists. Biram plays solo and White’s best work was with a minimalist drummer. White’s early work was loose, but he tightened up considerably, which has never been a problem for Biram. And Scott H. is a much better singer and more importantly a much better songwriter. Trent Reznor or Nick Cave? They are more last century, I’d think? So who else is there? Google provided me with lists, and I read through them, but nah, not much to compare. Is Rock dead? Almost it seems, but Scott H. shows it’s still breathing, albeit underground.

The wall of sound that comes out of his one man band setup is incredible and you really have to experience it to believe it. But it’s really his skill as a songwriter that puts him over the top among his contemporaries. Scott wants to live a righteous life, but the devil is always tempting him with whiskey and weed and the road and women who just can’t stop doing him wrong. Of course plenty of artists, particularly country artists, have those same afflictions, but Biram has a lot deeper insight than most and can communicate the surrounding emotions much better.

And over in the land of the good looking

They're still reeling in the years

And we're just standing over here looking crooked

Just bleeding in our tears

So get on up come on down

Take a good long look at my bad dream

After the show I took a walk down to Nashville’s tourist party area and saw a different kind of music scene. Scott H. Biram’s image is that of a hard partying truck driving type man, but I think he’s more popular with us slightly more sophisticated types. His Nashville show was at City Winery, which is a fancy chain out of New York that is apparently modeled on Joe’s Pub where you can get a chi-chi dinner or charcuterie and cheese with a good bottle of wine. In my experience, blue collar types tend to like the crappy music they play on the radio, not real artists producing genuinely interesting work. Nashville is ground central for popular music that panders to the working class. It’s not hard to find.

It’s also a popular place for wedding parties, particularly bridesmaids. I’d read that but then I saw it in person and it’s true. Young me would have snickered, but nowadays I’m fine with it. Girls just want to have fun. What’s wrong with that?

Yeah she's my woman, you can see her every night

Just dancing, looking wicked till the early morning light

Yeah she's my babe, she's my broken piece of ass

She's my number one undercover lover

But she been running way too fast for way too long

Come on down, take a good look at my bad dream

Boys like to have fun, too, but it’s a much harder hill to climb.

And my typical weird street photography? Why not? I was wasted by that point, seeing absurdities everywhere I looked.

I haven’t been drinking often but made an exception for Scott H Biram. My tolerance is low so I thought I’d have a couple of glasses of wine, but the first one went so fast I figured I should get a bottle and then share half of it with the nice couple at the next table. Ha ha. I had finished the bottle before the show was over and didn’t think twice about trying to get a good photo of Biram playing the preacher and blessing audience members. I held my arms up with the camera in my right hand and the flash in my left and tried to get the pic when he thumped his palm into my forehead, but unfortunately I missed the shot.

I had assumed that flash wouldn’t be allowed and the people at the venue said that was the case, unless the artist says it’s okay. I try not to let my assumptions get in the way of preparedness, so I brought a small off camera flash. Biram was kind of hanging out so I chatted some with him and asked if it was okay to take his picture while he played. He said yea, as long as I didn’t use flash. I said, thanks, but I was hoping to use flash, at least a little. He said some asshole at a recent show sat up front and took the same flash photo a couple hundred times throughout the show. I said that ain’t me and he said okay. I took a total of six photos from three locations until the revival schtick at the end of the show. Hope that bit with the blessing didn’t piss him off. One thing I’ve come to understand is that photos aren’t worth fucking up someone else’s show. But when I’m in that kind of head space I can’t imagine why trying to get a great photo would piss anyone off.

On a different note, I’ve become interested in visiting state history museums in the South to see how they portray slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Georgia’s was ludicrously evil in the fantasy narratives they were pushing. Mississippi was trying to be enlightened. When I visited Tennessee’s the day after the concert, I wasn’t in a deep thinking mood. I’ll go back when my mind is not so broken, but I did notice a couple interesting things.

One is that there was a lot about how big parts of the population sided with the North and fought against the confederates. Don’t know if there were really significant numbers or if that’s just to not make them look so bad? Even if the latter is the case, it’s nice that they at least don’t want to look bad.

The other thing was that Nathan Bedford Forest came up more than once. Forest was one of the more evil men in American history, responsible for the massacres of surrendering soldiers and particularly black soldiers. After his war crimes he went on to be an important early leader in the Ku Klux Klan. The exhibits I saw spoke to the massacres but said nothing about the Klan.

To quote Scott H. Biram, “It takes a real piece of shit to be a real piece of shit” and Bedford Forest was a real piece of shit. So sorry for showing you that piece of shit, but to make up for it I’ll leave you with a photographic palette cleanser. This photo of Ida B. Wells is one of my favorite portraits. Just look at it. For several minutes at least. See if you can see what I see.

You’ll thank me later.