I made a quick trip to Clarksdale, Mississippi meeting up with some of the guys who will make the trip to Alaska in June 2008. The coolest thing about Clarksdale is that it's regarded as the cradle of the delta blues music scene. This is where it is rumored that blues legend, Robert Johnson, sold his soul to the Devil in return for his musical genius at the crossroads of US Highway 61 and US Highway 49. We stayed at the Ground Zero Blues Club. The club has a group of apartments for overnite rent upstairs and is co-owned by the actor Morgan Freeman. I left Oklahoma City at 8AM on Friday and made the 511 miles to Clarksdale by 3:30PM. Not too shabby for this currently non-GPS'd rider. But then again, I was just riding the boring straight line of freeway slab most of the way to make time. I did manage to get lost after I got to Clarksdale---had left the local directions print-out at home (sigh). I circled for about 20 minutes trying to spot it before stopping at the Delta Blues Museum to ask directions---a guy's last resort. Embarassingly for me, they told me it was just across the parking lot, practically next door--of course. The other guys had arrived about 30 minutes prior and were already out roaming the streets somewhere. I pulled up beside the weathered rough brick Ground Zero Blues Club and saw all their bikes lined up, some still loaded with luggage, all encrusted with a few hundred miles of road grime and unlucky bug traffic. Was a cool sense of things to come on the Alaska trip.

I walked inside the dark almost empty-afternooned main hall, clad in dusty armored leathers, helmet and camera bag in hand----looking like a motorized version of some High Plains Drifter. I was immediately met by a perky waitress named Tori who showed me to a modest fold-out chair and a vinyl-sheeted cardtable where I piled all my junk. Philip, the room reservation guy was away at the moment so I couldn't immediately check in. Tori suggested I just plop down and cool off. After riding in the humid 100-degree heat for most of those 500 miles I appreciated the club's great frosty air conditioning. So I chilled, literally, and requested a water and a Dos Equis. Normally I drink maybe six beers----ANNUALLY. Not a great beer drinker to say the least. But THAT one tasted like nectar from the gods. Cold, rich, and satisfying. The only thing missing was me holding the bottle up, label facing forward, and trying to find the camera lens to complete the commercial :) Philip came along shortly and I got checked into the room which was a pretty interesting discovery. The building itself is an old, almost crumbly warehouse type of thing. Peeling paint, exposed wiring, and the afore-mentioned inexpensive fold-out tables and chairs for the main hall. The doorway to the upstairs rooms is outside and separate from the club. You open it and are faced with a steep, rough board stairway. When you step inside it smells like---well---an old latrine. Yikes. I was understandably apprehensive about what the room was going to be like. I plodded up the crude stairs with my gear and as soon as I reached the top the place took on a different air. Really. It smelled nicer. Carpet on the floor, neutral painted walls with white trim, tall ceilinged hallway at the end of which was my room, number 7. Opening the door I was met with a welcome site---the room was wood-planked flooring with a nice polished stain, contemporary furnishings and overall a great unexpected space---a living room, dining area, small but full kitchen (stove, microwave, sink, refrigerator), two separate bedrooms, each with a kingsize bed and a bath, and again that EXCELLENT air conditioning. And all for $85. John Davis, my film director friend from Atlanta, and I split it for less than $50 each. No TV, phone or internet but that was what made it perfect.

The evening was spent in the now-packed club listening to the house band jam away with powerful blues licks careening through the venue. Bill, one of Ground Zero's owners, came over and chatted with our table a bit. Filled us in on what his co-owner, Morgan Freeman, had in the works lately. Scripts he was reading, films he was shooting. The house band featured the room guy, Philip, on electric guitar and he was burning it up backed by a drummer and a bass player. He kept inviting any "musicians" in the house to come up, sign the clipboard list and sit in. Since no one was responding to his calls, I suspect one of our guys had ratted me out to Philip because references were made a few more times during the night that they KNEW there were some "players" in the house. Take the "players" term with a huge grain of salt. I'm a guitar piddler at home which my friends know. But I never felt brave enough to step up to the plate--these Mississippi Delta guys were way out of my amateur-guitarist league. Playing the blues fantastically comes to them as naturally as having grits each morning for breakfast. I just enjoyed listening to them and took a few pics though all at a grainy high ISO rating because of the almost total absence of light in the smoke-filled hall. I refuse to employ flash unless absolutely forced to. Flash photography, for me, sucks the life and soul out of the moment. We sat back and absorbed everything, not the least of which was our dinner---a juicy rib-eye steak, marinated in some magical, ethereal Mississippi delta-born sauce, and grilled-to-order right out on the front porch of the club. It was a great evening, good company, fun conversation and the perfect platform to conjure up visions of how this type of scene might replay itself with different packaging on ATLANTASKAKEY '08, our upcoming Atlanta-Alaska-Key West moto-journey in June. We all rode together the next morning for about 20 miles, a great parting ride marred only by an unfortunate bird-icide incident. About 7 miles in, a feathered friend flew Kamikaze-like, straight into the lead rider, John's, bike at speed disintegrating in an explosion of feathers and yucky stuff. I watched him pluck feathers off of his riding jacket and gas tank for three miles as we continued on.

We stopped at a local cafe along the way for a good southern breakfast, mapping the routes home on the table adorned with the place's special hot sauce contained in old liquor bottles, and chatting with some of the regulars. I met an 83 year old fellow with a smart newsboy cap who was something of a celebrity in the area due to his re-knowned hot tamale-making abilities and recipe. "Shine" Thornton is quite a character and graciously allowed me to photograph him for posterity. We bid everyone adieu at the restaurant and climbed back on the bikes for the last leg of our brief road trip together. When we reached the river junction, my friend Bradley, who lives in Dallas, and I headed west and the rest of the guys turned back to Atlanta. I rode with Bradley as far as Texarkana, Texas and struck out then north for home. Got in about 9PM that evening beating the weather front moving in from the northwest. A great enjoyable ride. And Alaska beckons promising to be even more so.

Powered by StirSite