Here’s the story on why some of my friends refer to me as The Reverend.
About 40 years ago while tending bar at The Golden Spur serving beers to my pals Furman Langley and Steve Rey, the Spirit of Dr. John the Night Tripper descended upon me, and I commenced in his voice to sermonificating on the glorification of the party impulse present in all of us - Baptist and Bohemian alike - and why that party bud must be allowed to bloom into boogie, cause if it ain’t, your existiment bound to be as flat and tasteless as BiLo brand Tonic Water what ain’t had the cap screwed on tight.
Or worser, that block-up party impulse knocked back down, squeezed back down in the reptilian recesses of your brain gonna mutate into some awful sexual dysfunctification like dwarfophilia or bovineophlia or hollywoodstar-obessification or some such other mental donemessedupness.*
* A crude approximation of the actual sermon, which was a Dionysian improvisation.
Better have your son grow up to be Screaming Jay Hawkins than Senator Larry Craig, I say.
Screaming Jay Ain’t Never Been Arrested in an Airport Restroom
So every once and a while, I indulge myself in a little off-season Mardi Gras, like this last weekend when Miss Birdsong and I motored up I-26 into the mountains of North Carolina to sample three of the bands playing Sunday at the LEAF festival in Black Mountain.
I’m not going to inflict upon you the depressing ride up there under leaden skies while listening through static to the Gamecocks losing on the radio or Judy B’s getting the car stuck in gravel in the driveway of the bungalow we rented or how the propane ran out right after I put the steaks on or how it grieved me to know my Clemson brethren must be hurting exponentially worse than I given their loss was Little-Big-Horn like in its humilification quotient.
where we stayed
No, I’m going to accentuate the positive. Like, trees in their autumn beauty.
And the smiling faces. This grinning cat facing the camera is talking to Corey Peyton of the Soul Rebels.
Speaking of the Soul Rebels, dig this (featuring Miss Birdsong in a cameo)
We also caught a smidgen of Vieux Farka Toure, whose more famous father recorded a dual effort with the great Ry Cooder, but the poor cat was playing opposite the Soul Rebels.
Nevertheless, he had ‘em dancing as well.
I’m not doing her justice - it was lovely
Of course, the headliner was the man himself, Dr. Dr. John**, who killed us with his band the Nite Trippers, especially the woman on trombone, whom the doctor-doctor described as his “musical directress.”
This was the fourth time I’ve had the pleasure, and I this was the best yet. His voice, really, doesn’t sound much different from what it did on Doctor John’s Gumbo from ’72, though all’s he’s doing in this clip is stalking around percussionficating.
**Tulane laid an honorary doctorate on him, doubling up on his titles.
Plus, the double doctor played some guitar. Never seen that before.
Truth is the trip was a success - got funkificated to the maximus, saw nature going out with a bang of russet and gold, got to hang with “the goddess,” but as Eric Burdon of the Animals sez, “When the LSD trip is over, baby, you got to go back to mother booze.”
In other words, the Dionysian can only be temporary. Can’t be in that mode 24/7 - 0r 7 for that matter - or you end up in the cold, cold ground as impoverished as Steve Jobs is at the moment, for as Sister Flannery O’Connor says, “You can’t be any poorer than dead.”
So, we’ll remove this mask for now.
the Reverend
and don another:
the Professor