Miserable South
Reminiscing on East Nashville and southerly accents.
A few weeks back, a friend of mine gifted me a ticket to see a sold-out Gillian Welch and David Rawlings show, but I felt sick and couldn’t go. They were doing a three-hour Grateful Dead set. I wouldn’t have made it through an hour. I like them, I like the Dead—couldn’t do it.
That, for whatever reason, got me thinking about old and new East Nashville, where my family now lives.
I was listening to an early recording of mine (I don’t do this much)—Miserable South. We cut it in old East Nashville about twenty-five years ago during the Under Cold Blue Stars sessions. I’m singing with a bit of a Southern/Midwestern twang. I can hardly listen to it, except for the band—Will Kimbrough, Pat Sansone, Sharon Gilchrist, David Gherke, and Dennis Cronin. Roger Moutenot was producing, and David Henry engineered. The recording sounds live and deep. It’s the big room at Woodland Studios—now owned by Gillian and Dave.
Driving my two teenage boys around to soccer the next day, I put on Soul Journey in our 2008 Honda Odyssey. It just happened to be in the van. Gillian’s voice and those songs sound country—Southern—but in the right way. In good taste. I recognize Woodland’s room sound right away. Unmistakable. The drum sound is simple and dry, but perfect for the songs.
I flip open the CD and notice it’s an old pal, Jim Boquist, whom I toured with when he was in Son Volt. He played bass then. Maybe that explains the no-frills drum style. He’s a cool cat.
Anyway, I start rambling—probably too much—about old East Nashville with my boys.
“See that studio? Back before you were born, Mike Grimes and David Gherke stepped out for a break from a recording session we were doing and wandered into a bar on the corner. A week later, they bought it. Called it Slow Bar. It was the start of something. Before that, most of Nashville wouldn’t come over here for fear of getting mugged.” Here’s a YouTube video of Mike telling the story.
More townies and musicians moved in. Hey, it was very affordable. Eventually, what used to feel rough turned into something else—$8 lattes, secondhand stores, a kind of Brooklyn cowboy-hipster aesthetic that didn’t exist before.
My boys are digging the groove of “Miss Ohio.” I didn’t think they would. It’s got too much feel to deny.
I actually covered that song, as did many others, back in 2003. Here’s a radio station recording of it somewhere in Australia, May of 2004. Curt Perkins is playing a bit of keyboard.
I’ve got a handful of shows coming up, all in the South. Unlike the song's title suggests, I do enjoy playing regionally; it’s relaxed, and I don’t have to fly.
