We drove all day Friday. Ate in Tuscaloosa and drove and drove and drove. Evan had never seen a mountain. We started to get into the foothills, and he's sort of awestruck cause he's never even seen a big hill, and I'm telling him (cause I grew up in the Blueridge Mountains) that THAT'S NOTHIN'. Then we got to Chattanooga (my late great dog was named Chat after Jimmy Martin's version of Tom T. Hall's "Chattanooga Dog"), and we all got all reverential and all - we have planted a shrimp plant over his grave in Miss'ippi. Anyway we're getting phone calls from Betty, and they are already there and have found our hotel. "We've been here for like three days it seems, and where are y'all?"

Here are the Mexican drug smugglers that we reported to authorities.

So we're lagging behind because we went through this thing in the morning of "Let's not leave till we're ready and the pig, duck, and horse are fed - they got fed twice cause our neighbor fed them too. So we're in the mountains and stretching our necks to get the view and all and pull into Harriman, TN. It's beautiful and raining. I have just recut my mullet (actually a shag, but it's more dramatic to call it a mullet) and hopefully thought, "It will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay, as long as IT DOESN'T RAIN!" Oh well, everyone is waiting for us to drive them to the liquor store, which I do since I'm sober, and we drive out to the site of Mucklewain. Oh my god, is this beautiful or what? Beautiful misty hills (everything in Tennessee looks freshly mowed. Why is that?), and after a year in the hurricane, mucked-up forest aftermath of Katrina it's like another world. It's like The Shire! So we're driving over the green hills of the site and we meet Modaviaslim who has arranged for us to be there. He's a happy mountain boy who's very enthusiastic and dashing and handsome. We're elated. We check out the concert site (a mini Woodstock) and then head back to a Mexican food dinner (yes, it was good Mexican) and then bed.

Next day I changed strings, went over my songs, worried about my BROKEN WRIST, put on my least fat-looking clothes (my Jimmy Martin, King of Bluegrass, t-shirt and my straw hat to hide my fresh-cut mullet. Hey, I'm hurricane trash from Miss'ippi and sort of proud and pitiful all at once) and headed out to go and play. We got to park in a good spot and only had to walk a ways. It's so beautiful here, green and hilly. Did I say that already? So there was a songwriter's stage which is more mellow and then over a hill two large stages for the bands. One band sets up while the other one is playing. They're all rocking. This is not a mellow thing...

Except for the songwriter's stage.

This deafening boom kept going off periodically. At first I was sure some electrical thing on one of the big stages had blown up and someone MUST be dead, but nothing ever seemed to be wrong. Still the booms would go off over the course of the afternoon and scare me to death. Later I listened to the promoters discussing it. "Why don't you go and tell them to stop?" "Why don't YOU go and tell them to stop." Ha! It seems we had some Earnest T. Bass's (hillbillies) through the woods on the neighboring property with a cannon!

And here's some hippy vans.

We played our set of originals on the songwriter's stage and did okay. I think we have good songs. There was a polite response, but there was a slighty growing rowdy response from some (what I would call redneck in Miss'ippi but maybe hillbilly in Tennessee) young dudes who seemed to like "Bad Attitude." This is all very welcomed. I wish we had about several thousand of these guys to play for. David did "No Regrets" which is a beautiful love song and should be a hit. One day!

Here we are from a distance. There are no closeups of us! For some reason.

And here are Betty and Buzz hugging instead of taking closeups of us!

So we got to see Farmer Jason (who I recognized from Jason and the Nashville Scorchers) in overalls and checks and was playing for children of whom there are maybe only three, and he was wonderful and funny. Wonderful and has problems with his "cousin" Jason Ringerberg who seems too focused on fame according to him. Then later on we saw Jason Ringenberg's set, and he seemed a bit miffed at Farmer Jason and his farmer thang. Ha! Maybe he should break up.

Here are some Miss'ippi girls! Notice we all have hats like the Mexican drug smugglers.

So our electrifying friend, Webb Wilder, arrived and did a rare acoustic set on the songwriter's stage. He asked me up to sing a song we used to do in our old band, Eveready, - "Cow Cow Boogie." I learned it off one of my dad's Ella Fitzgerald albums with Louis Armstrong, but it was originally done by Ella Mae Morse, The Cow Cow Girl. So it goes alright except for the fact that I screwed up the arrangement that we had gone over in Danna's black Mercedes Benz in the AC. I had forgotten that when we did the song years ago we went to the solo twice - one time we came out of it with Webb taking Satchmo's part of singing and the other time to the bridge (or something). So I went to Satchmo's part and Webb went to the bridge so I had to sort of sing Satchmo's part while Webb looked at me like "such a short trip from the Mercedes to here." Ha! But it sounded good nonetheless.

Heeeeeeeeeere we are.

And here we are walking back from the swag tent.

And here's what it looked like driving home the next day.