Tupelo by Reed Turchi

Tupelo, Mississippi. Where it began. Elvis, sure, but also for my own lost-in-the-blues trajectory. Flat-circle back a decade or so & find me in the back seat of Kenny Brown’s (longtime guitarist for RL Burnside, now for the Black Keys) van headed to a gig at The Blue Canoe. That night, just to listen. Kenny & his trio rolling through the Hill Country classics and tunes of his own. Crunch of gravel & cicadic cacophony beneath the magnolias haunting the parking lot.

Then last August -- the same hot summer, this time my own trio with Tupelo’s own Lee McAlilly on bass & the Tulsa time-keeper Erin Nelson on the throne. The sphere coming closed as we romped through some Burnside & Kimbrough classics (All Night Long, Goin Down South, Jumper on the Line), originals (Ima Bore), and re-interpretations (Alabaster, No Need to Worry, Special Rider). You have to grow roots to grown branches, and this set is a representation of that in nearly perfect form.

The night before we had played in Jackson, where the water crisis that would take over national headlines a few weeks later was just beginning. Two nights earlier we had played in Tuscaloosa. Can you name a weekend more dixie-fried?

Forgive (or embrace) any low-fidelity -- what you’re listening to here is a two-track recorder in the back of the room, the wood-walled club serving as echo-chamber & studio all in one. And don’t forget that bonus track -- some voices from that weekend, some improvisations on a harp we stumbled back to at 3am post-show.

Enjoy. If some ghosts come haunting, let them in. Sometime tomorrow we’ll go get biscuits. Lee knows a spot.

Reed Turchi is a musician, poet, and producer from Swannanoa, North Carolina, now living in Brooklyn. He has won a GRAMMY Award and received Emmy Nominations for his music, and his poetry has been published in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Narrative Magazine, and The Los Angeles Review, among others.

reedturchi.com