Bethany Arms Motel

Thursday 3rd June - Bethany Beach DELAWARE

Another beach from apartment and some more playing in the sea.  later this evening Leon once again eats himself into a coma at the Bethany Blues grill, I however learned by lesson in Charleston and didn't fall for that one again.  Walked along the boardwalk at night and had it all to ourselves.

Free Love Freeway

Saturday 21st May - Clarksdale MISSISSIPPI

So you make it back to your shack after a night of the blues at Reds, courtesy of Model T Ford and you hear must from the main bar of the site.  It sounds a bit like a Springsteen cover band but not a bad one and you don;t want to end the night just yet so you head on over for a final drink.

You certainly don't expect the next song to be Ricky Gervais's Free Love Freeway and for any girl under the age of 25 and remotely pretty to jump up and dance like it's the highlight of the evening.
At the end of the song Leon got up and shook the lead singers hand, Leon kept a straight face but the lead singer couldn't quite hide his smirk.  I'm finally in one of those moments when I get to say that we knew, that he knew, that we knew, that he knew it was (I have no idea what it was but it felt like one of those moments should feel if you hadn't drunk too much beer and you knew what you were on about).

PS: As people leave the bar some stupidly set their own car alarms off, this sets of the ducks that are somewhere nearby.  It make me feel at home.

Model T Ford at Reds Juke Joint

Saturday 21st May - Clarksdale MISSISSIPPI

Model T Ford is a 90 year old blues man.  Today was his 1 year wedding anniversary and everyone was invited to celebrate.  A tiny club in Clarksdale to hold such an amazing bluesman he completely wiped the floor with Honey Boy Edwards who i saw last year in Leeds and who is still only a spring chicken in in his 70's.  Red's was incredibly friendly, especially considering the number of people who wandered in all evening talking thorough the set.  Leon being a blues addict insisted we stay until the very end when we were literally the only people in the the place who hadn't been at the couple's wedding.  The gig was an absolute must and this trip hasn't been called the 'Old Man Dead Tour' for nothing, I doubt I'll ever see Model T again considering his age and the fact her doesn't travel but we was sooo worth the trip, plus they served cake so I was about as happy as I could be.  We also made friends with Dave and his mate from Iowa whoa re also staying at the Shack Up Inn, they consider themselves to be serious music fans and kept throwing our names of artists in some kind of gig one-up-manship, I held my own until they there out Van Morrison which I couldn't best however they hadn't reckoned on Leon who trumped them with a Van x5 (the number of times he's seen him) and they had to submit.  Not bad really considering their age and the distance they had travelled but Leon had started playing this game as a child and isn't easy to beat.  They were heading onto another gig but told us to stop by their shack for a whiskey when we got back to our shack, we tried (you never know when you're going to need a friend in Iowa) but they'd already headed off to bed, lightweights.

Shack Up Inn & Hicks BBQ

Saturday 21st May - Clarksdale MISSISSIPPI

Dinner was at Hicks tamales and BBQ, the BBQ was the best I've ever tasted and considering there were pictures on the wall of president Clinton enjoying the food I could say I was in good company.  It doesn't look like much, kind of like the places you stop for junk food on your way home after a night out in Leeds but a million times the quality and taste.  Anyone who comes within a 100 miles of Clarksdale has to come here, it would be evil not too.

Tonight we are staying at the Shack Up Inn, a kind of holiday park made up of old sharecropper homes that were going to be destroyed but were instead saved and brought to one place to create a holiday village of shacks centered around an original cotton gin.  It's ace, we are renting the Robert Clay shack, originally he was a sharecropper who drove a tractor and lived in the house with his 7 sons.  I don't know where he put them but as I write this I am sat on the front porch in my pj's enjoying my last beer of the evening and being thankful the building was saved. (Being thankful, I think those darned christians wore off on me).

Also, it's thunder and lightening overhead, I know Leon has a Dylan song reference for this exact thing in this exact place but I can't remember it but the breeze is welcome and the rain sounds pretty on the corrugated tin roof.

Robert Johnson & Dockery Plantation

And here we go again with another of Leon's must see music references, Robert Johnson's grave.  Now the grave is widely reported to be in 3 separate locations so we choose the one that got the most votes, the Little Zion Baptist Church on Money Road, Mississippi.  Basically we drove to a church, found a grave, took some photos and then left.  It was all very moving or would have been had it not been 90 degrees out.

Then onto another heritage music site, the Dockery Plantation, an old cotton plantation argued to be the home of the delta blues as it was once home to blues legends Charlie Patton, Robert Johnson and Howlin Wolf.  We did a drive by photo op.  this is the best way to see the south as it's way too bloomin hot to get out of the air conditioned car.

Mississippi Delta

Saturday 21st May - MISSISSIPPI

The plan was to drive from Lorman up to Clarksdale along the Mississippi river taking in some sights and stopping along the way.  First of all, the Mississippi has flooded and closed some roads so we had to detour, a lot. Secondly, if you ever get the chance to stop off in Vicksburg for lunch like we did, DON'T.  There is bugger all to see, unless there is flooding and the train station is a few feet under water, then there is stuff to see, but it's all under water so there's still not much point in stopping.

It was a pretty drive though, some of it I even drove (my first time behind and american wheel).  I thought I did pretty good at staying on the right side of the center line though according to Leon I spent a lot of time driving on the grass verve too.  Made it here alive and unscratched though do its all good.  More driving for me tomorrow.

Rosswood Plantation

Woke up at stupid O'clock thanks to thunderstorm that was actually pretty amazing.  The thunder and lightening were were hitting at exactly the same time so safe to say we were pretty much in the eye of the storm which considering all the floods hitting the Mississippi Delta, it's not somewhere you want to be.

When we did drag ourselves out of bed it was for morning tea and coffee on the upstairs terrace with the crazy christians one of whom was reading the bible and the others were weirdly talking about cheap ryan air flights around europe, much as I'm not keen on the airline you've got to be impressed by advertising that can reach to the depth of Mississippi.  When I say depth I'm not joking, go anywhere bigger and talk about Lorman where we stayed they look at you blankly.

Breakfast was in the main plantation dining room which was ace (though they need to re wallpaper) where we all ate around the dining table as a group, those crazy christians again.  they were all dressed up for the graduation they were attending so event hough Leon and I were both dressed nicely and not at all like tramps (I know, shocking for Leon) we still looked like the interlopers at the table.  The weirdest thing though was Peggy the cook, her bacon, scrambled eggs, cheese grits, cheese hash browns, spanish sausage and baked peaches were AMAZING but it felt a little bit wrong being surrounded by that many white americans, in a plantation house, in the south, being asked by a black cook if Mister Leon would like any more coffee sir.

The rest of them headed off to the graduation and Leon and I got ready for our 'tour' (included in the price along with breakfast) of a Southern plantation house.  Now I've toured old houses before, Temple Newsam, Ripley Castle (more a stately home and less a castle) and Bolton Castle, I've been there and done that, so I had an idea of what to expect.  I didn't expect to b 15 minute e taken into the library, plonked in front of the VCR (not even a DVD) and left to watch some old semi home made history channel wannabe documentary of the house history.  Saying that though it was fairly decent and at the end we got to fondle the cannon ball that destroyed the kitchen during the civil war.