For the last four years, every September, after agreeing to renew our alliance for another year, Bob and I head west, hang a left at Route 81, and plunge up the Shenandoah Valley—up, in Blue Ridge terms, being south—following more or less the same path through the Blue Ridge Mountains that Stonewall Jackson did, repeatedly, worrying Abraham Lincoln nearly to death. We flew past cows and Cracker Barrels and big rigs. This time as every time, I scrutinized the cows that lay on the ground, trying to verify what I was once told, that cows always lie on a north–south plane. Once again, I can neither confirm nor deny.
After splitting three two-hour shifts, we arrive at the City of Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee—the city straddles the border, with the middle of State Street marking the state line—this year hosting its 11th annual Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion. The Reunion is a music festival celebrating the city’s roots as The Birthplace of Country Music and the city’s triumphant present as an arbiter of contemporary music, of contemporary musicians and the many genres of today’s American folk music. The City of Bristol has decided not to go softly into that night, as so many Appalachian towns have done. Believe in Bristol, they say. I do.
Shortly after checking in to the Courtyard Marriott, we go out and wait for the shuttle to the Reunion. The shuttle’s late, as it seems to be the first night of every Reunion. Finally, the yellow school bus arrives and we climb on board. Bob and I are pleased to discover that our bus driver is Joan. Joan is sixty-eight and quietly elegant. Soft voice, beautiful mountain accent. You must listen very closely to hear Joan’s story.
Our bus is a middle-school bus; the men bow slightly to traverse the aisle. The passengers, all from our hotel and from the Holiday Inn next door, are merry and bright. Bob and I remember our driver from previous Bristol Reunions. Joan is animated, graceful, indulging ever so discreetly in music gossip. The last stragglers boarding the bus at our hotel find that all the seats are occupied. One guy climbing aboard sees the full busload and says to Joan, “Can I sit on your lap?” “Oh Lord,” Joan replies, rolling her eyes. She doesn’t want to drive off with anyone standing in the aisle. She looks back in the big convex mirror and says, Can y’all just one-cheek it? Merriment ensues as cheek-sized space is found on a few seats. Joan is lovely, and our lives are in her hands, and we all want to know about her.
Some really old guy came on to her the night before, she tells us, feigning horror. How did this come up? I don’t know. The passengers coax her on; they want to know the whole story. She tells.
The guy must have been eighty-nine, she says. He was waiting for her outside the bus when she returned from her fifteen-minute break, and he asked her out. She turned him down. He said something to her, we didn’t catch what it was. She declined again, with grace, I’m sure. Everyone on the bus laughs. Joan says, He was too old…almost ninety! We are so happy with our beautiful bus driver.
The festival is, as always, wonderful. The thing about Bristol is that you often arrive there not knowing more than a few of the scheduled bands and performers, but you’re open to suggestion and you usually come away with a stack of CDs and at least two or three new passions. This year, our new passions are Dale Watson and the Lone Stars, Shotgun Party, a Cajun couple who dance like heat lightnin’ at the Red Stick Ramblers set, and a hard-working fiddler busking on State Street. Some old familiar favorites are the Quebe Sisters, Justin Townes Earle, Stacy Earle and Mark Stuart, and a former Hackensaw Boys fiddler now with the Black Lillies. We stop in to visit and conduct commerce with our favorite American letterpress shop, YeeHaw Industries, in a tent on the Tennessee side of State Street. We drink, oh, one or two beers in the State Line, Borderline Billiards, et cetera. Bob takes pictures of the old twentieth-century mountain town buildings. Several of the businesses on State Street have been there for a hundred years.
About eight or ten years ago, before we’d ever heard of Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion, we stopped in Bristol on the way home from Nashville, looking for the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, celebrating the earliest
recordings—at a hotel in Bristol—of the Carter family and Jimmie Rodgers, who became the best-selling artists of their era. Our directions took us to a faded shopping center off the interstate, on the outskirts of town. The museum was closed.
Now, during the Rhythm & Roots Reunion, Bristol is vibrant, happy, friendly, full of civic pride, love of place, and the sheer determination that the citizens and politicians of Bristol put forth to bring to fruition this annual reunion of music-loving people and the townsfolk who open their streets to artists of every genre. From inside the temporary fence delineating the front patio and outer legal limits of a bar on State Street, we watch the friendly cops and ragtag musicians and old hippies and buskers and race track girls and kids swarming past and I say to myself, Hurrah Bristol!
The last day of the festival, Sunday, we check out of the hotel, leave our car in the parking lot, and hop the school bus into town. Joan is smiling as we board; the passengers are festive. Bob and I have come to see the Red Stick Ramblers, a Louisiana Cajun band. Their music lifts you and forces you to move, to sway, to shake your hips and kiss your love. We do all of these things, then when the band is done, we start heading up State Street, migrating toward the old train station where our shuttle will pick us up one last time this year. It’s mid-afternoon. The Reunion will carry on for another three hours or so. Bus number 2 trundles into the semicircular drive and we climb on board with Joan. We are the only riders.
Bob had told me earlier that he wanted to hear more of Joan’s story, to hear what exactly it was that old guy said to her, and now he sees opportunity knocking. We talk about the festival, about Joan’s rigorous schedule—she drove from eight o’clock Saturday morning ‘til two o’clock Sunday morning, taking only two fifteen-minute breaks that whole time. Bob steers the conversation to the old-man situation. What was it exactly he said to you? Was he rude? Were you a little flattered? She didn’t hesitate to respond to the gentle prodding. He told me, she said, everybody needs somebody to love. I told him, not me. I’m sure you get plenty of interested men, Bob says. I’ve been asked out a few times by other men, she smiles. But I’m not ready.
Bob and I are leaning in, arms propped on the bar in front of us, trying to catch every word. Bob is in interview mode, leading her gently but deftly where she wants to go anyway. She lost her husband of eighteen years to cancer, she tells us. Not so long ago, I surmise, as I remember distinctly that when we first met her four years ago she was married. I can see that she can’t quite believe she’s telling us all this, but she goes on. She’s just not ready to date. She has fun, she has church friends, they do things together. That’s how she knows the two men who have asked her out. They’re her friends and they’re nice. She really doesn’t want to hurt them. But she told them no.
Joan does not look in the mirror at all now. She stares ahead at the highway about to roll under us. Very quietly she says, It was horrible, watching him die. It was six months from the time they diagnosed him until he died, and it was so horrible, and she will never get that close to anyone again, because she can never again watch someone she loves die like that.
We’re silent for a moment. Then she tells us about her first husband. After thirteen years of marriage, she discovered that he’d been cheating on her, for a long time, with a woman she thought was her best friend. He told me everything once I knew, she said, he didn’t try to lie to me. He told her he’d been with this woman since shortly after he and Joan were married.
Her thoughts quickly return to her second husband. We had eighteen wonderful years together; he was a good Christian man. He was always good to me. We had so many good times, a lot in common. I was really happy with him.
Joan shakes her head, so slightly. She still has her house and her garden. A
beautiful garden. She has her friends. And maybe, she says, it’s just too soon for me to think about dating. I don’t think so, though. It’s not that. I just don’t think I can ever do it again.
Now she glances up into the mirror to meet our eyes, each in turn. Bob says, We just celebrated our fourteenth anniversary this month. That’s good, Joan says, sincerely. Treasure them. Treasure each other, every day that you’re given.
I do.
After splitting three two-hour shifts, we arrive at the City of Bristol, Virginia and Tennessee—the city straddles the border, with the middle of State Street marking the state line—this year hosting its 11th annual Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion. The Reunion is a music festival celebrating the city’s roots as The Birthplace of Country Music and the city’s triumphant present as an arbiter of contemporary music, of contemporary musicians and the many genres of today’s American folk music. The City of Bristol has decided not to go softly into that night, as so many Appalachian towns have done. Believe in Bristol, they say. I do.
Shortly after checking in to the Courtyard Marriott, we go out and wait for the shuttle to the Reunion. The shuttle’s late, as it seems to be the first night of every Reunion. Finally, the yellow school bus arrives and we climb on board. Bob and I are pleased to discover that our bus driver is Joan. Joan is sixty-eight and quietly elegant. Soft voice, beautiful mountain accent. You must listen very closely to hear Joan’s story.
Our bus is a middle-school bus; the men bow slightly to traverse the aisle. The passengers, all from our hotel and from the Holiday Inn next door, are merry and bright. Bob and I remember our driver from previous Bristol Reunions. Joan is animated, graceful, indulging ever so discreetly in music gossip. The last stragglers boarding the bus at our hotel find that all the seats are occupied. One guy climbing aboard sees the full busload and says to Joan, “Can I sit on your lap?” “Oh Lord,” Joan replies, rolling her eyes. She doesn’t want to drive off with anyone standing in the aisle. She looks back in the big convex mirror and says, Can y’all just one-cheek it? Merriment ensues as cheek-sized space is found on a few seats. Joan is lovely, and our lives are in her hands, and we all want to know about her.
Some really old guy came on to her the night before, she tells us, feigning horror. How did this come up? I don’t know. The passengers coax her on; they want to know the whole story. She tells.
The guy must have been eighty-nine, she says. He was waiting for her outside the bus when she returned from her fifteen-minute break, and he asked her out. She turned him down. He said something to her, we didn’t catch what it was. She declined again, with grace, I’m sure. Everyone on the bus laughs. Joan says, He was too old…almost ninety! We are so happy with our beautiful bus driver.
The festival is, as always, wonderful. The thing about Bristol is that you often arrive there not knowing more than a few of the scheduled bands and performers, but you’re open to suggestion and you usually come away with a stack of CDs and at least two or three new passions. This year, our new passions are Dale Watson and the Lone Stars, Shotgun Party, a Cajun couple who dance like heat lightnin’ at the Red Stick Ramblers set, and a hard-working fiddler busking on State Street. Some old familiar favorites are the Quebe Sisters, Justin Townes Earle, Stacy Earle and Mark Stuart, and a former Hackensaw Boys fiddler now with the Black Lillies. We stop in to visit and conduct commerce with our favorite American letterpress shop, YeeHaw Industries, in a tent on the Tennessee side of State Street. We drink, oh, one or two beers in the State Line, Borderline Billiards, et cetera. Bob takes pictures of the old twentieth-century mountain town buildings. Several of the businesses on State Street have been there for a hundred years.
About eight or ten years ago, before we’d ever heard of Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion, we stopped in Bristol on the way home from Nashville, looking for the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, celebrating the earliest
recordings—at a hotel in Bristol—of the Carter family and Jimmie Rodgers, who became the best-selling artists of their era. Our directions took us to a faded shopping center off the interstate, on the outskirts of town. The museum was closed.
Now, during the Rhythm & Roots Reunion, Bristol is vibrant, happy, friendly, full of civic pride, love of place, and the sheer determination that the citizens and politicians of Bristol put forth to bring to fruition this annual reunion of music-loving people and the townsfolk who open their streets to artists of every genre. From inside the temporary fence delineating the front patio and outer legal limits of a bar on State Street, we watch the friendly cops and ragtag musicians and old hippies and buskers and race track girls and kids swarming past and I say to myself, Hurrah Bristol!
The last day of the festival, Sunday, we check out of the hotel, leave our car in the parking lot, and hop the school bus into town. Joan is smiling as we board; the passengers are festive. Bob and I have come to see the Red Stick Ramblers, a Louisiana Cajun band. Their music lifts you and forces you to move, to sway, to shake your hips and kiss your love. We do all of these things, then when the band is done, we start heading up State Street, migrating toward the old train station where our shuttle will pick us up one last time this year. It’s mid-afternoon. The Reunion will carry on for another three hours or so. Bus number 2 trundles into the semicircular drive and we climb on board with Joan. We are the only riders.
Bob had told me earlier that he wanted to hear more of Joan’s story, to hear what exactly it was that old guy said to her, and now he sees opportunity knocking. We talk about the festival, about Joan’s rigorous schedule—she drove from eight o’clock Saturday morning ‘til two o’clock Sunday morning, taking only two fifteen-minute breaks that whole time. Bob steers the conversation to the old-man situation. What was it exactly he said to you? Was he rude? Were you a little flattered? She didn’t hesitate to respond to the gentle prodding. He told me, she said, everybody needs somebody to love. I told him, not me. I’m sure you get plenty of interested men, Bob says. I’ve been asked out a few times by other men, she smiles. But I’m not ready.
Bob and I are leaning in, arms propped on the bar in front of us, trying to catch every word. Bob is in interview mode, leading her gently but deftly where she wants to go anyway. She lost her husband of eighteen years to cancer, she tells us. Not so long ago, I surmise, as I remember distinctly that when we first met her four years ago she was married. I can see that she can’t quite believe she’s telling us all this, but she goes on. She’s just not ready to date. She has fun, she has church friends, they do things together. That’s how she knows the two men who have asked her out. They’re her friends and they’re nice. She really doesn’t want to hurt them. But she told them no.
Joan does not look in the mirror at all now. She stares ahead at the highway about to roll under us. Very quietly she says, It was horrible, watching him die. It was six months from the time they diagnosed him until he died, and it was so horrible, and she will never get that close to anyone again, because she can never again watch someone she loves die like that.
We’re silent for a moment. Then she tells us about her first husband. After thirteen years of marriage, she discovered that he’d been cheating on her, for a long time, with a woman she thought was her best friend. He told me everything once I knew, she said, he didn’t try to lie to me. He told her he’d been with this woman since shortly after he and Joan were married.
Her thoughts quickly return to her second husband. We had eighteen wonderful years together; he was a good Christian man. He was always good to me. We had so many good times, a lot in common. I was really happy with him.
Joan shakes her head, so slightly. She still has her house and her garden. A
beautiful garden. She has her friends. And maybe, she says, it’s just too soon for me to think about dating. I don’t think so, though. It’s not that. I just don’t think I can ever do it again.
Now she glances up into the mirror to meet our eyes, each in turn. Bob says, We just celebrated our fourteenth anniversary this month. That’s good, Joan says, sincerely. Treasure them. Treasure each other, every day that you’re given.
I do.
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