God's Word on the War

An open letter to my Christian and Muslim brothers (including so-called ‘Extremist Factions’),
Brothers, I’m writing to you because God has pressed upon my heart to do so. This ‘War on Terror’, this ‘Jihad’ has wrought violence and violence begets violence and there is no end in sight.
I can’t fathom and I won’t speculate as to why 9/11 had to happen, but I know that God does not waste a hurt and what was taken will be replaced a hundred times over, but only if we have love, faith and forgiveness.
I’m sickened and saddened by what has happened to Iraq and the toll it has taken on America. I feel shame and pity for our leaders, but also compassion. Everywhere you turn people are heartbroken and lost and confused-which becomes anger that we direct at faceless, nameless apparitions across the oceans. If we all took our broken hearts to God we could find peace. Our angry words are as dangerous as our loaded guns. More so, because bullets only destroy flesh and buildings, words destroy souls.
When we, Muslim and Christian, come from the same God and are after the heart of the same God how can we wage war against each other? If one of us is truly deserving of punishment isn’t that God’s decision to make and His vengeance to reap?
I am on fire right now with the Holy Spirit. The inferno blazing in my head and chest is of love and compassion. To my Muslim brothers, all I have to offer you, as a humble servant of God is my forgiveness and all I ask of you in turn is forgiveness. I love you all as I love my Christian brothers and I implore my Christian brothers to go to the Bible immediately if they don’t have love in their heart, because we a Lord who’s love is neither earned or deserved and we would shame Him to love anyone less.
Someone has to be the one to say ENOUGH, because not one more mother should have to senselessly mourn their child, rather that child is a soldier or a citizen.
Terrible injustice has been done by and to both sides in this conflict and evil will be heaped upon evil if we, as children of God, and the moral compass of the world, don’t demand that weapons be laid aside and we reach out brother to brother and simply forgive!
Christ teaches us to love our enemies. If he strikes our cheek offer the other. If he is hungry feed him. How can anyone hate someone who loves him or her? And if you learn to love the one you hate then how can you wage war?
Leave punishment to God because this is His world and we are all His children.
Tim Murr-1.12.08

From Conspiracy Of Birds

WARNING; This post contains language and situations that may be deemed offensive. I offer no apologies, just a heads up.
excerpt from my new novel Conspiracy Of Birds which should be out by the end of the summer.

Ruby, My Dear
I woke up after the sun had gone down to the sound of Darby trashing his room. He was growling like an animal and yelling incoherently, throwing himself against the wall we shared. He was hitting it so hard I thought maybe he was going to go through it.
I rolled out of bed and pulled my pants on and went next door to kick his ass, but I kept walking and went on down the hall to the bathroom and got in the shower. There was no hot water but that was ok.
By the time I was on my way back to my room, Darby was in the lobby going Tasmanian devil. Hank came over and decked him. Darby tumbled through a table, then laid on his back laughing. Hank waved him off and went out the front door angrily.
I got dressed with no idea what I was going to do. I wanted to take Debbie up on her offer to make up the Frank thing to me, but I didn’t want to go another round with him. My luck was sure to run out. There was a brothel near by and the action was cheap. I’d heard from Lucky they served Jack Daniels in the lounge (which was hard to find here) and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting ripped off.
The porch was crowded with a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals having a ‘spirited’ discussion about literature. I stopped for a second too long and Fitzgerald tried to get me to take his side about something. Before I could tell him I never liked him, Charles bashed him the teeth with his elbow. Fitz went back into the porch railing and crumpled like a sack of potatoes. This was all those boring sons of bitches ever did. Arguing over their own talent and intellect then going caveman when they didn’t agree with each other. At heart, we’re all fucking animals, and being on a college reading list doesn’t change that.

The brothel was called Damn Hot Cats and was run by Mama Lucille, a southern belle that must have been two hundred years old. She didn’t speak much when anyone entered, just nodded toward the lounge or the parlor. I headed for the lounge first. My head was pounding and I needed whiskey. I got a double and then another double. I drank three glasses quickly before a tall, thick girl in black silk sat on the stool next to mine. She smiled and I told the bartender to set her up. She had perfect curves, a big ass, and breasts that were spilling out of her lace. Her dark blonde curls hung around her face, like she didn’t care, and feline eyes glinted from beneath her locks.
We clinked our glasses together and knocked them back quickly. She slid off her stool and headed for the stairs, I was close behind. Up the stairs her ass swung hypnotically ahead of me. I could see the outline of a thong and my mind was getting lecherous.
When we got to her door, I was behind her, with my arms wrapped around her kissing her neck. She giggled and led me inside.
I started unbuttoning my shirt. She shoved me onto the bed. When I landed, I felt like I sank a foot into the mattress. It was the best feeling I’d ever had.
She pulled my boots off and my feet felt so light, I thought they might float away. Next, she was pulling my pants off.
We rode one another hard. The more we fucked, the harder I pumped, and the deeper her nails dug-I fell more in love. Maybe it was the poison in my system, but the earth was moving.
It came to a crashing halt when she asked to be paid. Her smile was gone. The glint in her eyes had become cold coal in a shit brown iris. Her curves were gray flabs that she shoved back into the silk. The beauty drained from her face. Her hair became a tangle of wires and knots. I tossed a few bills to her and got dressed.
I stepped into the hallway and touched the wall for support. It felt like warm raw meat. I could feel a pulse. Wet. I ran my hands along the wall, moving toward the stairs. I found a vein; it was so big it took both of my hands to get a hold of it. I squeezed, cutting off the blood.
Below, Mama Lucille shrieked from the parlor. I looked down and saw her stumbling into the lounge, holding her head with both hands. Her eyes were rolled up so far all you could see was white. I let go of the vein and she shot up right, reaching her hands to Heaven. Blood spurt from her nose. Everyone in the lounge was getting as far away from her as possible.
I grabbed the vein again and she did a header into the bar. Her brittle skull split under the rubbery skin. When she stopped twitching, people began to move in, muttering to each other. I slowly descended the stairs, not believing what I had just done. I told myself I was tripping. Just remain calm, and get the fuck out.
No one looked my way. The whores began to cry for Mama Lucille. The men started to exit with me, because they knew they’d get no action that night. We poured into the street like soldiers without a war. The streets stunk of defeat. Of dirty money set aside for immoral acts.
Most of them headed for the bars near the beach. I went the opposite direction. Going where the streets got a little darker, and the bars were less crowded. I turned a corner and came to an intersection where the streetlights had all been shot out. The only light was coming from the giant red neon cross hanging over the door of the mission. Several homeless people milled around outside. They looked like ghouls, aimlessly dragging their feet in the eerie, red glow.
As I passed the mission a few of them looked my way, their eyes were dead. A preacher came out on to the stoop and sat down with a cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup. His eyes were weary. His nose was broken. He was probably wondering why he was here-He had that look. It must be difficult to get up in the morning and wade through this open sewer and do God’s work. The road of the righteous is not an easy one to travel.
Down a street with no name and around a corner set a cinderblock building that looks like it used to be a garage. It had been turned into a pool hall. I found it a few days before when I went out looking for work. The neon beer signs behind the bars on the window were the only indication it wasn’t an abandoned building. As I got closer I could hear a blues band inside.
The band was set up near the door, the singer looked my way when I stepped in. She had a glass of something clear, but it was obviously not water. She leaned heavily on the mic stand as the guitarist tore through a solo. When he stepped back, she growled into the mic, “Chain, chain, chainnnnnn-Chain of fools…” She sang another verse, then the keyboardist took a solo.
I sat down at the bar and ordered a beer and a shot. My head was still fuzzy, but I was seeing shit with amazing clarity and depth. I felt like I could practically see in the dark. I’d had no trouble navigating the dark streets, now I could see the light stubble of an old man asleep in the far back corner, where most of the light bulbs had burned out.
I knocked back my shot and started sipping my beer. The band finished the song like a train wreck and ambled off stage. The singer slumped at a table alone, where a bottle of gin waited for her. She poured some into her glass and emptied the tumbler before the band crowded the bar around me. The keyboardist sat to my right. He couldn’t even speak he was so drunk. He kept trying to order, even after the bartender had sat another rum and soda in front of him. He drank half of it and stood up, mumbled something under his breath and sat back down, nearly falling.
He laid his head on the bar and whimpered. I looked at the bass player who sat on the other side of the keyboardist. He shrugged and went back to his beer.
I looked around at everyone else. Mostly older men and women beat up by and burnt out on life. Half dead eyes. The drinks in front of them were the high light of their week. Their conversations were loud and unintelligible, mixing with and getting tangled up in each other’s words. It seemed like half of them didn’t know the music had stopped, the rest didn’t know it had ever started.
The one waitress was as drunk as the rest of us, and didn’t do much other than sit at the far end of the bar, and bitch about how much her feet hurt. No one was listening, except a short, chubby old man that looked like he’d eat out of her toilet just to be close to her. His watery, mouse eyes kept dancing up and down her ragged body. She must have been gorgeous back in the day.
After several minutes some of the band members started packing up their equipment. The keyboardist snored steadily on the bar.
I kept putting the booze down; shot…beer. Shot…beer. I had a small stack of singles in front of me that the bartender would pick a few from every time he brought me a new round. The more he took, the more there seemed to be. I started trying to drink away the stack of cash, but there was always enough for another round.
I was seeing things swimming in the bottles behind the bar. Mutant tadpoles. Worms with jagged teeth. They were mating. Shitting. Giving birth. Splitting in two, then again.
I looked at my shot. A tiny, four-armed, fuzzy worm was climbing over the rim, trying to get away. I flicked it off and drank my shot. Then I heard a whisper over my shoulder. You’re poisoned. So I drank my beer.
A fly landed on the back of my hand. I waved him off. He returned with a friend. I waved them both off. They came back four strong. More started buzzing around my face. Landing in my hair. They were all over the bar, hanging around my drink. I shooed them away, they came back with double the strength.
Then the room got hot.
The door opened and in walked a slender man in a blood red suit. He sat down four stools from me, on the other side of the keyboardist. He ordered bourbon on the rocks. I looked over at the waitress-obsessed old man. He licked his lips with a forked tongue when she bent down to pick up a dollar someone had dropped. I turned to the bartender to order another round, but he was walking into the back cooler.
The keyboardist suddenly woke up and looked around.
“Hey, we done playin’?”
“Everyone left,“ I told him.
“Shit, man. They didn’t take my gear…How’m I gonna get it home?”
“Just take a taxi.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Didn’t you get paid tonight?”
“S’posed to. But those fuckers let me get plastered then they screw me. Every time.”
The man in red pulled out a roll of bills and peeled off two c-notes, American.
“Hey, you can have this, if you go play ‘Ruby, My Dear’ before you leave.”
The keyboardist looked at the money and happily took it from him.
“No problem…be happy to!”
He played the song like Monk. His eyes were closed and his face was close to the keys. If it wasn’t for the spastic bouncing of his foot you’d think he was falling asleep again.
I looked over at the man in red. He was hunched over his bourbon, muttering to himself. He slowly turned to me with a warm smile.
“Don’t believe a word they say.”
“Who?”
“Any of’em. Doesn’t matter. Politicians. Preachers. Doctors. They all lie to screw you over.”
“What do they gain?”
“They take your money.”
“I’ve never had much to take.”
“They take your freedom.”
“No one’s really free anyway. They’re taking what I never had.”
“They take your ideas.”
“I don’t have any. It’s all been done.”
“They take your choices.”
“Same as freedom, I’ve never had a choice.”
“You chose to leave your family. You chose to make their lives incomparably hard. You chose for your son to be a bastard. You chose to make someone die.”
“I didn’t feel like I had a choice then. Seemed like my family’d be better off without me.”
“You’ve got an answer to everything.”
“Just about.”
“You’ve got the whole fucking thing figured out.”
“No.”
“So why trust’em?”
“I don’t.”
“Why question sound advice?”
“I haven’t heard any.”
“Why are you closed to what I have to say, before I’m done saying it?”
“Because I don’t believe in you.”
“Good.”
He knocked back his bourbon and smiled to himself.
“Good.”
He stood up and walked toward the door. On his way out he pointed his finger at the keyboardist, like a gun, his thumb dropped like a hammer and he faded into the darkness of the street. Once the door closed the keyboardist stopped playing and unplugged his amp.
The flies started to disperse, and the room started to cool off. I pocketed my money and stood up. The bartender nodded to me and started wiping down my spot on the counter. I held the door open for the keyboardist as he lugged his case and amp out the door.
We stood on the sidewalk lighting cigarettes. There was a cabstand across the street, with one lone taxi driver snoring loudly behind the wheel. Otherwise, the street was empty. He started to cross, but I stayed where I was. I knew what was going to happen. I started looking up and down the street for the car that would come out of nowhere and run him down. But there was nothing.
He knocked the roof of the cab and got into the back as the cabbie woke up. The engine revved and the taxi sped off down the street. I started walking back the way I came. Before the taillights had completely disappeared, I saw the cab run a red light and get t-boned by a bus. I stopped and watch them skid and tumble through the intersection, then out of view.
I looked to my right and saw the red neon cross of the mission and started walking toward it. Most of the homeless people had gone inside for the night, but a few still sat on the steps with bottles in paper bags, talking in low murmurs. The alcohol was eating my insides. The brick walls were moving like water. Faces kept floating to the surface. I started retching and heaving. I grabbed a trashcan and vomited into it. It was dark, but my blood was glowing, so I knew I was throwing up blood. Then the worms came.
At first I thought I was going to choke to death, because I couldn’t get any breath or muster enough strength to push them out. I felt them squirming up out of my stomach, into my throat, trying to get down my windpipe. Then several slithered over my tongue. I got air into my lungs and coughed.
Like a bulldozer, everything moved up and out. Huge worms splashed and squirmed all over the garbage can and over my boots. I kicked them away and staggered toward the mission, spitting and wiping my mouth.
One of the bums held his bottle out to me.
“Looks like yew needa drink!”
I swiped at the bottle heading for the stairs, but without warning the sidewalk came up and sucker punched me. I rolled over on to my back and touched my bloody, tender cheek. Stars were falling out of the sky, fading, as they got closer to the ground. I looked at the neon cross. Christ hung from it. Blood running down his face. From his wrists. From his feet. From his side. His expression full of sympathy for a baby bird that fell from its nest.
All I wanted to do was die. So I closed my eyes and tried to. But I didn’t.
I woke up lying on a bench inside the mission with a cold pack over the side of my face. The priest was holding it there, when he saw that I was awake, he told me to hold it. I must have been out for a while, because when I sat up I felt slightly less fucked up than before I got there. Nowhere near sober, but I wasn’t feeling worms in my stomach anymore.
The priest sat down beside me.
“Havin’ a rough night?”
“I reckon.”
“Do you need a place to crash?”
“No, I’m at a hotel…somewhere.”
“What brought you here?”
“This is the closest thing to a church I’ve seen since I got into town.”
“This is a church.”
“Looks like an abandoned gym.”
“It is. Was. We converted it years ago.”
“Needs some work.”
“Yea, well, there’s not much money in this kind of business. We rely on the kindness and donations of others, mostly.”
“No one’s been kind or donated shit since when?”
“Since we got the building.”
“You look like you want to give up.”
“No, I’m just tired.”
“Are you making progress?”
“A little.”
“How many souls you figure you save on a daily basis?”
“I couldn’t say, but if I only save one, then all the feces and vomit and stench and blood and sweat and profanity have been worth it.”
“I can’t imagine being that committed to anything. I mean, you don’t even know if it’s real.”
“I have faith.”
“What’s faith? What the fuck is that? Just a leap in the dark. What if there’s a cliff? What if you’re wrong?”
“The burden to worry about that stuff isn’t on me. I believe and I go forward. If I’m wrong, by the time I find out it’ll be too late to do anything about it, so why dwell on it? I’m right though.”
“I never had religion. My wife did. She was always trying to drag me to church.”
“You ever go with her?”
“Once. I felt like the whole congregation knew I didn’t belong. Just kept feeling the eyes on me.”
“Where’s your wife now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Divorced?”
“Just absent.”
“So…you were looking for a church. Here you are. What can I do for you?”
“I need to know what to do. I’ve been runnin’ for a while. Did something I shouldn’t have done, which got me blamed for somethin’ I didn’t do. I came here to hide. Heard I’d be safe. I came here to hit rock bottom so I could rebuild myself from the ground up, but all I’m doing is floating in limbo like I have been for most of my life. I’m gray. No matter what I do, I’m never really bad or good, just not particularly right.”
“You’ve been trying to walk with one foot on the road of the righteous and one foot on the road paved with gold.”
“Maybe. Well not exactly. More like I’m walking on the strip of grass between the two.”
“You gotta serve someone. You’re life has no meaning. Step onto one of the roads, and your life will be defined.”
“Which one?”
“Which one do you think?”
I was tired of talking. This conversation was pointless, because I already knew what he’d say to each one of my questions. Ultimately this would lead to him asking me to repent and accept Christ as my personal Savior. Then I’d be able to dance on through the gates of Heaven when my death finally caught up with me (speaking of which, I’m surprised it hasn’t shown up in town yet).
I took the cold pack off my face and closed my eyes against the spins. The priest asked me if I wanted some coffee, something to eat. I shook my head and stood up.
“Why don’t you let me fix you up a cot?”
“It’s ok. I remember where I’m staying now.”
“Alright. Well, good luck. Come back anytime you need to talk.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, remember this; God’s heart breaks for his children who have yet to come home.”
I paused at the door and considered that. I nodded and walked into the predawn darkness, which was cool and the fog was rolling in.
After a block I looked back, all I could see was the neon cross glowing brilliantly. There was laughter in the distance, then a crash that must have been someone stumbling over a garbage can.
5.5.2006

The Watchmen Revisited

Originally published on Comicworldnews.com.

Allen Ginsberg described Hubert Selby’s epic debut Last Exit To Brooklyn as a book that was going to “explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America…” He could have easily have been describing Alan Moore (Swamp Thing, From Hell, The Courtyard, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and Dave Gibbons’ (Martha Washington) The Watchmen.
The Watchmen waded into uncharted waters and challenged a medium that had been wallowing in self-reference and repetition for at least forty years. The book stood in a stark defiance (backed by Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns and Howard Chaykins’ American Flagg) against every notion about what comics were and what they could do. Moore and Gibbons brought an underground bravery to mainstream comics and nothing has been the same since.
Like Last Exit…, reading The Watchmen, at least as a trade, can be daunting just for the sheer girth of information. We’re dealing with the intimate lives of six different lead characters and seven supporting characters that help give foundation to the lives of the leads. Not to mention the background characters that have continuing roles throughout the book, like the newspaper vendor, the two detectives, the ex-wife of one of the leads, the prison shrink. No character is just there- each is unique, has a purpose, and is spotlighted. Besides the sequential art, each issue (except the last) ends with an excerpt from an autobiographical novel, background information on a comic book being read by one of the extras, an essay, a police report, an ornithological essay, newspaper articles, a page from a catalogue, or an interview. These extra bits give even more depth and insight into what a superhero is, where they came from, what purpose they served and a general feel for the universe in which The Watchmen revolve.
The Watchmen opens with Detectives Fine and Bourquin investigating the homicide of an Edward Blake, who we soon learn is the legendary masked adventurer The Comedian, one of the last still active crime fighters, since the passing of the Keene Act, which outlawed all masked adventuring/vigilante, except those sanctioned by the government, like The Comedian. His murder is also being investigated by the last of the outlaw vigilantes, Rorschach, who deduces that there is a mask killer on the loose. He tries to warn his former colleagues, Dr. Manhattan, Laurie Juspeczyk, Dan (Nite Owl) Dreiberg, and Adrian (Ozymandias) Veidt, while beating his way through the criminal underworld looking for answers. None of the other ex-heroes have much interest in Rorschach’s theories and dismiss him as the nut job the rest of the world already thinks he is. But then their lives start to fall apart.
The next logical step for any comic book to take, would be for the heroes to come out of retirement, join together, and go kick the crap out who ever is screwing up their lives. Moore gives us something a little different. A little more real, and so much more fascinating.
That’s all I’m going to say about what happens in the book. For one, the surprises should be left to the new readers to discover on their own, and two actually going into the details of this monster would require a book of it’s own, to navigate through the dark, maze-like alleys of the plot and subplots. (Actually, I don’t know why no one has thought to do one of those fancy critique/companion books on The Watchmen, like the ones for Ulysses or The Sound and the Fury. After all, comic book or not, Alan Moore is just as fine a writer as Joyce or Faulkner.)
There is a general feeling of uneasiness and familiarity to The Watchmen, especially in the context of America’s post 9/11 state. The bloody conclusion, political ineptitude and dirty dealings hits far too close to home for comfort (let’s not forget, The Watchmen debuted in 1986, the Reagan/Bush era, when the Cold War was still very real). The Watchmen’s Nixon era America is not a far stretch from W. Bush’s America; civil unrest, paranoia, mass murder, un-American laws (the Patriot Act, anybody?), depression, and disillusionment. Now at the twentieth anniversary of The Watchmen, it’s still doing what good art has always done in times of struggle; provide a cathartic release and help give a comprehensible voice to our stress and fears, thus making them easier to focus on and deal with.
To say The Watchmen is a story about retired super heroes, is like saying Last Exit To Brooklyn is a story about a neighborhood. That doesn’t even scratch the surface. Like Last Exit…, The Watchmen raised the bar so high, we are still waiting for someone to match them, and it seems like, finally, twenty years after Moore and Gibbons threw down the gauntlet there are writers worthy of the challenge. If there is anyone out there that will topple Moore, it will probably be Warren Ellis, if not Moore himself, who has never stopped to rest on his laurels. There is a reason The Watchmen top so many people’s favorites list. If you don’t know why, go find out for yourself.

Savage Lit

Summer time in 1994 or maybe '95, I was in McKay's books in Oak Ridge, TN. It was an unusually hip used book and cd store, next door to the Krogers, where I found a lot of great punk albums and weird books. A couple times a week I'd prowl up and down the aisles, looking for anything that looked interesting. Passing through the mystery section, a title caught my eye; A Hell Of A Woman by Jim Thompson. I picked it up and knew I was going to buy it, even though I wasn't interested in mysteries or crime novels. The cover spoke out loud, with the alluring black and white photo of the beautiful femme fatale and the hot pink bands slashed across the front with the title and author's name inside. Even if the book sucked, it looked great. I gave the nice lady at the counter a buck and went out into the summer heat, not knowing I was about to have my life turned up side down.
Not by A Hell Of A Woman. I didn't particularly like it, but by The Killer Inside Of Me. I don't know why I decided to read another Thompson book, when the first one hadn't done much for me, I was compelled.
The Killer Inside Of Me moved me in a way no book would, until I started reading Hubert Selby Jr a year later. Thompson wrote in such a manner that you felt the sweat and anxiety and horror of each page. It was like sitting at a bar, while a killer held a pistol in your ribs while he confessed his sins. This wasn't Kerouac. This wasn't Miller. This wasn't the insipid, banal trash found in the rest of the Mystery section in Barnes and Noble. This was a different animal all together.
Thompson was working class. Tough. Drunk. Highly intelligent. He came from the oil fields of Texas. The Great Depression. His art is wholly American, but only really appreciated over seas. He died poor, barely known, with few, if any, of his books in print. To this day he remains a hero to me, when most of my heroes have disappointed and/or disgusted me.
Nelson Algren had a similar effect on me, as well as a similar story as Thompson's. I discovered Algren just before moving to Boston with his novel Walk On The Wild Side. Algren died alone, poor, his books out of print, with no one to claim his body, yet, he was one of America's greatest novelists.
So. for those of you who don't know, I give you Thompson and Algren. Two masters of savage American literature, criminally unknown in the 21st century.
I put a lot of importance on art and literature and music, because I believe in the importance of communication. I believe in plain-speak and not wasting time. I don't mind ugliness, profanity, violence, or drunkeness, because often times those things keep company with truth. Jesus certainly wasn't afraid of their company and his name is married to truth.
If I die penniless, alone, and with all my books out print, at least I'll know I was honest and in good company.

Finding Fenario: A Social History of Jackson Hall And The Mules

I had written this article to promote the release of Jackson Hall and The Mules debut album for Sponic Zine, but the online zine folded before it was published. The album is still available, contact me if you're interested.


Finding Fenario: A Social History of
Jackson Hall And The Mules
By Tim Murr, July 2004

Like so many things, it begins with Lou Reed. When you come from a small southern town, and you are the only one who has a Velvet Underground tape, you feel like you’re in some kind of secret club. You only let in your closest, most trusted friends, and then you smile at each other, because you know something all these small minded people will never know.
When Jackson Hall first got his hands on a copy of The Best Of the Velvet Underground; The Words And Music Of Lou Reed, a whole new world of possibilities opened up, and the seeds of everything he was to do in his life were planted in that moment.
In Kingston Tennessee there wasn’t much to make you feel desperate. But “Run Run Run” made him feel desperate to get out and do something great. “White Light White Heat” was a revelation and “Sweet Jane” was the standard by which all other music was to be judged.
But Lou and the Velvets were only the first pieces to the puzzle. As the end of high school neared, and more people came into Jackson’s life, the game changed and bent around the new rules and head trips of the other individuals, who were enlightened (and being enlightened was a prerequisite of the game). Slim Dunlop was two years younger than Jackson, but in him, Jackson found his first real musical partner, who got it. Scotts Jones was two years older, and was indeed wiser. Very quiet, very mature. Jackson, Slim, and Scotts formed several short lived bands, that were destined for failure from the get go, because where they were coming from was not a place many others were coming from. Not in Kingston Tennessee, anyway. Rock, country, punk, soul, jazz, and blues were not separate genres in their hands or heads. Everything was up for grabs and everything was possible.
In the mid 90’s the trio came close with a group called The Bourgeois Pop Machine. Their live shows were a test of endurance, for the band and the audience. (For a New Year’s Eve performance, they learned 50 covers, on top of ten originals, and played nonstop for 4 hours.) BPM had no concept of limitations. They took on all genres, including many jazz standards that would leave many pop bands scratching their heads at all the chord changes. These would be followed by a two and a half minute blast of power pop soul. Every show opened with “Sweet Jane” and within a year it was almost the only cover they ever did, besides The Beatles’ “I Am The Walrus”.
What made BPM so exciting to listen to made them impossible to sell. They were part of no genre, and didn’t fit in with any other band in the Knoxville music scene. On top of that, their timing was poor.
Knoxville was forty minutes from Kingston, and was the third largest city in Tennessee. But for it’s size, it may as well be a small town, because its downtown is empty and there are few places for a small band to play. When BPM first came to Knoxville most of the local bands were moving away or breaking up. Contacts never lasted or helped, and the band found themselves playing to a handful of people on the porch of a local coffee shop.
Frustrations were high, and with six individuals, with their own ideas about music, and the direction the band should go in, it was only a matter of time before things fell apart.
BPM’s last show came one September night in ’96. It was a porch show at the Java Hut, and was in front of a crowd of about thirty people. Half the band, including Jackson, Scotts, and Slim weren’t even speaking. There had been some heated debates about the number of jazz instrumentals and the lyrical content of Jackson’s songs. No one was happy and everyone wanted to quit, but no one wanted to say so. It was a hard decision considering how hard they’d worked. One unreleased album, and a single getting sparse airplay on a local station, showed so much potential, but the band was growing apart.
Jackson made the decision, in the middle of the second set. He dropped the mic and walked away. Scotts followed. The rest of the band jammed on the same song for two hours, until the entire audience got pissed and left. The group met at Krystal’s later that night, without Jackson, and decided not to carry on. Feelings were pretty well damaged.
Slim and Scotts formed a jazz combo with the drummer and bass player BPM, but Scotts soon left the group, and for a while had very little contact with any one.
Jackson knocked around Knoxville for a few months, seeing Slim on occasion, but no music was made between the two and they didn’t talk about forming another band. Then out of the blue, Jackson announced he was leaving for Boston. He had been accepted to an art school up there. It was a shock to all his friends, because everyone wanted to leave, but no one ever thought they would, and then he was.
For the next six years Jackson drank to oblivion in the bars of Boston, living the life of an artist with a lust for life and a death wish. Many nights were whiskey soaked bad noise kinda drunks, knocking back drink after drink, at The Model or The Silhouette, then rampaging through the streets, back to his Brighton apartment, with his new friends in tow, who were all as bad of drunks as he was. Most nights wound up in the living room, playing country songs on his acoustic guitar, everyone singing songs that they only knew through him, by George Jones, Hank Williams, and Merle Haggard. Jackson formed a rowdy honky tonk band with a few musicians he’d met around Allston. He finally had an outlet for all the new songs he had been writing, but the band was short lived. They played one legendary house show in someone’s basement, playing a set of genuine country at punk velocity, thrilling the packed room. The show was a sloppy drunken mess, but so fucking fun, that people were talking about it for weeks. But, for whatever reason, the band only played once more. My wedding reception. Our families were a bit dumbstruck. One more fucked up, drunk legend. Boston took its toll on Jackson’s health, far greater than he’d ever admit, and by 2000, it was time to get the hell out. All the fun had gone out of the all night drunken parties, and things began to get dark. One of his closest friends was flirting with suicide, and one night after drinking a handle of Jim Bean, ran into the Devil on his way to the bathroom. The Devil told him to kill someone, and he shared this with Jackson. Jackson talked him down and no one died, but it was a sign that it was time to go.
In the mean time, Slim continued to make a go at jazz, playing anywhere he could, with any group. He wound up studying under Donald Brown, who’d played with Art Blakey. Slim had dropped guitar and switched to piano. In two years he was better at piano than he was at guitar after six years.
Slim immersed himself into the jazz program at the University of Tennessee and began composing. He was living off student loans, what little he made off playing gigs, and selling his blood. He was selling his blood at least once a week, and his arm began to develop track marks, which raised some eyebrows. But nothing was going into his veins, just down his throat or up his nose. Old Crow whiskey was his weapon of choice, and crank was cheap and easy to get. The summer of ’98 he dropped acid for the first time, and it was a thrilling experience, but he only tripped once more. But what was most common was cough syrup. He often drank one or two bottles a night, and listened intently to avant gard jazz and classical music. He also listened intently to Jerry Lee Lewis, the Killer.
But by 2000, life was taking its toll on Slim as well and he began to clean up, and concentrate more on playing and finding paying gigs.
Scotts seemingly dropped off the face of the planet for a while. No one really knew what was happening with him in the years that followed the break up of BPM. But he was around, making ends meet and attending classes.
Jackson left Boston with a degree from the Art Institute of Boston, a bad headache, and a yearning to be back home in the south. But Knoxville was not in his future. He blew through Tennessee without stopping, and settled in Atlanta.
Atlanta proved to be anything but what he was looking for, and after a year he was moving again. This time to Chapel Hill, NC, determined to make the music thing happen he began prowling the clubs and bars looking for other like minded musicians and artists. And he found plenty; unfortunately they all had something happening, with no room for a side project. Jackson would be damned if he was going to be anyone’s side project any damned way. Besides, there was something else, nagging his heart; he missed his boys.
He contacted Slim and Scots, and they mended broken fences, and quickly began serious talks about forming another band. Jackson’s more recent songs had more of a country bend to them, but that didn’t deter the other two. They moved to Chapel Hill and began writing, arranging and recording the new music.
After a solid year of writing and jamming, almost nightly, the thirteen songs that would make up their first album, Found Fenario, took shape and were a force to be reckoned with. The fusion of soul, blues, and country ran the gamut of emotions-from heart breaking to humorous, from rowdy to compassionate. It is inspirational music from the American heartland. It is also, and maybe most importantly, uplifting music- as much from the heart as from the gut.
You hear Jackson and the Mules and you feel all right. Hell, you feel damn good. Popular music doesn’t sound like this, but life changing music does. Three chords are a powerful weapon in the right hands. I can imagine some thirteen year old kid, with a shit eating grin, hearing the Mules for the first time, twenty years from now, and suddenly feeling like he’s smarter than everyone else, because he knows about this band, and they don’t.