weed hounds southern tour, pt 5 – oxford
yep, according to my calculations oxford, ms was the next stop on our route of the south. we were slotted to play at a place called the red star bar. for some reason i didn’t shoot too many photos the day of the show but i can’t quite remember why. we set off to mississippi and eventually found ourself in a great deal of traffic with people uncomfortable and full of pee
my reaction to the traffic
we eventually stopped at some point at the king of burgers somewhere. i can’t even remember what state it was
i guess we were near rt 412?
on the way to oxford there were tons of two lane highways we got on. rolling, two lane highways.
at some point it started to rain and shit can it rain in the south. the weather just springs out and shows its face. can you see the size of those rain drops? i did my best to capture the sheer magnitude of the things
these photos still don’t do it justice
oh so everywhere in mississippi is covered by this beautiful vine called kudzu (sp?) i was informed that although it looks beautiful it is a complete nuisance to the natives. it springs up and covers literally everything. but it makes for some really marvelous views
we got off the highway and ended up in some sort of ghost town where old college buildings that once appeared to be thriving were just abandoned. they even built the new buildings directly next to the old beautiful ones
we eventually landed in the square of oxford. my first thought was that its not the biggest town in the world. there is just sort of a square with a courthouse in the middle and that is about it. nothing much else. people in oxford seem to like to eat and read because there was only bars, restaurants and book stores
they had cool old phone booths (obviously)
we got to the venue, which was closed, and noticed a flier for our show that night. that ruled. its cool when people seem to care about the show when you get into a town
we walked around a bit and found a bar to watch lebron’s announcement. we were hoping he’d choose the knicks but had no luck
after eating a descent slice of jalepeno pizza we entered the venue for sound checks. this turned out to be the best sounding place we played on tour. the promoter, dent may, really hooked us up. we had a cooler of beers (who cares) and an awesome stage to play on. i didn’t shoot any shots of girlfriends with my camera that night because it was the first night i remembered to take jenny’s camera and use it. here’s one of the shots that i found on her tumblr (which is incredibly entertaining, btw)
after the show we followed dent through what seems like 10 miles of dark forest and eventually reached his amazing barn-like house. we had a few couches and a few strips of carpeted floor to crash on
his house that he shared with a few other dudes was filled with fun stuff like a giant poster of andy warhol, a movie poster for wild style and assorted portraits and knick knacks
also this massive fly was left where it was flatted on the window. i stared at it when i woke up for a while. hey guy, how’s it going
the rain rolled in and out again but we missed it for the minute. i found myself trying to photograph dent’s place and saw jenny was out there doing the same. look at the ominous edge of the sky in the distance
after packing up we went back into town to meet dent and his co-worker pal at a real southern comfort food spot called tallulah’s kitchen. the food was pretty phenomenal but the portions were massive. i couldn’t finish my black bean chipotle burger at all. the others got catfish steaks and fried oreos. woah. i missed the fried oreos but made up for it this past week on the jersey shore. anyway
it was here that dent’s friend (who’s name slips my mind) told me that in town someone started selling a variety of jam made from that stuff kudzu i mentioned earlier. he said it sort of has a minty flavor… who knew!
when we got back to the square i ducked off for some ice cream with the girlfriends. the heat was wearing me down. i took this same photo with my camera but the scan had so much dust on it i decided to use the version i took with jenny’s camera. the coke float i had was so tasty. i wish i was drinking it right now… old thymey coke bottle… mmm
when i walked back to off square books, the place dent worked at, i narrowly missed the rain which came down in torrents. i think pat was unfortunately stuck in it
the book store was really cool, it had all sorts of cool titles and authors as well as recordings and treats. the night prior i wandered into it alone not knowing it’s connection to our promoter and bought steven martin’s born standing up for only six dollars! good read btw
we waited for the rain to dry off a bit and pet the local book store cat. nick and that cat became the best of friends.
the girlfriends were gonna wait a little longer in oxford but i think we wanted to see what our next stop, jackson, was about
we thanked dent and parted ways. he is a great dude, look him up if you’re ever in the city of oxford
off to jackson, the next stop.