Austin Fanzine Project

[Photo: promotional photo for the John Michael McCarthy film The Sore Losers] Promotional photo for The Sore Losers (Mike, Korine, Kim, and Susan)

Kimbrough play. It was kind of funny — nobody in his band could drive, so they had to send a driver down to Holly Springs, MS to bring everyone up so they could play the show. And it didn't really last that long, only about 45 minutes, which is about two songs for Junior.

This Dixie Fried was in a wickedly unsuitable venue, the Center for Southern Folklore in Beale Street. As a center for southern folklore, it's great. As a bar, it sucks mud. Venues being what they are in Memphis, it could easily have been worse, and at least you didn't slip in puddles of sweat like at the downtown Barrister's version of Dixie Fried, mark II. It's just that the place is a museum/information center/coffee shop, and as such isn't real conducive to the laid back, uninhibited feel necessary to listen to a lot of nasty music for hours on end. So while it was all right to watch old Sun sidemen Frank Frost and Sam Carr play in there, since a certain amount of reverence is due to them, it was a pisspoor place to watch the Oblivians, who played a pretty stitled set.

That Saturday, this amazing guitarist named Robert "Bilbo" Walker played a matinee set there, and boy, talk about a showman! This guy duckwalked halfway around the room, played solos behind his back and was dressed finer than cat hair. Anyone who wears a wig and lamé is going to have my attention, especially if he's black, male, middle-aged and duckwalks. I'm telling you, folks put on a show out there — later on Saturday, Othar Turner's Fife and Drum Band marched through the door in military style to take the stage.

This trip lasted through my twenty-first birthday, and even included a visit to the Hollywood Casino, in Tunica, MS. You drive down the highway south from Memphis into some rural Delta country and the all of a sudden, these huge neon casinos pop up out of the blackness. Considering that the Mid-South is such an affluent part of the country, I'm not surprised that these folks choose to blow their "disposable" income on house odds and quarter slots. Honestly, we were the youngest folks by about forty

Junior Kimbrough at Dixie Fried 3. [Photo: Junior Kimbrough performing on guitar]

Othar Turner's Fife and Drum Band at Dixie Fried 3. [Photo: Othar Turner and band performing]