Oxford: Southern Picturebook

In trying to describe Oxford, I started to write all kinds of absurd hooks (e.g., "Do you ever wish life would slow down and say howdy?").  Although all of them were true, none of them worked.  They all sounded like promotions for planned communities a la Seaside or radio commercials for Blue Bell.  I honestly couldn't stomach these wrenching cliches as descriptions of something that I've come to dearly love and hold so closely.

But like I say, all of the cliches are true.  Life does in fact slow down.  People are as polite as I've ever seen (I consider myself painfully etiquette-bound, and I was struck by their politeness).  The town is leafy and green and emanates from a square that literally embodies tradition, cleanliness, morality, style, learning, and cuisine.

And all of it anchored by Ole Miss.  It's a campus grand in its modesty and stateliness.  The white columns and red brick are totally at home with themselves.  The architecture itself seems especially
organic, as Ole Miss's Greek Revival architecture takes its cue both from description and from proscription.  Descriptively, the campus sits miles from the Delta, described by some as "the most Southern place on Earth," where Greek Revival columns seem to grow from the ground like cypress trees.  And proscriptively, the buildings take their cue from the architecture of Plato's Athens--as do many universities, of course--but here they even label the focal point of the campus the "Lyceum."  I've rarely seen a campus get it this right.

There should be more to come, but I could go on for hours about Ole Miss's effort to right wrongs, wright leaders, and right its pigskin ship.  But it's enough, for now, to revel in Oxford's near perfection.

Playing Possum: I Feel Tears Wellin' Up

The original "King George" is dead.

That's incredible.  His voice--with its instinctive phrasing and pure, rich melodic notes--defined country music for decades.  He sang with and for the Establishment, the "Nashville Sound."  If he thought that strings would enrich a song, he let them in.  No Nudie suit?  Fine.  George would wear a white leisure suit.  But it simply did not matter, because whatever his producers suggested, no one could pack more emotion and meaning into a song than George Jones.

"The Nashville Sound" is and was a dirty epithet and point of contention for  fans, and rightly so.  Those people--myself included--hail Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Cory Morrow, and Jason Boland as the antitheses of Nashville's soul-destroying, over-producing hit-factory.  "The Nashville Sound" is oftentimes viewed as the antithesis of "real," soul-felt music.  Much of that sentiment rings in me.  The eschewance of overproduced "Nashville" for more organic "Texas" is a common trope.  I love all of the artists who decided to forge a path in country music through channels outside the established Nashville folkways of country stardom.

And yet I cannot escape George Jones.  And no one can.  He is to country music what Frank Sinatra was to all pop music of his generation.  The weeping steel may have been supplemented by teary strings, but it was certainly not upended by them.  George Jones's voice was simply dynamite.  Anyone who could pack that much emotion into two minutes deserves our respect, no matter his genre.  He interpreted and carried a song like no one I've heard since him.  No one on radio, country or otherwise, can bring the raw emotion (i.e., supply meaning) to song like he can.

And so I say "The King Is Gone." Every time I play guitar and sing, that song carries your influence.  Thank you for teaching us how to sing, and listen, and love, and feel.