Beervana, Wisconsin: Local brewers at the cutting edge of the American craft-beer revolution

When the majority of American beer connoisseurs speak of a “craft” beer paradise, a Shangri-La of locally brewed malted barley & hops concoctions, they usually mean Portland, Oregon (USA).  Also known as Portlandia & the people’s republic of portland, the Rose City - a West Coast community of 600,000 - has embraced the portmanteau moniker Beervana.  And the hype is actually justified:  Portland deserves the craft-beer title of the continental United States, given its approximately 59 quirky brew-pubs & craft breweries.   

The term “Beervana” is simultaneously (1) a nod to the mellow Pacific Northwest / West Coast seeker vibe - available in even the rainiest parts of climatically diverse Oregon, Washington & California; and (2) high praise for the heavenly array of high-quality local beers on tap at Portland’s licensed premises.  The craft-beer revolution, of course, is not limited to the coasts.  It has spread far & wide throughout contemporary America.  

The craze for hops-enhanced pale ales & other trendy beers - whether on tap or in recyclable bottles & growlers (re-usable 64-oz. glass jugs) - shows no sign of abating soon.  Hip cities, such as Seattle & San Francisco, may enjoy a moderate climate & a sophisticated culture.  But their craft beers are no better than those brewed in, say, Kenosha (Wisconsin).  In that city of 100,000 souls, Public Craft Brewing Co. & Rustic Road Brewing Co., both established in 2012 in the city’s revived downtown, lend hipster cred & cutting-edge chic to that former AMC/Chrysler factory town.

Indeed, Wisconsin’s many craft brewers - from metro Milwaukee & Madison to Green Bay, Black River Falls & beyond - are giving Portland a run for their money.  When it comes to offering tasty options for locally brewed, small-batch craft beers, the proud brewing tradition of the Badger State has been rescued from the slow death of corporate mediocrity.  Moreover, these niche gourmet beers fit the emerging foodie economy, unlike the insipid mass-market beers sold by global giants such as SABMiller or Anheuser-Busch InBev.  

In fact, Wisconsin craft brewers have made important contributions to the small-is-better industry legacy.  In his list of the “Ten Great American Beers” (see the June/July 2002 issue of American Heritage), for example, renowned beer expert Michael Jackson includes Wisconsin Belgian Red by New Glarus Brewing Co. (est. 1993).  He says that this take on a Belgian cherry beer has “an almost purple color, a textured body, a malty background, and a beautiful balance of almondy fruitiness and tartness.”  In a nod to the international success of American craft brewers, Jackson adds that this tasty beer from tiny New Glarus, Wisconsin, “has won several awards in Europe.”

In Milwaukee (population:  599,000), home of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball club as well as the iconic Harley-Davidson motorcycle & gear brand, the renaissance of craft brewing was launched by the Sprecher Brewing Co., which sold its first beer in 1985.  What could go better together than baseball, Harley bikes & beer?  Meanwhile in the state capital, Madison (population:  250,000), successful breweries such as Ale Asylum (eastside) & Capital Brewery (in suburban Middleton) have become established leaders in craft brewing.  You might say that Milwaukee & Madison are vying to become the Mecca of Midwest craft brewing.

Today the leading innovator among Brew City’s numerous craft brewers is Lakefront Brewery, founded in Milwaukee in 1987, when it brewed a mere 60 barrels.  In addition to an annual production of thousands of barrels of its own varieties, Lakefront also custom brews proprietary recipes on contract for area brewpubs - such as the refreshing Grampa Jack’s Pilsner, exclusively available at Reefpoint Brewhouse (est. 2012) in nearby Racine, Wisconsin.  

Located in a restored warehouse on North Commerce Street, adjacent to downtown & beside the Milwaukee River, Lakefront Brewing was cited by the editors of Draft magazine (in 2008) as offering the best “family friendly” brewery tour in the world. They put it ahead of the staid yet generous tour at the gargantuan Guinness brewery at St. James Gate, Dublin (Ireland).  And deservedly so:  having taken both tours, I assure you that indie-sized Lakefront Brewery’s hour-long tour beats the Guinness version hands down for entertainment value.  

Having a sharp sense of humor is a vital tool for survival, a way of remaining sane in a sometimes crazy world.  And here’s the genius of the Lakefront tour:  it’s pretty funny (if you understand American English well).  Our middle-aged guide, Katie, presented herself as a refugee from the corporate sector:  she used to be an accountant, but switched to teaching.  Lakefront Brewery manager Chris Ranson explains that their tour “revolves around the brewing process” so that “participants get a real good sense of brewing.”   

Yet it’s not at all a dry learning experience for thirsty adults.  One happy customer called Lakefront’s tour “the Animal House of brewery tours,” reportedly because the $7 admission charge includes four 6-ounce tap beers, served in a spacious Old World-style beer hall, a coupon for another pint at a local bar & a souvenir Lakefront pint glass.  The brewery’s owner, Russ Klisch, kicked the fun up a notch by purchasing two iconic items of local memorabilia:  (1) the chalet that mascot Bernie Brewer used as an outfield perch to watch every Brewers’ home game at Milwaukee County Stadium; and (2) the bottling line used in the title sequence of Laverne & Shirley, a lame ’70s sitcom where two goofy girlfriends work at the fictional Shotz Brewery in Milwaukee.  

Lakefront also offers a “technical tour” (conducted especially for home-brewers) for $30, as well as private tours upon request.  In addition to their many year-round beers (such as Extended Play IPA) & seasonal offerings (e.g. Cherry Lager), Lakefront makes a gluten-free beer (New Grist) for celiac-disease sufferers as well as an Organic ESB for health freaks.  Lakefront Brewing has been certified “green” for its environmental practices by Travel Green Wisconsin.

Craft brewing is an industry ripe for parody, with its eccentric brewers, offbeat beer-names & garish labels.  Flying Dog Brewery in Colorado, for example, uses the punky splatter illustrations of Ralph Steadman on its labels as well as a tagline by “Gonzo” journalist and longtime Woody Creek (CO) resident Hunter S. Thompson:  “Good people drink good beer.”  Some craft brewers resort to desperate measures in order to cut through the clutter of this suddenly crowded market.  Only three percent of US beer sales (some six million barrels) last year were domestic crafts.  However, that’s up 17% from 2012, according to Brewers Association figures.  No wonder craft-beer brands keep proliferating.  

Is it a delusional business model, spreading like a beer-borne contagion?  Or a viable consumer trend?  Only time will tell.  As evidence of craft-beer marketing run amok, I offer Exhibit A (as in apropos or absurdity):  an otherwise appealing bottle of dark brown Scotch ale, by Sacramento Brewing Co. of California, is cursed with the yeti-inspired name Sac-Squatch.  Doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, does it?  

So it’s high time that Christopher Guest make a mockumentary on the subject.  He could call it Bottles of Glory, a bizarre journey into the creative heart of the American craft brewer.  (“More fun than a lost weekend,” drones Roger Ebert’s immortal Internet avatar.)  Guest & a pair of longtime improv collaborators, Harry Shearer & Michael McKean, famously spoofed aging British rock stars & heavy-metal headbangers in This is Spinal Tap (1984).  They deftly skewered the Sixties folk-music generation in A Mighty Wind (2003).  They even lambasted purebred-dog competitions (Best in Show, 2000) & community theatre (Waiting for Guffman, 1997).  Satirizing small-batch craft brewers who aspire to make a legendary beer, while conspiring to undermine their beer-addled competitors, might make for a good film scenario.  

Lakefront guide Katie deployed bad puns & bald-faced lies in telling her condensed Story of Beer.  But she kept her balance, deftly sidestepping comic bombs.  More important, her passion for the subject was palpable.  Lakefront’s Chris Ranson hires all the tour guides, requiring each applicant to have home-brewing experience.  He made a solid hire in Katie’s case.

Conventional wisdom would have you believe that the post-’80s “craft beer revolution” only happened because, in October 1978, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed the homebrewers & winemakers bill.  That federal law led to thousands of beer enthusiasts experimenting with recipes, making up to the legal limit of 200 gallons of beer per household.  Some of them were encouraged to go commercial, opening brewpubs & micro-breweries across the vast parched landscape of North America.  

What’s usually left out of the Hollywood myth outlined above is the countervailing ’70s trend toward taste-free “light beers” (Miller Lite, Coors Light, etc.).  The aspirational American beer-lover’s palette demanded something better.  It devised an American response to such substantial European imports as Grolsch (with its porcelain cap), Guinness & St. Pauli Girl.  In the end, demanding consumers will create & sustain diverse markets - in so-called “free societies,” anyway.  Beer is no exception.

In William Hogarth’s 1751 print Beer Street, the British artist depicts drinking ales & porters as a life-affirming habit.  In sharp contrast to the dying wretches of Gin Lane (a companion illustration), people on allegorical Beer Street look healthy & happy.  Hogarth festoons the scene with a sign celebrating beer’s main ingredient:  Health to the barley mow!  Or as the old Czech folk song puts it:  Kde se pivo pije / tam se dobře žije!  [Wherever beer is brewed / life is lived well!]

In a cover story for American Heritage (June/July 2002), “Beer and America,” Library of America publisher Max Rudin calls beer the “drink of democracy.”  He embraces both the modest working-class origins & the literary legacy of a sometimes denigrated aspect of American culture.  Rudin quotes beer-praising passages from Jack London & John Steinbeck & he cites a nose-thumbing beer gag in the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera as proof of beer’s deeply ingrained popularity in the USA.  

Fortunately, contemporary craft brewers, including several from Wisconsin, have not only improved the taste & variety of American beer.  They’ve also educated discriminating beer drinkers’ palettes along the way.  Cheers!

NOTE - Related recommended reading: (1) for details about the history of beer in the Badger State, get Breweries of Wisconsin by Jerry Apps (Madison, WI:  University of Wisconsin Press, 2nd ed. 2005); and (2) for a generously illustrated overview of the industry, see Brewed Awakening:  Behind the Beers & Brewers Leading the World’s Craft Brewing Revolution by Joshua M. Bernstein (NY:  Sterling Epicure, 2011).

[© 2014 by J.C. Mrázek]

Racine vs. Kenosha: rival cities on different paths in the 21st-century

This month’s ballyhooed announcement of the proposed $65 million Machinery Row project in Racine left me sceptical.  The Iowa developers’ plan, the latest of several big ideas for the Belle City’s redevelopment (most of which have failed due to lack of financing) might someday bring shops & loft dwellings to a pair of decrepit asbestos-coated buildings along the Root River downtown.  If it were planned for Kenosha, I’d be more hopeful about this optimistic notion coming to fruition.  

For much of the last century, Racine & Kenosha were similar industrial & trading ports of modest size.  They also had a relative lack of sophistication in common, despite being located within easy train or driving distance of two metropolises, Milwaukee to the north & Chicago to the south.  As a person raised in Racine I hate to admit it, but over the past 20 years Kenosha has outgrown its shrinking neighbor to the north.  Lest it decline into a city housing a majority of poor people amidst privileged pockets of wealth, Racine can’t afford to fall farther behind.

In transforming itself from a primarily factory-based (hence dangerously polluting) economy into a bantamweight cultural dynamo, Kenosha has become an attractive place to live & to visit.  These sibling cities on Lake Michigan have benefitted from -  and sometimes been hindered by - the gravitational pull of their metropolitan neighbors.  As they struggle to establish a new identity in the early 21st century, Racine & Kenosha are diverging - one for the better, the other for the worse.

Racine regularly has the state’s highest unemployment rate (now around 12 percent) as well as crime & poverty rates that rival Milwaukee’s sad “misery index.”  A 2012 United Way Indicator Report stated that Racine has a 24.6 percent poverty rate, above the national average.  As part of its Industrial Cities Initiative, a 2012 study of ten Midwestern cities by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (FRBC) assessed why some manufacturing hubs are thriving while others struggle.  The report named Racine a “fading city” while praising Green Bay as a resurgent industrial center.   Green Bay, by the way, replaced Racine as the third most populous city in Wisconsin several years ago, while Kenosha is now fourth.  

In reaction, Racine Mayor John Dickert claimed that the FRBC study didn’t entirely capture all the nuances of the city’s efforts to attract manufacturers.  As a matter of fact, the Belle City is having trouble retaining even some of its well-established companies.  For example, InSinkErator, a waste-disposer manufacturer (founded in Racine in the 1920s) recently decided to expand production by leasing a 160,000-square-foot property in the Business Park of Kenosha rather than building in Racine County.

By contrast, Kenosha is clearly a city on the rise, a community that is successfully managing the difficult transition from an American Motors Corporation (later Daimler-Chrysler-Jeep) company town into one that has diversified its economic base & added several new reasons to relocate there.  The mostly friendly competition between these local rivals, located just 10 miles apart along the western shore of Lake Michigan, offers hope that neither will fall too far behind the other.

In terms of population increase, an indicator of a city’s attractiveness to migrants, Kenosha is home to about 100,150 people - up over 20,000 residents since 1980.  In that same 34-year period Racine’s population declined, from over 85,000 to just 78,303 residents.  Yet, with its beautiful sandy beaches & historic Wind Point lighthouse (1880), Racine beats Kenosha in lakeshore aesthetic appeal.  Even so, Kenosha’s commercial as well as residential property values have leaped ahead of Racine’s.  

This is partly due to Kenosha’s proximity to the Illinois border & Chicagoland’s wealthy north shore.  But credit should also be given to Kenosha’s more practical political leadership, which extended sewer & water service along Hwy. 50 all the way to I-94 decades ago (a feat Racine has yet to accomplish on either Hwy. 11 or Hwy. 20).   Many middle-class Illinoisans have recently moved to Kenosha in order to take advantage of the lower cost of living in Wisconsin.  This influx of migrants provides welcome tax revenue for Kenosha - far more than Racine has been able to capture so far.  Moreover, during the summer boating season, you’ll see more Illinois-tagged vehicles cruising downtown Kenosha than you will in Racine. 

In terms of cultural institutions, Kenosha has surpassed Racine.  The volunteer-driven Racine Theatre Guild’s bland mainstream productions are dull compared to the stage shows put on by either Carthage College or the University of Wisconsin - Parkside.  And Kenosha is miles ahead in quality museums.  Its Civil War Museum, Dinosaur Discovery Museum, Kenosha Public Museum, Kenosha History Center & Anderson Arts Center have well-defined educational missions as well as diverse collections.  The contemporary craft objects on display at the Racine Art Museum do draw visitors from far & wide, but the small collection of paintings, drawings, photographs & sculptures at its affiliated Wustum Museum are not very interesting.  Kenosha’s nicely curated historical museums put the low-budget, industry-focused Racine Heritage Museum to shame. 

The Belle City does have the 32-acre Racine Zoo, which opened in 1923 & only started charging admission in recent years.  Depending on your point of view, it’s either an impressive feature for such a small city (zoos help conserve endangered wildlife) or a sad mode of life for the creatures who reside within its walls (zoos are prisons for wild animals).  Personally, I’m not a fan of any cages, unless they contain rabid animals or human psychopaths.  But the zoo grounds do provide a great summertime live-music venue for the Animal Crackers jazz series.

Kenosha has a clear edge in libraries, with four branches of the Kenosha Public Library system - as well as the vast, publicly accessible collections at UW-Parkside.  Although it has just a single downtown branch, the Racine Public Library does offer a panoramic blufftop view of the lakeshore in its main reading room.

In niche enterprises like craft-beer brewing, Kenosha is well ahead with two downtown micro-breweries:  Public Craft Brewing Co. & Rustic Road Brewing Co., both established in 2012.  Racine has only the Reefpoint Brewhouse (at the Reefpoint Marina since 2013), which contracts with Milwaukee’s Lakefront Brewing for production of its tasty proprietary beer recipes.  

Yet the news isn’t all bad for Racine.  My hometown leads Kenosha in one critical growth sector of the US economy:  the government incarceration industry, specifically state prisons.  In addition to suburban Sturtevant’s Racine Correctional Institution, there’s the inner-city Racine Youthful Offender Correctional Facility.  Kenosha probably doesn’t mind losing in that category.  Besides, Kenosha doesn’t need those state jobs as badly as Racine does.  

In other downtown amenities, the competition is closer.  Kenosha has a fleet of colorful vintage streetcars that follow a two-mile loop around downtown & back to the Metra train station that carries commuters & visitors to & from Chicago.  Racine has a more diverse choice of boutique shops & fine restaurants along Main Street & Sixth Street.

Kenosha, however, has more live-music venues (& usually better audiences) than Racine - although the Belle City’s club owners have been hosting more bands lately.  In yet another example of civic backwardness, Racine has no farmers’ market remotely comparable to Kenosha’s spectacular Saturday Harbor Market.  

In terms of sports franchises, at least, Racine remains the equal of Kenosha.  The Racine Raiders semi-pro football team has played at Horlick Field for decades, while the Kenosha Kingfish baseball club, a new addition to the Northwoods League, was launched this May.  On the other hand, Kenosha offers more choice facilities for free recreational sports.  These include a first-class velodrome (bicycle race track) & two outdoor municipal swimming pools.  UW-Parkside is deservedly proud of its wooded cross-country skiing trails, which double in warmer weather as a renowned competitive cross-country running course.

True, the capitalist-philanthropist Johnson family supports numerous projects that have made Racine a more pleasant place to live.  Their main companies, SC Johnson & Son (home-maintenance & personal-care products) & Johnson Financial (insurance & banking) still co-sponsor Animal Crackers, a live-concert series at the zoo featuring distinguished jazz & blues artists, among many other events.   

Furthermore, the trio of structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (who called Racine a “backwater”) for the late patriarch H.F. Johnson still draw architecture enthusiasts from around the globe.  The Wingspread modernist mansion (now home to the Johnson Foundation) in tony Wind Point, the Johnson Wax administration building & the adjacent research tower give Racine a few distinguished landmarks unmatched by any in Kenosha. 

But even the billionaire Johnsons, owners of the largest private corporation in Wisconsin, can only do so much to help Racine on the Lake  (as local boosters have re-branded the Belle City).  Without a more sustainable local economy, and given the cruel vagaries of globalization, the future of Racine does not inspire much confidence.  At least Kenosha is just a short drive away for us Racine residents.   

[© 2014 by J.C. Mrazek]

Steel Bridge Song Fest 2010

Here's an incredible small-town music festival you might not have heard of: the Steel Bridge Song Fest (SBSF). This year, the 6th annual SBSF, was an inspiring gathering of 150 musicians, singer-songwriters & (mostly ad hoc) bands, spread over 4 days on an outdoor stage & inside 15 various venues in downtown Sturgeon Bay, Door County, Wisconsin (USA).

Saturday I spoke with LA session drummer Wally Ingram (of Timbuk 3, Stockholm Syndrome & the Sheryl Crow band), who worked with me in Madison in the summer of '81. He played at Butch's, a throwback neighborhood bar, Friday night with co-organizer pat mAcdonald (Timbuk 3) as well as San Francisco guitar virtuoso & singer Eric McFadden in a heavy-blues group called the Legendary Sons of Crack Daniels (sample lyric: "I'm all out of love, baby, let's make some more!").

Pat's raw blues project with fellow Door County resident melaniejane, Purgatory Hill (listed as hailing from "Heaven/Hell, WI") might just blow your mind. Their CDs distributed by the University of Wisconsin Press. The crowd on Sunday afternoon certainly dug their abbreviated set. Among the other highlights for me at SBSF this year:

* Dry-witted, big-hearted Texas troubadour James McMurtry ("Painting by Numbers" etc.) performing with his banjo-playing son Curtis at a moving Fathers & Sons/Mothers & Daughters set.
* New Orleans native (a Hurricane Katrina refugee by way of Memphis & Atlanta) James Hall, who coaxed sweet sounds out of his Gibson hollow body & sang with a passion reminiscent of the late Alex Chilton. I rewarded him with an ear of roasted corn during the closing blues jam Sunday.
* Wisconsin-born ukulele-strumming singer-songwriter Victoria Vox making uncanny trumpetlike vocalizations on both her own tunes and during an all-star jam session.
* Noah Engh howling his California blues into a eerily distorting CB microphone while wailing on slide guitar, sweaty hair flying to the delight of the audience at Butch's late on Friday night.
* Geri X, a riveting rootsy tattooed brunette rocker transplanted from Tampa Bay to Atlanta, moving the Saturday crowd to dance. She autographed my copy of her new CD, "The Bedroom Sessions." She looks as good as she sounds too.
* Solo Per Adulti (For Adults Only), a weird acoustic group of Italian pretty boys led by a scatalogical blasphemer of a singer, who did one tune in English.
*The Maybenauts, a self-described glam pop band from Chicago, featuring a male guitarist who performs in a panda mask, a dynamic young female singer in silver pants plus a pair of tattooed chicks on drums & bass.
* Gospel & bluegrass for the churchy feeling of a Sunday morning coming down.

Not only is Sturgeon Bay (pop. 9,500) packed with hipsters & hotties on SBSF weekend, the supportive community vibe of SBSF is spectacular. The skies may have been mostly gray, but the music was bright & intoxicating. Put it on your calendar for next year (second weekend in June) if you love live original music. It's a non-profit event created, in part, in order to preserve the historic 1930 Michigan Street steel bridge (currently undergoing rehabilitation by the state). Among the vendors this year was Guitars for Vets, whose slogan is "putting the healing power of music in the hands of heroes."

And always remember, folks, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that TWANG!

A wounded fawn along a Wisconsin country road

At the corner of Sugar Hill Road & Hillcrest Drive in the town of Brooklyn (Wis.) this morning I saw a fawn. She was stoically dragging her broken right rear leg as she moved dow.n the side of the sunny asphalt country road.

A white wolfish dog watched the injured deer from across the road, his owner keeping him at bay by voice command. It was just about the saddest damn thing I'd seen in ages, but I admired that fawn's struggle to survive. I slowed down immediately. I pray that I never hit a deer with my little Volkswagon.

I am moving to Door County (Wisconsin) this Friday - just in time for the Steel Bridge Song Fest this wseekend. I hope I have better luck finding a job up there, where the rich Chicagoans temporarily dwell. At least for the summer tourist season. Enjoy the summer, everybody!

My Year in Music (2009 edition)

I ain't ashamed to admit that I wept hard when my 18-year-old cat & best pal ever, Miss Miko-san, died in February. But then Wilco "(The Album)" came along & gave us another "sonic shoulder to cry on." Fortunately, I had more cause for joy than sorrow this year. My Song of the Year award goes to Neko Case for "People Gotta Lot of Nerve" (from her brilliant 2009 album "Middle Cyclone"), a perfect pop tune with an animal-rights/wildlife-revenge theme.

Both of my favorite concerts occurred outdoors in the warm Wisconsin summertime:
* Justin Townes Earle twanged up Cathedral Square in downtown Milwaukee, a benefit for WMSE-FM ("anti-Established in 1981"). In addition to performing originals by the gifted son of hardcore troubadour Steve Earle, JTE & his mustachioed cartoonish seed-cap-wearin' hipster-hillbilly sidekick covered Mance Lipscomb & Hank Williams songs. [The Grand Ole Opry has sinned--time to let dead Hank back in.]
* Shemekia Copeland (daughter of Texas bluesman Johnny Copeland) shouted & growled the blues with a confidence far beyond her 30 years. She even stepped into the crowd sans microphone at the Racine Zoo's natural amphitheater. Backed by a tight band grooving hard on the moody murder ballad "Never Goin' Back to Memphis," Shemekia shared her powerful talent with an appreciative crowd of mostly whitefolks. God, she has soul to burn!

Watch for Racine's own folk 'n' rollers Folkswagon, a fun new band that inspired my move to Nashville. Their moving, heartfelt Thursday night sets at J.J. McAuliffe's bar on Monument Square, proved that Folkswagon & its charismatic singer/songwriter Rachelle Laundrie have a promising future. They're about to release a debut record, "Fresh Fruit"--buy it if you can find it. Better yet, catch them live the next time you're near Racine, Wisconsin.

Bob Dylan dropped a bomb, the bizarre & abominable charity project "Christmas in the Heart, but he redeemed himself with "Together Through Life," a bluesy bucket of guts that opens ominously with "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'." Thanks, Jack Frost (Zimmy's producer persona)--keep on nippin' at our ears!

Honorable mention goes to fellow Badger resident Cory Chisel & the Wandering Sons, who put on a fantastic December show at the Exit/In in Nashville. Check out his 2009 album "Death Won't Send a Letter" for some fine alt-country/retro-rock sounds.

Best of all, I discovered my mission on planet Earth this year. While acting as an agent for Kenosha bands Ash Can School (original rock) & The Hot Club of Rambler City (gypsy jazz), I devised a prickly alter ego named Joe Impresario. A showbiz wannabe, keen cultural critic & ecstatic poet all in one, Joe's motto is "Music is Life, y'all--Dig It!" After turning 49 in October, I took his advice. I abandoned my condo on the Root River in Ratscene U$A and hightailed it to Dixieland. I've found a temporary home at Music City Hostel, where American bohemians, budget travelers & international adventurers rub shoulders, entertained by Google, Ron & Tracee's tiny Boston terrier hostel mascot.

Ah, the old reliable geographical cure saves me again. Now it's time to convert a weird epiphany ("Go South, man!") into a paying profession. God knows I'm tryin', y'all. Wish me luck 'cause I'm a-gonna need plenty in this shark pool. What does the New Decade have in store for me, for you, for our culture? Stay tuned.

Dedicated to Vic Chesnutt (1964-2009) & Miko-chan (1990-2009). Rest in peace.