Harmony from Nashville to New Orleans

Music brings people together, now and in history, across the American South

"Music really brings people together..."

The words said to me over lunch with former Louisville Leopard Kelsey Lee, a drummer and percussionist with bands including Southern Sirens and Arianna & the Bourbon Britches (“sometimes the ‘R’ is silent”) rang in my ears as I traveled along on my Search for Harmony to Nashville, the Tennessee town dubbed “Music City.”

Kelsey had mentioned this new trend of “Pickin’ Parties,” jam sessions at people’s houses, including one her brother Jake hosts in Flagstaff, Arizona. I love the idea, as I have SO many instruments and love just to jam but never actually organize it.

I was excited then when after dinner outside Nashville, my friend Jeanette suggested we visit The Legendary Kimbros Pickin’ Parlor in Franklin, a little town near her house in Brentwood. In addition to the fun band onstage — The Texas Chainsaw Store Managers, ha — the venue had a little room off the bar where some folks gathered around playing the instruments on hand, a couple old upright pianos, some drums and guitars. It was a dream come true for me, such an amazing thing to allow people like me to jam for a bit, to play rather than just be a passive audience (joyous though that is.)

I went afterward to the Flamingo Cocktail Club in downtown Nashville, a venue co-owned by Dani’s friend, singer/songwriter Angela Laino. It was Wednesday Invite Night. “We invite our friends to invite their friends to play music…” Flamingo says.

As I stood listening to the changing array of musicians and singers (including Angela), I saw a familiar face, a Brooklyn musician I met way back in 2008 when he was the drummer in a friend’s band, Running Still. Zach Jones is now touring with Sting, but was on a break, visiting Nashville with friends. The music world is a small one, and it was with great pleasure that I watched as Zach took the sticks and played along with an array of other musicians joyfully.

Before heading out of town, I visited with my Brooklyn buddy Brian Elmquist, a great musician who (sadly) left NYC for Nashville years back. His band The Lone Bellow is made up of all Southerners, and they hightailed it for Music City. His backyard studio is awesome, and hearing him play his newest guitar find I recalled fondly when Brian came with me and performed at PS 81 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, how cool it was for the kids to hear his great voice ring out as the kids watched and clapped, how they got up themselves afterward to sing. Watch the video of his performance. I interviewed Brian during the pandemic for my old Talking to Strangers podcast. Listen up here.

I stopped off at the Nashville Biscuit Co. for a yummy egg sandwich before getting on the Natchez Trace Parkway to Tupelo. The scenic drive goes through a corridor used by American Indians, a 444-mile route that connects cities representing the great musical history of the South, birthplace to genres including blues, jazz, country, rock ‘n roll, R&B/soul, gospel, Southern gospel, Cajun/zydeco and bluegrass.

I was most excited by my stop-off in Tupelo, the birthplace of my childhood heartthrob, Elvis Presley. Seeing the little house where Elvis was born was surreal. I never imagined I’d be standing in front of it someday when I stayed home from school for five days straight (feigning sickness) because it was Elvis Week on the 2:00 movie!

The La Quinta motel welcomed me with a big pic of Elvis (below, top left), and the nearby Blue Canoe offered 42 beer taps, and the most AMAZING fried black-eyed peas and Pork & Greens. I LOVE Southern food. Elvis was also featured on the wall as inspiration maybe for the modern crooners gathered on stage for Hot Licks singer/songwriter night.

Despite thunderstorm warnings and flood watches, I proceeded along, taking a quick detour to eyeball the museum erected for the “Father of Country Music” Jimmie Rodgers (not to be confused with a country singer by the same name born decades later, who my mother remembers seeing in Branson, MO years back), in his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. The museum was closed, but I decided to listen to his upbeat yodeling—a combo of folk, hillbilly and blues —as I maneuvered on through driving rains.

Next up was New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz, the city where Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton got their start, where music streams out everywhere. As I drove in, across the mighty Lake Pontchartrain, I went round a traffic circle near my hostel and discovered to my great amazement that it has recently been renamed The Harmony Circle after controversy over the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee resulted in the removal of it.

“The name Harmony Circle reflects New Orleans where we work to come together and we all make our community whole,” a city councilman said.

Ha. My search for Harmony had brought me here.

Searching for musical harmony, I wandered through the beautiful city, admiring the architecture and the street life. I made my way to Frenchmen Street, once a local gem for live music, now well discovered. Music poured out of every storefront. I peered in to one place and a young man standing there spoke to me.

“Stephanie?” he said. “Stephanie Thompson?” I didn’t recognize him at first, until he reminded me. James Delano is a saxophone player I’d met years before at a jam session my friend Dezron Douglas hosted at Drom on the Lower East Side. We’d met up, and I’d asked him to join me with other musicians to perform at a men’s shelter where I was facilitating a drum circle. He told me he’d just been looking at the Polaroid he’d taken that day years back, and here I was. He’d moved to New Orleans three weeks ago from Portland, Maine where he’d been living. Small world. I watched his band, Belle & the Garcon at Favela Chic, then said goodbye and moved on to catch some other music. There was so much.

I popped in to a few spots, then grabbed a delicious dinner — Shrimp & Grits. I got talking to another female solo traveler and we went together in search of a band to watch. A few doors from where I dined, at d.b.a., a name caught my eye: Aurora Nealand. I had no idea the multi-instrumentalist and sound artist—a master of the sax, accordian and vocals—was a New Orleans native when I saw her recently on the last night of the “Oceans And” tour she was on with Brooklyn sax player Tim Berne and cellist Hank Roberts at The Local in Saugerties. So beautiful, so I of course went in to see her perform with Boma Bango, a Lafayette, Louisiana band that offers a modern twist on the music from 60s Congo. Wow. Amazing.

Synchronicities abound on this solo journey, my Search for Harmony. I am finding it, to be sure, in the musicians I have met who cross my path again, the new ones who offer up their beautiful skills. There is community in music to be sure, I have borne witness to it over these last days traveling.

As I write this, I am indundated with revelers dressed in green. I have unwittingly sat down outside a cafe in the Garden District that sits at the very start of New Orleans’ St. Patrick’s Day Parade. The joyous community culture of the Crescent City, for locals and tourists alike, is abundantly clear.

I am late to leave for my next stop, supposedly Austin, Texas, another great music city. But sometimes, oftentimes, the road to harmony is not exactly as you might have imagined.

Thanks for traveling the road along with me…I’ll keep you posted!!