The jukebox that changed my life

How I found country music again, plus my weekly shareables: college football, grandpa shoes, and the ghosts of Spotify

Photo by Pedro Forester Da Silva on Unsplash

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One quick update from last week’s newsletter: Alert Shedhead Barry Y. noted that I posted a delightful poem about a dog attending the opera … but I neglected to mention the poet’s name. She is Charlotte Matthews and she is very good. Thanks for the catch, Barry.

I know it’s getting down to the wire for holiday gifts … but I did just sign a bunch of copies of DOGLAND for my friends at Park Road Books. If you’re in Charlotte, stop by and grab one (or several). If you’re out of town, it might be too late to get an autographed copy shipped for Christmas, but your local bookstore or online portal should have copies available. It’s definitely not too late to send the ebook or audiobook.

Also, you can always give a subscription to The Writing Shed! It’s as easy as mashing this button:

As we always do this time of year, we’ve had Robert Earl Keen’s “Merry Christmas From the Family” on repeat. It always makes me laugh, and also crave a margarita.

Do you ever try to go back and figure out how you first started listening to somebody, or reading some particular author, or how you met a friend? I’m not sure exactly when I first heard Robert Earl Keen … but the path that led me to Robert Earl Keen, I can trace back to one particular jukebox.

This would’ve been in 1986 in Augusta, Georgia. I was 22 and working my first fulltime job at the Augusta papers: the Chronicle (the morning paper) and the Herald (in the afternoons). My musical tastes at the time ranged from indie-rock (R.E.M. and such) to early hip-hop (I had all the Run-D.M.C. records) to Motown to Skynyrd. The one type of music I didn’t listen to was country. Country was all my mom and dad listened to when I was growing up, and even though I liked a lot of it, I got tired of it by the time I was 12 or 13 and started my Molly Hatchet phase.

My first job at the Augusta papers was as a cops reporter on the night shift, theoretically from 3:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., although it almost always went later. Most of the night crew got off work around the same time and some of us liked to hit the bars. We’d play pool at the Gin Mill* or listen to bands at the Red Lion or hang out in a dive called the Operating Room, which was over by the medical school.

*Does every town have a bar called the Gin Mill? I’ve spent lots of time in Gin Mills, uppercase, and gin mills, lowercase.

But some nights we just walked out the back door of the paper and catty-corner to an old hotel that had a bar so dark we called it the Batcave. The Batcave had the jukebox that changed my life.

It turns out that in that very year of 1986, a new batch of artists was making country music I would come to love. Their early singles were on that jukebox. That’s where I first heard Dwight Yoakam and Lyle Lovett and Randy Travis. Randy Travis, especially, with that dark-chocolate voice that cut through the barroom noise. I still remember hearing “On the Other Hand” and going right to the jukebox to play it again.

That jukebox was also full of classic country—Hank Williams and Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash—and it all got mixed in together and at some point I realized, hey, it’s not just that they mix the bourbon and Cokes really strong here, I love country music again.

Over the next few months I bought all the records from that jukebox I could find, including Lyle Lovett’s debut, which has a song called “This Old Porch,” co-written with his old college buddy, Robert Earl Keen. That’s probably the first Robert Earl Keen song I ever heard.

These days, most of the country music I love falls under the banner of Americana—basically, country music without the gloss. Stuff you’re not as likely to hear on country radio. Jason Isbell, Tyler Childers, Waxahatchee. I’m sure I would have come around to it at some point. But I sure am thankful for the on-ramp all those years ago, thanks to the Batcave, and that jukebox.

10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. This week’s SOUTHBOUND is the Best of 2024 episode, featuring my favorite guests of the year: Landon Bryant, Michael Kruse, Valerie Bauerlein, David Hale, Deesha Philyaw, Kiese Laymon and James Lee Burke.

2. My weekly for WFAE was about how Bill Belichick needs North Carolina more than North Carolina needs him.

3. Eli Saslow’s latest for the NYT is another piece that just shattered me—the story of a young man in Rome, Georgia, whose family voted for Trump, even though it might lead to his deportation.

4. I’ll be spending much of my Saturday watching the college football playoff … if you want a crash course on the beautiful insanity of college football, listen to the PABLO TORRE FINDS OUT episode on the Paul Finebaum show—featuring a caller named Legend who is hilarious, thoughtful … and a convicted murderer.

5. That Pablo Torre episode spends a little time on the saga of Harvey Updyke and Toomer’s Oaks. I wrote about all this in 2011 for Sports Illustrated—my first big magazine story, and still one of my favorites.

6. I’ve never worn Mephisto shoes—too expensive—but I’ve always thought of them as the epitome of the comfort shoe. Now, according to the NYT, they’re also cool.

7. Loved this Mother Jones Q&A with the New Yorker’s Amanda Petrusich about music, grief, and her awesome Instagram feed.

8. The ghost artists of Spotify, from Liz Kelly in Harper’s.

9. Bojangles, for those of you not in the South, is a chicken-and-biscuit chain based in Charlotte that inspires fanatical devotion. I found this Bojangles tribute rap through Jeremy Markovich’s NC Rabbit Hole, and like him, I’m not sure if this is an official Bojangles video or not. Given the language, probably not … but these guys should still get free chicken for life.
   

10. I love a groovy organ trio, and Parlor Greens most definitely qualifies. I’d never heard of them before I ran across this set for KEXP radio, but I’m in the full throes of a band crush. Enjoy this half hour.
    

    Have a great week and a great holiday season, everybody. Sleep in heavenly peace.

—TT