The Redneck Negress

In memoriam: Douglas Allen Woody (1955-2000)

My father is a Georgia Negro. If you know what that means then you might could (as his mother says) ken why he thinks the Allman Brothers Band, formerly based in Macon, Georgia, is irrelevant. However, this week, upon reading erstwhile Brer Allen Woody's obituary in the Miami Herald, my father had this to say (I paraphrase): the Allmans did things their way, they had this distinct sound of music they wanted the world to hear, they got the urban, Yankee, bourgeois audiences and vulture music biniss to come around to their way of thinking, they changed the world, they are revolutionary.

I cite my father because now, in what for me are dark days of my joke-career, I recollect that he --- followed by Christopher Robinson of the Black Crowes, Stanley Booth Jr., Derek Trucks, and Mrs. Marie Miranda Hester Scott Burrell --- has had the greatest influence in shaping my love and knowledge of music. Also because I think of him in the shadow of my grandfather, the late Reverend Walter Holloway, one of the key figures of the 1960s Albany (GA) Movement, which not only gave Voice to Les Brers' soul contemporary on the protest tip, Bernice Johnson Reagon, but served as a milestone on the Road to Integration effected in erstwhile terror-ridden pockets of the Deep South. Not only did the Albany Movement help to usher in the climate which birthed the triumphant New South from which the Allmans became the most celebrated ambassadors (see their proselytizing on behalf of my favorite President Jimmy Carter... hey, I voted for him in Kindergarten --- and he won! In this election year... well, I reckon that was truly Democracy in action). But the haunting example of my grandfather unwittingly instills in me this ongoing will to preach the Good Word. Of course, my Word is Bond and it is always sonic. After Stevie Wonder in my crib, the Allman Brothers Band was the singular most important group to form my consciousness and understanding of the world without and within. And Gregory Allman and his late brother Duane gave me a new, devastating language more potent than the written word.

Because of my relation to the Peach State and my implicit, unwavering trust of the Allmans and their dynasty, it was inevitable that I should become a stone fanatic of Gov't Mule. Oddly, now confused by the murk of time, I may well have seen the Mule in all their glory before I ever saw the Brothers. Certainly I recall peeping their New Year's Eve gig in the mid-Nineties, at the Wetlands, and being so exhausted --- I was not a professional critic yet so that midnight hour was well past my bedtime --- that I sat on the stage under Woody. He looked down at me bemused and intrigued and kept right on funkin'. Somehow I must have been prescient enough to suss that that Bottom Badass from Tennessee would come to be very important to me and my worldview.

The culmination of these sporadic experiences with our beloved blues power trio, including the divine Matt Abts (drums) and Warren Haynes (vocals-guitar), r esulted in an illusory prose dance between them and I... a waltz or a Buzzard Lope, if you will. Certainly the masterpiece sets of their 1996 touring with my other favorite sons from the Empire State of the South, the Black Crowes, became legend and served as catalyst for me to embark on this quixotic sonic trip. I came closest to scratching the kudzu-like surface of the Mule's inexorable magic in a much-reviled feature published last summer in the Atlanta Press. The Good Ole Boys were incensed by my daring to delve into the organic origins of the notion of a "government mule" and just what the phrase "forty acres and a mule" means. Of course, Warren, Matt and Woody, in the tradition of their heroic compadres Les Brers, had the courage to see clearly and not condemn a wee scribe for revisiting the dark places of their regional culture. Like the late Brian Jones, like Jimi Hendrix and Phil Walden Sr.'s first great client Otis Redding, Gov't Mule are something more than a mere rock & roll band with merch and tickets to sell. People love them not just because Warren's voice comes straight from heaven, his guitar playing is phenomenal and Woody and Matt always unerringly lock into the stone cold playa groove. The fans outpouring of love and grief is as real as the continuing veneration of Duane Allman because they are all freedom fighters, determined perhaps in spite of themselves to usher in the new age.

Gov't Mule's music --- thoughtfully recorded for posterity on their eponymous debut, Live At Roseland, Dose, Live... With A Little Help From Our Friends, and the current Life Before Insanity (Capricorn) --- is the language of the zeitgeist, in a sense taking the seed of what the Brothers began more than thirty years ago in Alabama and Florida and disseminating it in a transcendent, post-modern way. Mule songs are universal, sparking seekers from their local Manhattan home-away-from-home Irving Plaza all the way to Japan. Just ask Mule main man Ken Kobayashi how heart-achingly "Wandering Child" or the trio's anthem "Mule" translate across national barriers to speak truth to power. Ken's long journey into the spooky night of Stateside Mule mania has sho'nuff made it more cheering to be the crazy Redneck Negress in the Brothers' midst. It might be Voodoo, which is never wrong. But it certainly is Truth, delivered with the golden beauty and clarity of a day to rival Skydog's smile.

My "writing" is always suspect to friends and foes alike. Obituaries are by no means my forte and this is certainly an odd way to introduce a column. Still, it is vital that everyone understands how essential Gov't Mule's music has been to my well-being and the degree to which they, just as Woody & Warren's former band the ABB, are integral to my process of assessing and assimilimating music in these here Last Days of Rock & Roll. I am disconsolate at Woody's departure for on High, hopeful for Warren and Matt's continued sojourn on the shining path. My father might not believe in my "Dixie-fried" choice of subject matter (shout out to Jim Dickinson aka Daddy Slim), nor in the stubborn support of musicians descended from the Allman Brothers Band or fellow midnight riders from their modal-mastery milieu. He likely still believes his blind Great Uncle Homer is a better geetar-picker than Skydog. But I must persevere in the missionary Tradition of my grandfather Rev and that is the raison d'etre for Stellarfunk. And, lest we ever forget, there is Derek Trucks and his mighty band to be cared for. With the arrival of Javier Colon on winged feet like Grace Itself, we ache for the loss of Woody and yet rejoice in the welcoming of another Brother.

Kandia Crazy Horse is a honky-tonkin' sweet black angel currently floating in the blue ether. Her fave raves include Funkadelic, Anita Pallenberg, Stephen Stills, Gram Parsons, Leon Russell, Jennifer Herrema, grits and of course, SHOWS. She has long been a loose-limbed lurker at ABB Family jam shows at Wetlands Preserve. You can dig her work online at the Village Voice, Musictoday.com, Creative Loafing - Atlanta & the Boston Phoenix. Airmail special any stellar Jimmy Herring-run Brothers boots to her by hollerin' back at BlackQueen@jambands.com