Thunder rolling over Clarksdale, everything electric blue

RIP BB King - but more on that in today's post, as this is from yesterday. 

We left the luxurious Shoals accomodation to head back onto the Natchez Trace down to Clarksdale, Mississippi, having spent the previous night shamefully watching some of the Law & Order Binge-a-thon. 

First we stopped off at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio to soak up the vibe. 

Orange sofa and chair are the original ones, as seen here:

Here (Mick Taylor)

Keith

Lou

Dylan recorded some of Slow Train Coming and Saved here, as well as at Fame. Below is pic of the basement where the post recording parties took place. Legendary building. 

We crossed the Wilson dam,

 

counted dead armadillos :(

saw Alvin from The Straight Story chugging along the side of the road,

saw a sign for Vulcan quarry - could this be the ISIS evil equivalent as per earlier post?

We ate our cookie from French Camp, which had been made as part of 'activities undergirded with a biblical world view'. Undergirded?!! Anyway, tasted like a regular cookie, we'll let you know how our undergirding fares. 

Our route included 103 miles on the - stand to attention - Military Order of the Purple Heart Highway. 

And as soon as we arrived at The Shack Up Inn, Lou got her groove on (she's not ripping into a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, but playing You Got to Move, ironically at a painfully slow pace).

So this is where we are staying for next 3 nights:

Bar

Stage

Instruments you can borrow 

We then headed to Po Monkeys juke joint. We drove. And we drove. And we drove. Until we hit a dirt track. And drove some more. Until this place appeared in the middle of a cotton field. 

Inside is like a grotto of lights and foil decorations, which bounced off the excited shiny faces of the white middle-aged tourists, trying to act like they did this kinda thing all the time, as the place filled up with partying locals. Thursday night is clearly the new Friday night down south. Though Po Monkeys only opens once a week. 

Lou drank 3 cans of coke, got her buzz on, danced, got hit on with the subtle whisper in her ear of "I see you" (a tad stalky), and thoroughly enjoyed the DJ's fairground style banter. Den found the music a tad pornographic, until he considered that the Blues that would have been played in earlier days was just as potty-mouthed. 

The journey back was challenging, as the windscreen developed a dead bug veneer. Yup, back in the sultry Mississippi. 

We got back to what we expected to be a rocking late night, to find the jug band had failed to arrive and everyone was tucked up in bed. Except the toads. And mozzies obviously. A great day/night. 11 days left. Bloody knackered!

Awesome: EVERYTHING!

Banjo: Undergirded baked goods. 

Diner: duck gumbo and blackened catfish tacos. 

Co-pilot: A certain friction in the air at times, but Lou bumping the SUV through the cottonfield may have got her up to a 6. 

Mozzies: We're paying the price for Highway 61 Revisited.