“Good eeeevening…”

The inspiration for Memphian Arthur Lee’s “I Wonder”? Downtown bread factory where Dewey Philips once worked, Memphis, April 2010

So. Yerse. Six months of hijinks I have had. Foreign climes. Superlative gigs. BBQ. Pale ale. The occasional shave, even. So let’s get started…

Sivad aka Watson Davis

Fast-forward to April and we’re visiting pals in Memphis, ostensibly to check out Mike McCarthy’s four-nite tribute to the Bluff City’s fave TV horror host, a former Malco cinemas promo guy named Watson Davis whose imagination ran away with itself. This rather jolly fellow did such amazing things promoting B-movies in TN that they gave him his very own TV horror host spot as Sivad (geddit?).

So Mike’s wingding, Sivads of March, promised much tomfoolery of every kind:

We’d get to stay with our very good friend Tad Pierson from American Dream Safari, in an Airstream trailer in his ‘indoor fishing camp’ in downtown…

American Dream Safari HQ

We’d get to grokk two of the finest r’n'r (or whatever) bands on the planet, the Reigning Sound and Jack O & The Tennessee Tearjerkers, on the same night, at different venues.

Sivad artifacts at the Brooks Art Museum

And we’d get to see all of our other friends, eat superlatively at The Bar-B-Que Shop, drink at The Lamplighter, go thrifting, buy vinyl from Shangri-La and Goner Records, and do all of the myriad great things that Memphis offers…

Checking The Flyer at American Dream Safari HQ

Although folks wuz, understandably, pretty cut up about the very untimely passing of LX Chilton, it turned out to be a blast of a stay. Even bumped into our friend, Paul Duane, a tirelessly righteous filmmaker who’s making an “It Came From Memphis” film doc with author Robert Gordon. Paul was in town to shoot former William Eggleston running pardner Jerry McGill, a legendary wildman musician who’d recently reappeared. When we bumped into Paul and Robert at the Sivads of March opening, the director had spent several days being driven around by his quarry and friends, drinking moonshine with beer chasers and surviving on truck stop snacks… check Paul’s blog for more…

Sivad drew more fans to Memphis fairgrounds in 1964 than The Beatles

So the whole Sivad thing was as fascinatingly Memphian as you’d expect — his audience crossed every barrier of race, age and class, just like Sun, Stax and Hi, etc. Literally everyone who asked us ‘where yuh from?’ during the course of our stay had a story about the ghoul, when we told ‘em the reason we were in town, and he’s been off-air since 1972! Yet another example of why Memphis is a living, breathing, glorious contradiction, and a real surprise on my tenth trip to the burgh — is there no end to the Bluff City’s cultural treasure? As Dewey Phillips woulda prolly said, “noop”. Check out Mike’s Sivads of March page, which has loads more wild and wooly info & links to what transpired…

Sivads of March opening, Brooks Art Museum

After a week in Memphis, we decamped to New York, where we hung out with Nick Ray and Jenni, enjoyed cocktails and pastrami with  The Hound, and did miles upon miles of walking… but that’s another tale…