Rock and Roll: The Blinders Play to a Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Town.

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Rock and Roll: The Blinders Play to a Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Town.

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(First photos are of The Blinders. Last Photo is of Elvis and Pat Hare to his right, who wrote the great blues song, "I'm Gonna Murder My Baby..." and then did.)

It's football season in Alabama. That doesn't impress me much.

I'm taking a library book back for my daughter and at the entrance a young band is setting up their equipment.  I step over and around cables.  It's nothing to me... at first.

I go in and come back out and go to where I work, which is a stone's throw over a wire mesh fence from the library.

Later the band cranks up... and they are good.

A truck driver says, "With that loud noise they ought to have a crowd here in a little bit."

It doesn't happen.

I walk over to the fence and look over.

Whoever it is is playing by the entrance. While people are going in or out.  I see my friend Paulette, a librarian.  I decide to walk over there. By the time I get there, they have finished their song and a guy in a suit and tie is talking.

I ask Paulette, "Who is that?"

She tells me that's so and so and he used to be her history teacher. The whole thing is a voter registration drive.

There is also someone in a big Cow costume there. A shill for a restaraunt chain.

I tell her, "No, I mean the band. Politicians fade away, but the band might be something someday."

She says, "It's the Blinders," and then tells me one of them is related to the library director. I hear the suit and tie telling people about how important every vote is - how some elections are decided by just a very few votes."

I ask her, "How are they?" and she says, "They're great, they're wonderful. The problem is there's just no people here."

Then she says, "Do you want a hot dog?"

Of course I want a hot dog. And when she made me one without onions, I called her on it. But there were none.

Then I had to get back to work. On the way back, I remembered I had eaten like a pig already that day. Steak and eggs and hashbrowns, and then a large barbecue beef. I threw the hot dog away half eaten (Sorry, Paulette) and went to work on a loading dock.

The Blinders played a couple of songs I have never heard - I'm an old guy - but I could tell the singer had a fine voice and he also played top notch lead guitar.

Then they played "Never Been to Spain" by Three Dog Night. It was excellent. And I kept thinking one of the lines of the song and repeated it: "I've never been to heaven..." because I have been stuck here. 

I started thinking, maybe these guys, who are playing before an empty crowd (So that's not possible, sue me) might be somebody some day. Maybe I should pay more attention and find out who they are. That was right when they took a break.

I walked over to the fence and called to Paulette. She didn't hear me. I called again, louder. She finally came. I told her, "Tell one of those guys to come over. I'd like to talk to them. I don't care which one."

My belief is that anyone and everyone has a good story in them. Even if the story is that they are just plain boring.

She knows I like to write and she went over to them and talked to the vocalist, while I watched the whole thing. He wasn't in any hurry to come over. Playing it cool. Make the press wait. As if I was actually... "the press."

I had time to see a woman on crutches get into a van, and a man wearing a yellow shirt and green pants come out of the library.  And to notice that the flagpole seemed to be coming perfectly out of the top of a tree. You can see all kinds of strange things... if you just take the time to look. The key is just to look.

He finally came over to the fence and I stuck my hand over it and said, "My name is Will, I'm a friend of Paulettes," as we shook hands.

I said, "I just like to write and thought maybe I could talk to you and get something up on the internet about you."

He said, "Cool, very cool." And that his name was Jeremy Jackson.

As he said this, I was looking past him, as I saw the big Cow walking around. I wondered what this had to do with either music or a voter registration drive. I couldn't figure out anything else but it was a blatant attempt by a chicken sandwhich seller to horn in on any event whatever - even on the local level - to get more publicity for their corporation.  

On the other side of Jeremy I saw an old man who owed me ten dollars. It was hard to concentrate. The last thing the old man had said to me was I will pay you back, I'm not a con man. I didn't care about the money. I just hate to be conned. Plus he was with his son who was wearing a hockey jersey (in Alabama?") and looked like he could stop any puck shot at him. The old man had actually been wearing an oxygen mask in a lobby when he hit me up and told me his "check" was late and he was running out of oxygen. Who could resist that original line?

But back to The Blinders.

I'm not a great interviewer. I once asked Minnesota Fats, if he was so damn great why was he playing in a dump like this? (It was a pool hall in South Middle Tennesse - Wayne County to be exact. He looked at me like who the hell are you? Then said, "I play a lot  of places. I play all over the world.") That was good enough for me. I came to see him, and I left when I heard that.

So I asked Jeremy, exactly what I was thinking: "What's it like to play at something like this, when there is nobody here?"

He said that that was just the way it is sometimes and that "last night we played before a hundred people."

Then he said, "This is Gadsden Alabama - that's the problem. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I just don't know what it takes to get people off their couch here."

I asked him if they had just started, and he said no, that "actually we have been playing for years and that they had once opened for a group named "LIVE.""  And that they were hoping things would be getting better in the future. Maybe an album.

He also said he hoped that they would be smarter about what they would do - how they would proceed - and I got the feeling that they had made some mistakes or trusted someone in the past and it had not worked out well.

I asked him if he still enjoyed playing... even when no one's listening.

He told me that "You get an itch when you don't play..." 

But also that you could play in bars all over the country but it wouldn't matter if you didn't do something in front of someone who can do something.

He finally said he wished there was a formula on how to be successful with all of this.

I felt bad I didn't have one for him.

He said there's a fine line between selling out and writing what you feel... and his hope was that they would find someone to guide them.

Then he heard someone calling and said, "My wife is calling me to get started again."

I had seen a woman with a little child on a blanket in front of the band.  That could have been her and their child. I wondered how the wife felt about the band and how the child would feel someday, having grown up watching daddy and the band playing rock and roll to... almost no one at events like this.

He said I could email him if I wanted to, and gave me his email address... which I will pass on to you the reader - as who knows who might read this. With good luck a record producer. With bad luck... no one.

His address is jer_jack@hotmail.com with a _ between jer and jack.

I told him thanks... and went back to work.

The band started back and played a song that really rocked... the lyrics saying "It's Tricky.." and "... you just can't hide."

As they played I looked around and I saw "workers" walking around in a daze like I myself often do. When they would hear the music they would walk over and look - as if the music temporarily woke up something they miss deep inside of them. The ability to feel. The ability to have fun. The feeling generated by a good song played by a good band.

I wanted to go back over and I started to go back over... but I couldn't. Maybe take some pictures. Try to help them any way I could. But I couldn't go back. I have responsiblity. A wife and a child who depend on me to work... and not to write.

I went back in the building and "Glory Days" by Springsteen was playing.

I played in a rock and roll band when I was 16. We sucked horribly.  We were no where as near good as The Blinders. Not one one hundreth as good. We thought we were on the way once, when we played on the same stage as Paul Revere and the Raiders had once played on. We weren't even close.

Those were my long gone Glory Days.

Someone woke me out of my stupor saying, "What's the score of the Tennessee game? Anybody know?'

Outside on the dock again, the Blinders stop playing. My chance is over. There's is not.

I take a moment. I sit down and look at them across the way, taking down their equipment. Still young. Still dreaming.

A truck pulls up for me to unload. I have got to get back to reality. I'm not young. And I'm not dreaming.

It's all over.

A girl says to me "What's the score for Iowa vs. Pittsburg?"  I don't give a f***. But because she is a nice person I start to look it up for her on the internet. But before I'm done her dad calls and tells her and she lets out a squeal. She has won a bet.

Someone brings some chocolate brownie shaped "footballs." "Oh hell," I say to myself, "I give up. I might as well eat one."

Someone else says, "Boy Tennessee got beat down today! 30 to 6."

Football here is king, queen, and jester.

Music is... Alabama and Hank Williams, Jr.

For The Blinders, it's going to be "tricky."

But by God, why not them?

I look out at the parking lot again.

It is empty.

The Blinders are gone... on their way somewhere.

I throw my chocolate football brownie away into the grass for the birds...

and say out loud, "you go Blinders, you go guys!"

Don't look back. Escape!

A helicopter passes overhead.  It's too late for them to be looking for marijuana fields or chasing crystal meth heads.

I like to think the Blinders are on it. Going on to better places and better things.

A woman comes in that once had breast cancer. She keeps going. So will I.

Now no music is playing at the library. Things are getting back to "normal" in Gadsden, Alabama.

People had their chance to hear The Blinders. They didn't take it. Their loss.

A guy leaving says, "Will, let's go home and watch some football."

I tell him, "No thanks, I'll pass. I believe I'll just go home and eat myself to an early grave."

The night turns dark.

I go back to work.

And you realize,

this is the end.

Will Bevis, Sept. 20, 2008.

Jeremy Jackson and THE BLINDERS can be reached at:

jer_jack@hotmail.com that's jer _ jack@hotmail.com

Website for The Blinders is:

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=404553986