Dinner and entertainment in Clarksdale

This afternoon when we are riding in, about two blocks before our hotel, there is a giant cloud of smoke coming from a giant barbequeue cooker in front of what appears to be an abandoned building. As we rode by, we saw a big black guy cooking a mountain of pork products.

We were chatting with Rat about where to eat, and he says he heard Red was going to open up tonight. "Is that the big cloud of smoke a couple blocks up?" Rat said that was it.

While we were out buying beer, we rode by Red's. I peeked in the door, and inside it appeared to be a bar, maybe abandoned sometime in the 1960s. The guy cooking barbeque on the sidewalk turned out to be Red. He said (unbelievably) that he was going to chaperone a group of high school kids from Colorado that were coming to experience blues, and they would be open for business and people would be eating and drinking.

We came back around 7 and sure enough there were a bunch of high school kids lined up at the pig cooker for dinner. Meanwhile, inside, the bar is open and there are people drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while an old blues guy is tuning up his guitar.




We get some beers at the bar from Red and ask about the food. He says it's all paid for, just throw some money in the tip jar.

This was a total score. There were ribs, plump juicy smoked sausages, baked beans, and a big vat of shrimp etouffe. This totally evens out the buffet at the slots barn this morning.

So then the music starts, and we don't have some random two bit old blues guy, we have Robert "Wolfman" Belfour, who is on Fat Possum Records, and who is absolutely amazing. Fat Possum finds these incredible old blues guys, records them, then they die, then I hear about them. I can't believe I just got to see another Fat Possum Recording artist live. The only other one I've seen is T-Model Ford.







There were at most 50 people at this gig, including a couple dozen high school kids.

You can't plan this stuff.

-- Post From My iPhone