The Road to Memphis and the Ponderosa Stomp: A Motorcycle Trip On America's Music Routes
Forward
Looking for a Cure to the Isolated
at home with the COVID-19 Blues? How 'bout taking a motorcycle trip to two of
the Meccas of American Music, Memphis and New Orleans as Plain Sense relives his trip of a life time and the fulfillment of
his dream of attending the legendary Ponderosa Stomp Music Festival. Along the way he stops off in Memphis,
Tennessee at the Museum of the legendary Stax Studios, itself the shrine of
Soul Music and Graceland, the home of and now shrine to, who some call, the
“King of Rock and Roll”. While some may
disagree over the accuracy of that pop culture moniker, it does not diminish
the undeniable contribution that Elvis Aaron Presley has made to American music
and whose legacy is still felt today.
Attending the Ponderosas Stomp
music festival, the then annual and currently in hiatus, celebration of the
unsung heroes of American music (which has now transformed into a worthwhile
music education outreach program), had been a dream of mine ever since I heard
of the first Ponderosa Stomp festival.
Those early rosters of performers read like the long lost family tree of
the greatest of the great in America’s genealogy of music. These were the greats behind the scenes,
whose names you might not have ever heard of, unless of course you were, like
me, a music freak who reads the credits and liner notes for everything in my
music collection. Not being a musician
myself, it was always a great mystery how they produced this magic we call
music and by reading every credit and liner note I thought I might one day
crack the code.
Although I had made and posted a
contemporaneous travel blog along the way replete with photos and memorable
anecdotes, there were two holes in the record marked only as “…to be
continued…”. Just recently, while cleaning
house during these days of social distancing, I have come upon my
contemporaneous hand written notes that were never posted along with the sd
card of my entire trip photos. I had
assumed for years that they were long lost and most likely destroyed. Chalk up a victory for all the pack rats out
there!
This article not only will fill in
those glaring gaps in my coverage of the trip but hits on current events and
appeals to music lovers as well. The
similarities to life in April 2009 and today will be eerily familiar and only
proves how cyclical the human experience is.
Just like we survived the swine flu epidemic and financial crisis of
2008- 2009, we will get through the COVID-19 Pandemic and financial crises of
2020 as well.
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