Melanie Hammet: News

What an incredible place!

I taught two songwriting classes yesterday at this fascinating school, started just this year. The students were great---as were the songs they wrote---thanks to the creative people who brought this into being.

This song was written mid-January, after a long and passionate dinner discussion about the election and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama. The swirl of pragmatism, patriotism, cynicism, and simple hope sent me home to write.

I spent hours looking at iconic American images and phrases and reassembled them into the lyrics of "Inauguration Day."

This song isn't out--yet---but little did I know how timely it is: the AJC ran a news item about a father who bought his 4-year-old daughter a pink .22---

"got a pint-size trigger
so easy to pull it
but the dadgum thing
shoots a gallon-size bullet"

A few weeks ago I was in the Mississippi Delta being dive-bombed by hummingbirds; now I'm immersed in the fall spectacle of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Thanks to Virginia at Malaprop's for her gracious hosting of last night's event. I've heard David talk about his book a dozen or more times now and I remain a huge fan of this story---The Education Of Mr. Mayfield---

This is a rare and delightful trek with David: independant bookstores all across the South, where it's a guarantee that an interesting idea, person, story, song, or poem will be waiting.

I spent most of last week in the company of writers and poets and playwrights; hour after hour of listening intently to the imaginations of others.

Back in the studio, finishing the mixes for Edifice Complex. In fact, we just finished the mix for “What Happens Next,” an all-acoustic posing of the basic question about making decisions that affect generations to come.

Ben plays all the instruments on this track: stand-up bass, guitars, and mandolin. Beautifully done!

I love the gulf coast.

If I had not been pushed for time, I would have ditched the homogenized interstate landscape and cut south off of I10 to scenic 90, put up with the ugly retail blemishes along the way just to be closer to Biloxi, Gauthier, Pass Christian, and Ocean Springs, to name several. I’d have stopped at the Walter Anderson Museum for the dozenth time, checked in at Shearwater, bought some kind of healthy soda at Five Seasons . . . . .

Even so, the coupla hours west to east, New Orleans to the Mobile tunnel across the bayway----I love the gulf coast.

“the sky, the mud, the breath and the blood I am Lifted”

In January 2009 I spent a month with five other artists as residents in the Seaside Institute's Escape To Create program. This song was originally a very singable series of inside jokes---making a nearly incoherent set of lyrics. I re-wrote the words, tossed out (most) of the jokes, kept the alligator.

It is a wonderful thing, this traveling and playing music and meeting interesting people and hearing great stories and looking at the green-green Mississippi Delta and driving with the music up loud.

But: it is almost more wonderful to discover alligator cheesecake, to even know that those words exist back-to-back in a two word combination that would be a great song title, a great name for a band, a drag queen, or an appetizer at Jockamo’s, in the city of dreamy dreams--New Orleans.

And that is part of what we had on our table----Parker, Tracie, David and I---sitting in the back room jammed with people, hanging on to our wobbly little four-top so the fried green tomatoes with shrimp and the pepperypeppery batter, the salad with worcestershire dressing and a single oyster, and the soft shell crab with some kind of outrageous pecan dressing keeping it afloat in the middle of the meuniere didn’t fall off the table and require us to chase it across the floor.

Which we would have. Gladly.

This event could be the reason I came to Mississippi; could be the reason I said 'yes" when David proposed this unusual trek; could in fact be the reason I picked up a guitar in the first place.

There are places and gatherings where the soul of a community hovers, touching the time and its membership with a kind of light. Such was this noontime and David and I recognized it immediately and felt honored to witness and participate.

So many of the men and women we met had known M.B. Mayfield personally. Some have his paintings in their living rooms; all knew the gift of his art to their homeplace.

David was there to make M.B. Mayfield's story part of written history. I was there to sing. And I did, "Hammer" being a particular favorite. Perhaps the plainspoken lyrics had something to contribute: "when all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

I am proud to have been part of that Mississippi moment.

Somewhere in the heart of the Delta, a small hybrid vehicle is nosing its way through the fog and 100% humidity, wondering where in the hell Oxford went.

It's right about midnight, and David and I have just spent a rollicking evening on the back porch of TurnRow Books with a half-dozen new friends. The event was great good fun, capped off by the tales, lies, and general foolishness that made the gathering The Place To Be in Greenwood, Mississippi. Shout-downs about books, a boast or two about bread-baking, and the discovery of my new favorite band, Tornado Bait, were part of the perfect swirl.

No wonder we can't find Oxford.

There is an automobile-shaped rain cloud over my car.

Yesterday was a long drive west, made longer by stops and slowdowns so The Remarkable wouldn't simply whiz past.

Here are the highlights:

Listening to Beirut while cruising the Natchez Trace.

Passing (I can't believe I didn't stop for this) the Coon Dog Cemetery. Why didn't I stop???? It was pointed out to me that this was probably a cemetery for the community of Coon Dog. . . . I was all set to see the headstones for Ol' Blue and Rascal and such.

Most remarkable of all---the birthplace of Helen Keller in Tuscumbia, AL. It always amazes me that the scale of the miraculous is human-sized. Sometimes.

I've always intended to spend a day or two exploring Chattanooga, TN---it was an absolute delight to be invited to perform there and be given a quick tour by David Magee, who writes----among many other things (check out his website on my links page) a column in the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

As an urban design nerd and novice, I thought downtown Chattanooga was great---the renovated walking bridge, emphasis on locally-owned businesses, electric trolleys . . . I'm going back for another look---

Ben Holst and I have been hunkered down in record-mode for weeks and weeks and FINALLY, part of the work has escaped to the outside world in the form of CROOKED SPOKE, the new EP timed for release with touring w/ David Magee and his new book, The Education Of Mr. Mayfield.

David and I met in Seaside this past January as part of the Escape-To-Create artist residency and became great pals. In fact, David was the push behind the recording and release of "Spoke."

The next EP, EDIFICE COMPLEX, will emerge sometime in late October.