My Will Oldham Story - part 1

Right, so for those of you who haven't been in the loop you may not be aware of the fact that I now have a 'Will Oldham Story'...

Yes he's a bit of a hero, right?  I mean, he's a strange, warped, twisted hero, but you can't deny he's an indie-rock-underground legend!

So I went to the Mountain Stage, in Charleston West Virginia and this is how the story goes.

Firstly, our flight was cancelled in the middle of the night, luckily I was online checking last minute e-mails before the trip to West Virginia to play NPR's famous Mountain Stage Sessions with an amazing line up!  We'll get to that in a minute.

So we literally hoof it straight to Heathrow at 2:00 AM in hopes they can put us on the next flight.  You see, because our flight was cancelled we would have missed the session!  It was tres stressful!

We hang around Heathrow for hours, fueled by large coffees, on the promise that they will get us on a flight, and they do!  Hurrah!

The flight is turbulent to say the least, there is a serious blizzard brewing below and there were times I wondered if the Mountain Stage was worth risking my life for... When we landed safely I kissed the earth, the terra firma that is my homeland - America awaited me.  We were in the nation's capital city of Washington DC and we had more hours to kill waiting for the 2nd flight.  Much to my delight there were burritos and tortilla soup in terminal C, and I utter the words "there is no place like home."  You see, Mexican food made by a Mexican person is in another league to this British Mexican food we get here in the UK, and that's true even in the airport.

We get on a tiny tiny plane, which requires bundling up and slipping out onto the runway where the salt and grit had melted the ice away in little pathways.

The plane felt like it was made by Playmobil.

We hadn't slept for 24 hours.  The view below was stunning and other-worldly, like a white-dusted, crazy quilt.  I felt like I was floating due to the lack-of-sleep, caffeine-fueled, post-Mexican-food, trance-like state I found myself in.  It was a beautiful way to see the Smokey Mountains, up high in the clouds with snow below.

Adam from the Mountain Stage was there to greet us and he was the epitome of Southern hospitality.  He took us to our Super 8 through the winding, snow-ploughed roads.  He was used to these conditions.  He runs the Mountain Stage dang it, and he's a Mountain Man, a little snow on the zig-zag roads left him nonplussed.

And we were there!  The city of Charleston welcomed us and that's where I'm going to leave you (until the next installment)

Here's a little video about the journey featuring a cover I did of Bonnie Prince Billy's "Ease Down The Road" - please check it out!

And watch this space for Part 2 of the story!
xx
Piney