NEW! Paul's First Instructional Video for Truefire: Dirt Road Blues

Click the picture above to add to shopping cart, which will open in a new window, or Click Here to read a full description and view video samples of the product.

"Paul Rishell’s Dirt Road Blues is optimized for solid intermediate to advanced players, is presented across 2 interactive video CD-ROMs (Windows and Mac compatible), features 40 full-length interactive video lessons including performances of all the songs, text overviews, standard notation and interactive Power Tab so you can "see" and "hear" the tab and notation played out at any tempo. TrueFire's video lesson player features zoom, frame advance, looping and other handy controls."

"Get a solid grip on this Delta, Piedmont and Texas blues guitar repertoire and you’ll be able to handle anything (including your own compositions) with authenticity, stellar technique and maximum groove. Head out to the porch now with Dirt Road Blues."

Featuring Annie Raines on several performances. Bonus material also available on request.

SONGS:

“Down the Dirt Road Blues” by Charley Patton
“Shake ‘em On Down” by Tommy McClennan
“Low Down Rounder” by Peg Leg Howell
“Sweet Jivin' Mama” by Blind Blake
“One Dime Blues” by Blind Lemon Jefferson
“Black Horse Blues” by Blind Lemon Jefferson
“Rag Mama Rag” by Blind Boy Fuller
“Custard Pie” by Blind Boy Fuller
“Step it up & Go” by Blind Boy Fuller
“Trouble Blues” by Scrapper Blackwell
“Hunkie Tunkie” and "Keep it Clean” by Charley Jordan
and four Rishell originals; “Vanessa,” “Louise,” “I’m Gonna Jump & Shout” and “Blues on a Holiday.”

California Beamin'

Have you ever had a really vivid dream that was like a movie? Not a nightmare, but a story with such a happy ending that you still felt good even though you woke up and realized it never happened? That's how I feel right now, only it really did happen.
I have to start by going back 20 years: It's 1988, I'm 18 years old, in my first and only year at Antioch College, and about to start an internship at the Community for Creative Non-Violence in Washington, DC. Of course the first thing I do when I get to DC is look for a blues show in town. Jackpot. Lazy Lester and Loaded Dice are playing at the Twist 'n' Shout in Bethesda. I'm accompanied by my father and my uncle, who assure the doorman that they will vigilantly monitor my drink orders.
I don't care about drinking anyway. I'm too busy hero-worshipping. I buy a copy of Lazy Lester's new "comeback" LP, Lazy Lester Rides Again. His real name is Leslie Johnson and he comes from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was one of the main session players on the Excello label, recording 15 singles under his own name and many more as a sideman for Lightnin' Slim, Whispering Smith, Slim Harpo, Tabby Thomas, and others in the 1950s and 1960s. The music coming out of J.D. Miller's studio for Excello became known as "Swamp Blues" both for its sound, a murky melting pot of blues, country, cajun, zydeco, and pop styles, and for the Louisiana artists who crafted it.
After Loaded Dice plays a great first set, I make my way through the crowd to talk to the band and Mr. Johnson. I boldly and recklessly ask him if I can sit in with him. Keep in mind I've been playing for all of 18 months. He balks a little, then says, "Why don't you audition for us after the show, and then you can sit in tomorrow night." I don't want to explain that my Dad and my uncle won't be available to drive me to the club the next night; that doesn't sound like something Little Walter or James Cotton would say. So I just tell him that I have to work the next night and would he please consider letting me sit in anyway? Relenting, he asks me point blank if I'm any good. Being 18, I'm confident in my abilities and assure him that I can play. Being 18, I'm not at all prepared for what's about to happen.
He brings me up on the third song and calls a harp shuffle in E. So far so good. He takes a few choruses, then turns it over to me. I start my solo and the band and audience are responding well. So far so good. I start wailing on the "3 hole" of my A harp, which I've just figured out how to manipulate to get some honking, wailing sounds. In fact, at this point in time it's the only place on the harmonica on which I can get honking, wailing sounds. And I've really got that one-note jam down. Which is why I become completely lost when both the reeds in that hole suddenly get stuck, resulting in more of a no-note jam. Panicking, I try to play other licks, but they all rely on that third hole. I have a solo to take. People are depending on me, or so I imagine. I throw the solo back to Lazy Lester while I try to fix my harmonica. This has never happened before. What do I do? I try tapping the harp against my hand and on the stage, hoping to dislodge whatever is stuck in the reeds. I'm really wimpy about it because I'm afraid I'll get thrown out for denting the stage floor. Finally I extend my harp out to Lazy Lester, and indicate through some kind of sign language that I want to trade harps with him.
To this day I can not describe the look of shock on his face. But bless him, he goes for it. I take his harp, finish my solo, acquitting myself reasonably well under the circumstances, and cringe as Lazy Lester takes my damaged harmonica and starts to play. But the man proceeds to wrest more music out of the first 2 holes of the harmonica than I could have gotten out of all 10. No 3 hole? No problem.
At that moment, I have one of the greatest epiphanies of my musical career: professionalism isn't always about how well you perform under the best circumstances, it's about how you perform under the worst ones. It's about how you cover up those inevitable disasters and keep the show going.
But it's too late for me to appy this knowledge on this night. The song is over, I'm back in the audience, clutching Lazy Lester's harp, my hands tingling, my mind racing. After the show, there are too many people around him and I never get a chance to thank him or give him back his harmonica and reclaim my own.
I was pretty happy to have his, actually. And a few years later it turned out to be the perfect harp for a recording session with Paul. The song was "Nothing But the Devil" by Lightnin' Slim, originally recorded in 1960 with Lazy Lester on harmonica. This led to another epiphany: "Old Blues Guys," as I characterized many of my heroes back then, often took the time and trouble to cherry-pick their harmonicas so they could play in tune. I had been nursing an invisible prejudice in assuming that playing "real blues" meant not caring about that stuff.
I saw Lazy Lester again years later when we were both playing at the Great British R&B Festival in England. He sat in our dressing room and surprised us by playing a Hank Williams song on Paul's National Steel. He didn't seem to remember much about our first encounter, or if he did he might have been trying to forget it. He was friendly but reserved. I wanted to make a musical connection with him, if only to make up for my own earlier embarrassment and awkwardness, but the timing never seemed to work out.
Flash forward 20 years to last weekend at the Doheny Blues Festival in Dana Point, California. It's a beautiful day, about 80 degrees with a breeze off the Pacific Ocean. We're getting ready to play a set on the "Back Porch" stage with our band, which consists of Billy MacGillivray on drums, Chris Rival on guitar, and Ed Friedland filling in on bass. We're happy to be there out on the road with such good players. I'm excited because Willie "Big Eyes" Smith and Bobby Rush are in the audience. Bobby Rush has just finished a powerful acoustic set and everyone is feeling fine. So I don't need anything more out of life, when suddenly who cruises by the stage but THE Lazy Lester. We wave at each other and he goes in search of a seat. Now I'm really hopped up. We start our set. The crowd is fantastic. The band is just cooking. About three quarters of the way through our set, I introduce "I'm a Lover Not a Fighter." I tell the audience, "This is a song by the great Lazy Lester, one of my very favorite harmonica players. I know he's here today so we're going to do it for him." I'm putting my heart into playing and singing it. I can't see him in the crowd but I hope at least that someone will tell him about it afterwards. In the middle of our next song, he shows up in front of the stage. He has a T-shirt over his shoulder and he hands it up to me. The T-shirt is the label of the Excello single of "I'm a Lover Not a Fighter" and it commemorates the 50th anniversary of the song. I try to keep playing through this but I just have to stop and lean over to give him a hug. I'm so thrilled I hardly know what I play to finish the song. The crowd is going nuts anyway. They call for an encore, and I get an idea. I step up to the mic and ask if Lazy Lester would join us on a tune. With a little help from Paul, the septegenarian makes his way over a rickety fence onto the stage. I ask him if we can do "Nothing But the Devil." He says he'll sing it but he doesn't have a harp. Don't you worry about a thing, I tell him, reaching over to my harmonica tray to hand him my backup A harp, a brand new Hohner Marine Band Deluxe. And now he's singing, and Paul is laying down some beautiful slide guitar, and now Lazy Lester and I are trading solos again, and I can't believe we've both survived long enough for this moment to happen. I watch him sing and am amazed by how animated he is and what a cool-looking cat he is. Tall and wiry, he seems younger than he did the first time I played with him 20 years ago. I guess 50 seemed older to me when I was 18 than 70 does now. And right now I feel more like a kid at 38 than I ever did when I was 18.
We finish the song together and I'm just beaming, grinning ear-to-ear. The band, the audience, all of us are one big ball of joy. Lazy Lester embraces me and then tries to give me my harmonica back. I hold my hand up. "Keep it," I tell him. "I owe you one."

photos by Robert Hyams

Springing the Blues, part 2: Reeeeal Fooooood

Success! After a few days of desolation and mall cuisine, we found not one but three great restaurants on our trek south. Sometimes we're forced to live on food from the Cracker Barrel or the Olive Garden for several days in a row. I realize how lucky we are to have this option when so many people are starving in the world. And for some people, especially young people, this restaurant regimen would be a dream come true. These chains have a nice shtick, serve decent food and are generally reliable. (And if they're close to the hotel, you have the added bonus of being able to dine in your underwear with the heat cranked up while watching HBO, and your mother won't come in and yell at you.) After three consecutive meals of this kind, though, when you're so doped up on sugar and salt you can hardly distinguish a "Tour d'Italia" (a rather cheesy offering) from a plate of corn muffins, it's time to hunt the big game: Real Food. We had some good leads in the form of a newspaper article about restaurants along the southern stretch of I-95 in South Carolina and Georgia. Unfortunately, after clipping the article and saving it from the trash for 3 months, I forgot to bring it along, and I couldn't remember the names of any of the restaurants it mentioned. No problem, that's why cell phones were invented. I called directory assistance, told the operator I was looking for a BBQ joint in Darien, name unknown, address unknown. She gave me three numbers and got off the line quickly before I could annoy her any further. None of the names sounded like the place I was looking for. No problem, that's why kids and the internet were invented. We called our daughter from the road and she was able to pull up the newspaper article online and give us directions to B&J's. I believe her college education is paying off already.

B & J's Steaks & Seafood
Hwy. 17, S, Darien, GA 31305
(912) 437-2122
We've eaten at four restaurants in Darien, a small fishing and marine research hub off of I-95 halfway between Jacksonville and Savannah. They're all pretty good and we wouldn't mind returning to any one of them. However, B&J's will be our first choice. It's just a neighborhood diner, easily bypassed by an outsider speeding to a better-advertised location. Its interior cinderblock walls are adorned with mermaid murals and a tasteful amount of nautical bricabrac. The two small dining rooms are filled with long folding tables and the tables are filled with people. The people are in turn filling up on the lunch buffet, which includes fried chicken, collard greens, cole slaw, baked beans, real mashed potatoes, stewed tomatoes, a full salad bar, and macaroni and cheese that was actually made by someone's Mom. Both the food and the atmosphere are genuine, and a bonafide bargain at $7 a head for some down-home cookin'.
Doggie Bags: 5!!

We arrived in Jacksonville that afternoon. I wanted to extend our streak, so I went online and did Google searches for "best restaurants jacksonville" and "restaurants jacksonville 'wine list'" and found a few prospects. We ate at two of them, Ocean 60 in Atlantic Beach and Giovanni's in Jax Beach. Both were expensive restaurants with excellent, freshly prepared food, and good wine and service. But as Paul put it, Ocean 60 is "a little too close to the beach." It features designer food and a crew of tall. handsome waiters. Its popularity as a nightspot for young singles became more apparent as we finished our meal and watched several groups of young women parade into and around the Martini Lounge where we were seated. I guess the word had gotten out about the waiters. I had plenty of good things to say about the place, but I forgot them by the next night because we ate at Giovanni's.

We've had some great meals in our time, but this was truly memorable from beginning to end. We started with some delicious California wine - it should be noted that Giovanni's has won the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence, which can't be a bad thing - and an appetizer of homemade sausage over gorgonzola. We shared a Caesar salad which was prepared at tableside - a little gimmicky, but it gave us a chance to get to know our waitress better. Her name was Jennifer and she reminded me of a grown-up version of Charlie Brown's mythic love, the Little Red-Haired Girl.
Paul was able to fulfill his weeklong quest for linguine and clams, with delicious results. I ordered one of the specials, a filet mignon which had been marinated, grilled, and glazed, and covered with fat, juicy porcini mushrooms. This all sat atop a homemade sweet pea ravioli and was surrounded by a cabernet reduction. It wasn't dinner, it was a religious experience. It was a little rich, though, so I put some aside for later in order to save room for dessert. I was glad I did. We had the "double-crust apple tart" which is really just a 5-inch pie, but call it what you want. Just don't call it a Table Talk. It was pure heaven. It had a buttery, flaky piecrust that had obviously been made that afternoon, apples cooked just shy of melting, and a scoop of homemade caramel balsamic ice cream.
Doggie Bags: My usual scale is 1 to 5, but I have to give this one a 10!
Giovanni's Restaurant
1161 Beach Blvd
Jacksonville Bch, FL 32250
(904) 249-7787

Springing the Blues, part 1: getting there

Glen Allen, Virginia, April 2, 2008
We're dying for a good meal. It's been almost 48 hours since our last bite of Real Food, a roast beef sandwich at the famous Rein's Deli in Conncecticut. I violated one of my cardinal rules of restaurants yesterday by driving 10 miles off our route onto a peninsula in southern Maryland for lunch at Captain John's Seafood. Captain John's is not to be confused with Cap'n Jack's or Captain D's, or its neighbor, Captain Billy's, whose weathered billboard on the highway suggests it has either seen better days or it hasn't, ever. I think I can safely add a "No 'Captains'" rule to our restaurant guide.
We made a more pleasant stop in Orange, Virginia, home of Billy Cooper's Music Store. This is the pedal steel guitar capital of the Eastern Seaboard. They have an amazing assortment of steel guitars for sale, and other instruments as well. My favorite item in the store is the pad of post-it notes with a little picture of a pedal steel on each note. The artwork takes up a lot of space on the tiny square, but it's cute and it provides entertainment for us "steel widows."

Questions about Harmonica and Women Players

Ana from Atlanta writes:
Hi Annie, I was at your seminar in Atlanta for the AHE [Atlanta Harmonica Enthusiasts] and I would like to say thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences as well. We are all waiting anxiously for that instructional dvd that you mentioned as one of your projects for the future, and you are always more than welcome to come back and teach us at the AHE.
I am also writing to ask you as a woman and harmonica player and i have some questions that i wish you could share with me about your own experience:
1) Do you think it is possible to live as a musician only? what are your the projects you are involved with: playing with different bands, organizing projects involving harmonica, teaching, all that stuff?
2) have you experienced some sort of prejudice because you were a woman (like any other job)?
3) what are qualities that in your opinion define a good harmonica player?

Dear Ana,
Thank you for getting in touch. I'm glad you enjoyed the seminar.
1) I can tell you from my own experience that it is very difficult to make a living as a musician. First of all, there are only two kinds of financial transactions in the music business: Robbery and Charity. You generally need to have some "seed money" to get a career going and cover all sorts of promotional and travel costs. The pay can sometimes seem good for a 90-minute show or seminar, but it is very low for the total hours put in traveling and preparing for gigs, and if you don't want to live in the back of a van and eat at Burger King every day, it doesn't go very far. That being said, it's so important to follow your passion and your dreams. It takes a lot of hard work and no small amount of good luck as well. People have taken advantage of us from time to time. We have also had a lot of help over the years from family and friends, help that we needed badly even with income from gigs and selling CDs. We had to keep our family as the main focus while our daughter was in school, but now that focus is shifting back to us and our career. However, the club scene has been greatly diminished since we started out in the biz. We're shifting our focus now more to teaching, creating instructional products and a greater body of recorded work. We're trying to forget about fitting into some existing market and we're trying to focus more on enjoying what we're doing so we can make the music better. That's the plan anyway. It's a work in progress.

Thanks for the questions and keep 'em coming!

The Don'ts of Driving

Getting ready for a drive from Boston to Jacksonville, Florida in a few weeks. Time to check out the car, shake out the spring wardrobe, and remember some of the rules of the road:

When you're driving, DON'T...
- Drink wine
- eat with a knife and fork
- wipe hamburger grease off your hands
- examine your hands and clothes for bread crumbs or melted chocolate
- listen in on passengers' arguments
- fish around for your meds
- fish around for someone else's meds
- think about what would happen if you suddenly JERKED the steering wheel
- stare at limos
- play that song that makes you close your eyes
- play Monopoly
- or Sudoku
- assume that there are any good restaurants on a peninsula
- drive down said peninsula looking for said restaurant
- answer your email
- change your pants
- floss
- take off more than one layer of clothing at a time
- watch the movie playing in the car ahead of you

Those are all the printable ones I could think of. Feel free to add your own!

Mailbox Full; Mind Empty

When I was a kid, my mother brought home a book by David Macaulay called "Motel of the Mysteries." It was a takeoff on the excavation of Tut's tomb, but set in the future some years after our present culture was buried alive by the simultaneous collapse of airborne pollution and millions of pieces of junk mail in transit. Macaulay, for all his brilliance as an architectural illustrator, storyteller, and educator, was close but just off the mark in anticipating the worldwide catastrophe that threatens us even now: being buried under mounds and mounds of email. And we're not talking about the printed hard copies here or even the backup discs. Just the invisible, weightless bits and bytes that take over our once-productive lives. There has to be some measurable weight to my Yahoo! home page, though, which swells importantly as it delivers the statistic: "Inbox 12,911 messages." This is not even counting items that were deleted or dumped in my spam folder. Luckily for me, Yahoo stopped limiting message storage space a few years ago. I think it's one of the very few examples of a corporation actually acting out of pity for the consumer.

A couple of weeks ago, as my computer was recovering from a series of crashes, I started looking around for ways to free up memory and drive space. I had been able to keep the Outlook inbox under 2000 messages, but after last year's tours, it had ballooned up to almost 2500. Somehow my eyes locked onto the screen and I sat down and started reading, replying, filing, deleting. My eyes turned red as tabasco. Two little gray cones of my dead brain cells piled up on my shoulders, and a croupier mysteriously showed up to brush them off. I didn't take any notice, I just kept typing. Finally, after 6 hours, I looked up. Way up, as I had shrunk 3 inches when my neck went from vertical to horizontal. The inbox now held only 1605 messages. Wow! Amazing. May as well get it down to an even 1600, or just a few below to make room for the incoming batch. Another hour or two went by, and it was down to 1423. Gee, I should just get it down to 1400 and call it a day. Dinnertime came and went. At last I gave up the chase. But I had gotten the total down to just under 1200 messages. That was the first of several marathons. I've stayed up all night. I've used every color of flag provided by Microsoft Outlook. I've created several dozen folders and subfolders. I've answered emails that were 2 or even 3 years old. I've apologized profusely in at least 5 languages. And these are well-thought-out replies, too, not some all-upper case or all lower case Blackberry cuneiform, like "ok thx". I'm neurotic and picky and I actually think about how I sign an email. "'Sincerely' sounds nice, but on second thought doesn't that seem a little insincere? I'll type 'Best regards' instead. I can back that up. Or maybe 'warm regards.' No, too much. stick with 'Best.'" It's as if I think there's a Nobel Prize out there for email.

As of this writing, there are only 326 emails in my inbox. Oh crap, 330. 339. And almost all of these are awaiting a reply. Paul came upstairs and stood behind me watching the wisps of smoke rising from my ears. He suggested that I set up an automatic reply telling people to try back if they don't hear from us within 3 weeks. How could such a simple, ingenious idea come from someone who can only use our expensive laptop to get boxing news and spyware? Maybe his intelligence has been preserved by his computer illiteracy. I read in the paper that email lowers your I.Q. (okay, it was the comics page, but there's probably more truth there than in the national news section). Could that be true? What about the freedom we were supposed to gain with these labor-saving devices in our paperless officies? And where are those hovercrafts and streaming holograms we were promised in the disco age? They were supposed to have been perfected by now. The way things are going, we won't even have the social security income to buy them if they ever do come out.

I'm convinced that someday people will see us the way we see depictions of people in Victorian times: caught up in email and Google searches just as our forebears were caught up in dusting, washing and feeding chickens. The humans and nonhumans of the future will long for our open spaces, our sense of beauty and history, but they will enjoy conveniences we can only dream of. Of course it follows that their labor-saving devices will probably create inconveniences and demands on their time that we would even never want to imagine.
Feel free to add your comments! Don't be too surprised if I don't write back immediately.
ok thx
ar

Harmonica Q&A

Cliff Wilkie a.k.a. "The Kingfish" writes:

My wife and I heard both of you last weekend at The Outpost in Albuquerque. You rocked the joint !!! I had never heard the two of your before and had only heard Annie on a few cuts on random CD's. I could go on, but really I have a harmonica question.
Annie, during one of your last numbers you did a 3-4 draw trill forever. You just hung on it until I thought you would drop. Do you do some sort of circular breathing or have some kind of special trick to keep your breathe going that long? Would you mind explaining.

That 4-5 draw trill on Lookin' Good is just a long, steady, quiet inhale with my nose closed to keep from taking on excess air. It's not hard to sustain if you breathe in and out a couple of times beforehand to oxygenate your brain, and stay relaxed so the notes don't get pinched or leak air from your lips. I classify it with "party tricks."
There's a version on Youtube now called "Annie Raines blows you away" with our band that came out pretty well. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjQJetx593o

Just in - Road Restaurant Reviews!

As we pull out of the driveway at the beginning of a tour, Paul and I wave goodbye to our home, our family, our pets, and our appetites. Long haulers with little downtime, we frequently gamble on finding a good meal in an unfamiliar town, and when we lose, we lose big. However, we've had a bumper crop of fine dining experiences on this most recent tour of the southeast, thanks to some internet research and a plethora of online customer reviews. After reading so many of these reviews, I was inspired to try my hand at the genre and spread the word to other hungry road warriors. This is a work in progress; I'll keep adding to it until it's done and we're back at our own kitchen table.

Ratings:

5 doggie bags: Excellent! The best of its kind! Book your travel through this city just to eat here! But read the review carefully to determine if this is the dining experience you're looking for.
4 doggie bags: The same as 5, but with room for improvement
3 doggie bags: A good bet for the area
2 doggie bags: It won't kill you.
1 doggie bag: It might.


Rein's Deli - Vernon, CT

A traveling northeasterner's home away from home. Styled as a New York Deli but run by about as Jewish a crew as you'd find at any Mountain Top location in Amish Country. Still, Rein's delivers classic Rubens, Rachels, kreplach soup, fresh bagels and all kinds lox, plus an irresistible array of candies, chips, frozen desserts, and gourmet condiments. Great for families and road musicians on the well-worn trail between Boston and New York. Look for Nancy at the take-out counter and tell her Paul and Annie say Hi! We'll be back soon. Doggie Bags: 5 out of 5!

It's About Thyme - Culpeper, VA

Homestyle Northern Italian food ranging from delectable gourmet salads with roquefort-raspberry dressing to a pan-simmered pot roast bathed in stewed tomatoes that will make you sing Ave Maria, prepared by a certified Cordon Bleu chef. Need I say more? About the best place to eat in the entire state. Doggie Bags: 5 out of 5!

The Family Wash - Nashville, TN

Come for the Shepherd's Pie, stay for the live music. Or the other way around. We stopped by Cole Slivka's Tuesday open mic on our first visit to the Music City. This ain't the Ryman, folks. It's a former laundromat hunkered down by the tracks on the north side of town. A larger version of the Cantab in Cambridge, the Wash is brimming with young daters and musicians enjoying beer, wine, and surprisingly tasty comfort food. The shepherd's pie was freshly prepared and piping hot. Our friend Ted ordered a roast half chicken on garlic mashed, which looked and smelled great. Jamie and the whole staff will treat you like family, only better. Lively, noisy, a great place to make and meet friends. Doggie Bags: 3.5 out of 5

Woodfire Grill - Atlanta, GA

A trip to Atlanta to play Blind Willie's wouldn't be complete without a visit to nearby Cheshire Bridge Road. There the eager tourist can view the Cheshire Bridge Motel where Blind Willie's used to house its visiting bands, and the even more eager tourist can indulge in visiting the large number of sex shops and other seedy enterprises that make up most of the neighborhood's trade. Somehow thriving in the midst of this turpitude, like flowers in a junkyard, two world-class restaurants, Woodfire Grill and Nakato, have sprouted side-by-side atop a small rise. Both restaurants are fronted by two-man crews of energetic young valet parking attendants who must be raiding Johnny Cash's old stash to keep pace with the crush of arriving and departing customers.
Woodfire's reputation rests on its use of fresh, organic and locally produced ingredients and a menu that changes daily. We particularly enjoyed the diverse selection of wines and the high-quality service, including frequent cleaning of the table between courses and immediate replacement of any used or dropped silverware. "Small Plate" appetizers included Kumomoto Oysters, a personal weakness of mine, and smoky roasted little neck clams. I had a pan-roasted fish that was perfect. Paul ordered a ribeye which was just OK and more than a little overpriced. It's hard to justify gourmet labels and prices for grilled steak, which is the football-watching, beer-can-tossing macho guy's haute cuisine. But the sauteed greens, a deceptively simple preparation, were flavorfully complex and as deliciously bitter as anything penned by Dorothy Parker.* Doggie Bags: 4.5 out of 5

*Ms. Parker, responsible for such gems as "Scratch a lover, and find a foe," also generated what could be our own motto: "Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."

Nakato - Atlanta, GA

Nakato perches just above the neighboring Woodfire Grill, its unassuming facade set back a few yards, like a suddenly tall kid slouching to blend in with his still-short friends. Diners can choose between Hibachi Grill seating or traditional tables, and there are a few seats by the sushi bar as well.
I'd long ago given up asking "What's fresh" at seafood restaurants, only to be reproached with: "Everything's fresh, ma'am," but Nakato highlights the freshest items on their sushi and sashimi menu, something I have never seen at any Japanese restaurant in America. I excitedly ordered several of the highlighted selections, including succulent Maguro tuna, the blander hamachi (Yellowtail), and some fish I'd never heard of, including shima aji (jack fish) and saury (a type of mackerel). I don't consider myself a fan of mackerel or other oily fish, but the saury was incredibly tender and aromatic, not redolent in the least. I also tried a house special oyster maki that was kind of interesting, which is to say not for the timid, and California rolls so fine and good they should have been reviewed by Ernest Hemingway instead of me. Ernest surely would have liked our waitress, a beautiful young kimono-clad woman who made pleasant conversation and checked on us frequently. Paul ordered a lunchbox-style meal with Beef Teriyaki and ate everything except the Edamame beans, which left more for me. There is a full bar with an extensive menu of sake, wine, beer, and cocktails. Desserts are surprisingly Western, but this is Atlanta after all. We polished off a "Tartufata Cake" which seemed more like a classic Napoleon and enjoyed a quiet but convivial atmosphere in the traditional dining room by a window overlooking a Japanese garden. Doggie Bags: 5 out of 5!

Tuscany - Lexington, VA

We had stumbled in here for lunch on a previous road trip, and were so pleased with the simple but fresh Italian cuisine that I routed our tour through Lexington and booked a hotel nearby so we could return for dinner. Yes, it's that hard to find good food on the road. However, dinner was a bit of a letdown. Caesar salad was heavy on the mayo, pasta and potatoes slightly undercooked, and the chicken marsala without any recognizable flavor. The framed articles that adorn the walls tell us that the place is owned by an eccentric world-class chef, Luciano D'Avanzo, who has cooked with and for the greats. My best guess is that it was such a slow night, the chefs were sent home and the skeleton crew that remained did their best to serve us and the two other couples present that night. Perhaps we'll try it again on our next trip through, but we may try a few other places first, or just adjust our routing to land in White Sulphur Springs, WV, home of the Greenbrier (see Tamarack). Doggie bags: 3 out of 5

Bonefish Grill - St. Petersburg, FL

It's hard to find a restaurant in Florida that isn't housed in a concrete mini-mall. Bonefish Grill is no exception to this rule, but once inside, you'll feel like you're in a "real" restaurant - and so you are. The chain's flagship restaurant in St. Pete is decorated on a human scale, not a massive one, with warm lighting over the tables and a cushion of darkness between them, giving diners a sense of privacy when ensconced in a booth. We arrived at 7 PM on a Tuesday night, and tables and booths were filled with lively young corporate types and a few families. Our host ordered so much food that the table started to look like a time-lapse film of cells dividing. Appetizers included Bing Bang Shrimp, which disappeared quickly. Seared Ahi tuna melted in the mouth. Crab cakes were tasty enough, though not sublime. Seafood is obviously the feature here, and most of the piscine entree offerings are prepared one of four ways. In spite of the variety of mix-and-match options on the menu, the preparation and presentation were exquisite. Even though I was so stuffed to the gills I risked being added to the menu, I managed to polish off most of my Flounder served "Virgin Mediterranean" style, a simple preparation of this fresh, tender, flaky....mmmmm...sorry! I got carried away for a minute. Paul ordered Chicken Marsala, part of a worldwide quest for the perfect version of the dish, a quest that unfortunately fell short at this particular location as the grilling created a rather dry product. The wine was excellent, the service efficient and inspiring, the drinks dangerous. Doggie Bags: 4 out of 5. Note: we ate at another Bonefish in Owings Mills, Maryland, which boasted a similar menu and excellent service, though the seafood was not quite on a par with the St. Pete location.

Indian Grill - St. Petersburg, FL

The standard Indian menu plus some interesting and tasty recommendations freshly prepared and served with a touch of audacity by the gregarious proprietor. Try saying THAT three times fast! You won't be able to, you'll be too busy eating the Chicken Do Piaza. Go! Doggie Bags: 4 out of 5.

La Teresita - 3248 W. Columbus Dr., Tampa, FL

Paul and I were tired, cross, and wet when we arrived at this downhome Cuban eatery during a storm, and Paul's malapropistically referring to it as "la Turista" added to my apprehension. However, there was nothing to fear. We enjoyed abundant portions of delicious, home-cooked food at the lowest prices in the entire Tampa Bay area. There is a sit-down restaurant on one side and a cafeteria with dining counters on the other. The restaurant side serves the same food as the cafeteria but with higher prices. The cafeteria is noisy, but it affords the casual diner some of the best people-watching in the state of Florida, which is saying something. Recommended: Roast Pork, Collard Green Soup, fried Plaintains, and the Ensalada, a simple green salad, not too cold, with DIY oil and vinegar available on the counter. Doggie Bags: 4.5 out of 5! Caveat: not a good Valentine's Day date location.

Smokin' Joe's - Darien, GA (exit 49 off I-95)

We passed through Darien a couple of years ago and had lunch here. At the time, an autographed picture of James Brown graced the counter. Apparently he had eaten there many times in the past. I have to admit it was the picture of the Godfather of Soul that brought us back to the large, wood-paneled restaurant. The smell of woodsmoke billowing from a chimney over the kitchen was also a good sign. I have a friend who is not only a professional bbq chef, but an artist with smoke and sauces as well. Out of loyalty to him I try to maintain a minimum standard when on the road that I won't eat in any 'Q joint where I can't see or smell smoke.
We ordered our food and looked for JB. His photo was gone, as were all the other photos and bric-a-brac that had covered the walls. In its place was a signed photograph of Nicholas Cage. It turns out his cousins just bought the place two weeks ago and are managing and cooking some mouth-watering, high quality BBQ. The ribs were meaty and tender, though not quite as falling-off-the bone as I'd like. Cole slaw was fresh and crispy, contrasting well with the richness of the ribs. Best of all, none of the food was oversalted. The entire staff was solicitous and friendly, and we'll be back next time for more of their homey southern hospitality. Doggie Bags: 4 out of 5

Marchand's Bar & Grill - St. Petersburg, FL

The Renaissance at the Vinoy is St. Pete's swankiest hotel. Also its pinkest. From the outside it looks like a stucco model made entirely of Hostess Sno-balls. We haven't stayed there (yet!) but we did stop by their restaurant for some breakfast and it was one of the best meals of the entire tour. Service was impeccable, orange juice was fresh if a little navel-ly, and we were seated in high-backed, comfortable chairs next to a tall window that looked out on the tree-lined drive. Paul had the Eggs Benedict, prepared in the local style over crab cakes with a citrus sabayon. I had one of the signature dishes, Lobster Hash, which consisted of delicious chunks of fresh claw meat over a lovely saute of julienned peppers and onions, all topped with two poached eggs. Dreamy. Doggie bags: 5 out of 5!

Tamarack - Beckley, WV

We had only been to Beckley once before, in a muddled attempt to find an elegant lunch that ended up with us glaring at each other across the table at a Captain D's. At the time, it seemed like the lesser of two evils as we steered away from a Pacific-themed grille with the portentous-sounding name of "Rimfire." In any case, I was determined to get it right the second time around.
Friends in Charleston told us about Tamarack, a highwayside tourism center perched above a rest area off of I-79. Before I get to the food, I have to recommend that anyone driving through West Virginia stop by Tamarack. It's part arts foundation, part craft gallery, part gift shop, part traveler's oasis, a unique cottage industry that benefits state tourism and is aided in turn by the state. A circular building houses regional crafts such as quilts, wood carvings, furniture, ceramics, and glassware, as well as locally produced comestibles like honey, pickles, preserves, and barbecue sauce. Resident artisans demonstrate their techniques at various locations throughout the complex, and lecture halls and theatres provide a setting for regularly scheduled films and concerts, and a conference center is available for private parties or business meetings.
Tamarack's food court is catered by the Greenbrier, whose home base is White Sulphur Springs on the Virginia border. This is a cafeteria in name and appearance only. The food is well-prepared, fresh, and flavorful. Green beans were actually green, a pork loin slightly tougher than hoped for but edible nevertheless, and pulled pork barbecue was tangy and not oversalted. We also enjoyed the roasted new potatoes, which were a tiny bit al dente, but I think this was intentional as the lunch hour had just begun and the potatoes would have time to finish cooking in the steam table. Service was friendly, something it's hard to take for granted coming from the frozen Northeast. Doggie bags: 4 out of 5.

The Bayou - 212 Morehead Plaza, Morehead, KY

A piece of modern political and cultural history tucked away in a mini-mall not far from the MSU campus. The owners were lifelong residents of Louisiana until, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, they came up to coal country and started an authentic Cajun restaurant with a homey menu of po'boys, jambalaya, gumbo, and other traditional New Orleans dishes. Food is made to order, so it takes a while but is well worth the wait. Louisiana beer and hazmat-laced, color-saturated sodas fill the fridge, and there's lots of clatter in the kitchen as the young chefs whip up each roux the way they learned to from their parents and grandparents. Doggie bags: 3 out of 5.

Culinary high point of the tour: first bite of lobster and poached eggs at Marchand's

Runner-up: wicked good sushi served by an incredibly cute waitress in a kimono at Nakato in Atlanta

Runner-down: Single-handedly (literally!) eating a large bag of Smartfood while driving, yet somehow ending up with both hands completely plastered with that quick-dry cement they refer to as "white cheddar." The popcorn is highly addictive, no doubt due to a proprietary blend of barely legal chemicals, but the gooey residue reminds me of those blob toys I used to get out of gumball machines at the supermarket as a child. Don't forget, kids, "non-toxic" doesn't mean you're supposed to eat it.

Low point: BBQ sandwich purchased from a gas station in Brentwood, Tennessee. This actually is toxic. And it made me cry. As I spit out the first bite of acrid mystery meat, I sobbed, "Is there anything in this state that isn't made entirely of SALT?"

(reviews coming soon):

Portofino - Lexington, KY

Dudley's - Lexington, KY

City's Cafe and Market - St. Petersburg, FL

Pearl's Saltwater Grille - Savannah, GA

Oily in the Morning

I got my driver's license when I was 18, but my real driver's education came from using a stick shift. My father had an old 1981 Toyota Celica hatchback that was all falling apart except for the engine. I careened all over Massachusetts at record-breaking speeds, zooming from work to gigs, from home to rehearsals, and giving rides to other musicians when their cars were impounded for overdue parking fines.

The Celica ran hot. The only way to keep it cool was to run the heater full blast, even in summertime. I remember bouncing from pothole to pothole down a simmering, bubbling L Street in South Boston in July to rehearse with my friend Pete, a great guitarist and songwriter who lives in Nashville now. I adjusted the vents to blow all the hot air at my feet, which was not as uncomfortable as it sounds. I'd rather be too hot than too cold anyway. But I did a lot of stupid things like that when I was younger. Not like now, of course.

When I first started driving, I had to be "schooled" at the gas pump. One time I was giving a ride home to my old music partner, the late Butch McClendon. I was running on empty, so I pulled into a filling station and got five dollars worth of regular unleaded. At the time this was about 3 gallons. Butch shook his head and said,"Little girl, you don't know nothing. You can't go around putting five dollars in all the time." He took a ten out of his coat pocket and handed it to me. "Here. Put some more gas in your car." Butch hardly ever paid me for gigs as the band drank up the tab and usually ended up owing the bar money, but he believed in the value of a good education. I think of those days fondly now as we drive from state to state spending 50 bucks a pop at the pumps.

Before Paul and I became music partners, I would drive him out to his Wednesday night gig at the Sit 'n Bull Pub in Maynard, MA, where he opened for Ronnie Earl and the Broadcasters. I was always late in picking him up, but felt confident I could make up the time en route. One winter there was a snowstorm every Wednesday night. I took a rural road for most of the 17 miles, navigating the sharp curves and slippery conditions with my left foot hovering over the clutch, my right pressing accelerator and brake simultaneously, as I palpated the horn every few seconds. I had become a topnotch Boston Driver.

Eventually my father traded me a red Acura for his beloved Celica, and from there I graduated to a Dodge and then a Plymouth minivan, better suited to larger bands and longer hauls. Paul and I had a gig at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York, followed by a gig the next night in Burlington, Vermont. It turned out to be a longer drive than I had anticipated, and we would need to hurry to get there in time. We examined the map and made the mistake of believing that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. The straight line in this case was a road called 9N that branched off from the New York Thruway and angled towards the Hudson River south of Burlington. 9N may have looked perfectly straight from above, but on the ground it was the world's longest, bumpiest Evel Kneivel stunt prop. We dipped in and out of the asphalt waves, surfacing among Adirondack Lake cabins. I can never forget the grinding sound as I gunned the engine to speed over those winding hills. The next day we had to drive over the Green Mountains on the way home. Finally, on Interstate 93 in southern New Hampshire, the car made a final growl and stopped responding. This is when I learned what a transmission was and why I needed a new one.

Of course, I eventually forgot all about it, until we got to Livingston, Montana last July. Livingston is a really cute town outside of Bozeman. We had a gig at the local Elks Lodge. I was worried we wouldn't have any people, as the entire town was plastered with posters for an upcoming show by "Sean Reefer and the Resin Valley Boys" which sounded like some kind of code for something. But we had a wonderful night after all, with a great crowd, and we want to thank John Taillie for putting it together. He and his girlfriend treated us to a delicious dinner and put us up at the best hotel in town, the Murray. The only odd thing about the Murray was that it had a century-old elevator that could only be operated by a member of the desk staff. The desk didn't open until 7:30, so the next morning we had to wait to load out, though we would ordinarily be on the road by 6:30 AM.

The Murray Hotel, Livingston, Montana. Across the street is a restored old railroad depot. You can't see the detail in this photo, but the circular rosette between the depot's second floor windows contains a red and black plaster yin-yang, an feature designed and installed by the original Chinese builders.

I thought that since we would still be in town when the local businesses opened, we might as well get the oil changed and the car looked over. John sent us over to a place called "Special Lube." You laugh, but it's the best damn place to take your car in the entire Mountain Time Zone. It's owned and operated by a group of idealistic, polite young people who aren't out to fleece anybody; they just really like cars. The guy at the desk wore giant tortiseshell glasses that were too big to fit on his nose and had slid down to just above the tip, giving him an owlish, baby-faced look like Al Wilson from Canned Heat. As he wrote up the bill for the oil change he informed us that the transmission fluid was brown and full of little burned-up pieces of the transmission. Apparently this is a bad thing. However, it would take them almost an hour to do a "Tranny flush" - stop laughing, it's auto mechanic's jargon - so we decided to take our chances as we had a long drive over the Rockies to get to Spokane by evening. Paul and I got in the car and had driven about a block and a half when we looked at each other with the same thought: "Take our chances? In the ROCKY MOUNTAINS?" What's an hour in Livingston, I realized, compared with the time we'd spend waiting for a tow truck to find us at the Continental Divide, or the incredible hassle of renting a car or looking for a new one for the remaining 6,000 miles of our tour?

Neither of us had said anything. I just turned the car around and drove it right back into the bay at Special Lube. We took our instruments out and sat at a picnic table across the street, playing for a couple of foraging prairie dogs as the freight trains rolled by behind us. I should have taken a picture. It was our only non-ludicrous "Americana Moment" on the tour. I'll get to the ludicrous ones eventually.

The Special Lube guy wrote up the final bill ($122 well spent!) and, with an air of sincere interest in the subject and no trace of sarcasm, gave me a few pointers about gear shifting in a car with automatic transmission. I really noticed the difference in the feel of the engine after the transmission flush. And I suddenly felt guilty about those hundred-mile-an-hour joyrides through the trooperless High Plains. I paid much closer attention to the tachometer after that and patted the dashboard with apologies and comforting words for the next several thousand miles.

Looking back on the trip now, I wish we had taken as good care of ourselves as we took of that car. But that's another story.

Paul in downtown Livingston





Inside the Elks Lodge with two of Livingston's finest. Everybody we met there was great, but these two made it happen.