Mountain Jam
Another Story From the Jukebox
I was, and in many ways still am, the preacher’s kid.
My parents, after having admirably served the war effort (the big one, WWII) had decided to trade the modern world for the relative safety of backwoods western North Carolina. We weren’t exactly Appalachian folk. Mountain adjacent, let’s say.
1973. I’m 16 years old, a roiling mass of ambition, confusion, and hormones. The mountains are beautiful, although a bit serene for a kid who just wants to play ball and hang out. We have a crew. We called ourselves The Southern Elite (no lack of self-awareness there!). The school kids called us the Roots, for reasons I was never clear on. They also called us the basketball team. 7 of us, mostly from other places around the south.
That era had a certain “end of the world as we know it” flavor, not unlike 2026. We were refugees, just a bit early. Expats.
I was at Dawg’s house, me and him and Sambo. Dawg’s mom had left the angry violent dad in Fort Myers, brought the kids to the mountains for a better life. She was a nurse, always working, never home.
We always had weed. Puddin and I were growing it down by the bend in the creek. And Dawg had Florida connections. So here we were, on Dawg’s porch, with a doobie that looked like a pregnant dolphin because none of us really knew how to roll one, and time. The kind of time God made and gifted to Appalachia.
Dawg had made a cottage industry out of slipping albums out of the local Sky City in his jacket. He sold Bang A Gong and Deep Purple to a kid whose parents were Church of Christ. Where that kid played those records is anybody’s guess. But one record Dawg didn’t sell was Eat A Peach.
On that porch on that timeless Saturday afternoon, Sambo and Dawg and I became revelationists. The 7 of us had sat stoned in KP’s garage and devoured Fillmore East a few months before. Eat A Peach though. Personal. Tragic. Powerful. Delicate.
I bought a guitar shortly afterward. I’m left-handed. The guitar was awful - the strings sat off the fretboard like high hurdles. I made noise. But godamightydam! Did you hear what Duane Allman and Dickie Betts did with these things? They called the angels. I persevered.
My dad was looking out for us. He genuinely believed in the rapture, and that we must remain unsullied in the eyes of The Lord. Electric music sullies us in the eyes of The Lord, he said, quietly. Those Macon boys are not right with The Lord, he maintained, and I would be better off without them in my life.
But godamightydam dad! Did you hear them?
My favorite cut on Eat A Peach is Blue Sky. “Lord, you know it makes me high when you turn your love my way.” Heard it for the first time there on Dawg’s porch. And also this 33-minute rip in the fabric of normal called Mountain Jam. The theme of the album is peace. The album’s title came from a quote by Duane: “Every time I’m in Georgia, I eat a peach for peace”. And T S Eliot. Yes, brother, we dare.
Not sure how Dad’s inner world shifted the day Mom announced that she just loved that Melissa song on the radio.
