Voodoo Child

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jIuWZaF7wb-v3OYS4myTWkF_aMThLCfR/view?usp=drivesdk

This is my response to MJ’s prompt for the song Voodoo Child. The link is here: https://open.substack.com/pub/storiesfromthejukebox/p/voodoo-child?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1n38r

and every writer is invited to participate.

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The old house dates from 1840. It was built in Madison Georgia, and much later was moved to Athens. I found it standing at the end of a long dirt road in the rolling pinewoods. 

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Additions to the old cabin made it accessible to the modern world, but the past was in every corner. Every squeaking board. Yet comfortable as the day is long.

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And it had ghosts. At least one was fairly modern, a couple were ancient. I smudged the place when I first moved in, it was that kind of place, ancient logs, a mix of dark and light. Georgia. 

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The old log house had the vibe of a gramophone string band. If you listened close, you could hear the fiddle playing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. And a woman's voice, coming for to carry us home. The old house had soul. It had the blues.

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The modern ghost - let's call him Robert - had been a Renaissance man. Owned a restaurant right off the main square in Athens, built and lost a real estate empire, loved them Dawgs! But more than anything, he loved the blues. Lightnin Hopkins, low-down dirty, sideways windin blues. 

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He had put on weight in his later years, and he died of a heart attack while trimming the bushes in the old house yard. He climbed to the back porch and lay there motionless for a day or so before the distant neighbors found him. He's buried on the private land a ball field or so away, in the clearing that the wisteria wants to take over.

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I never met him in life, but I knew him in his after. He smoked cigarettes on the back porch at night, a weird little red glow and the smell of Cherokee tobacco permeated the dark. Especially those long, chilly rainy Georgia nights. If you've spent a minute in Georgia after the heat breaks, after the Dawgs have won five or six, you know those nights.

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Buzz is a force of nature. He has a real name but has been just Buzz since he came back from Kauai thirty years ago. Buzz was an old friend of Robert. They played blues together in an Athens band for years.

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Buzz is getting on in years himself. He does odd jobs for the man who inherited the nearby farm. He minds the chickens, harvests the beans and walnuts, trims the crepe myrtles. But mostly he plays the blues. I was walking nearby one day, and I heard him playing down by the henhouse.

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I trundled down to listen. He asked if I play, so I played a little riff. He handed me a joint, and a couple eggs, said don't be a stranger.

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We became unlikely friends. Buzz is as old school as they come. Gruff, opinionated, foul-mouthed, playing blues guitar like the son of the devil.

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We started meeting down at the old house on the regular to jam. Buzz only knows the blues, but is as good as I've ever heard at it. I gave him my cheap electric. Well, he paid in weed and that rich low-down sound, so it was a fair trade.

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It was along about dusk that day, clouds hanging just above the long-boned pines. We had played a few minutes already, I had brought out a blues harp and had added some keyboard to his guitar licks.

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We stopped for a bit, and had a good long toke on the porch. I don’t drink much anymore, but for whatever reason, taking a shot with the Buzzmeister that dusk seemed just right. So I broke out an old bottle of Woodford Reserve and a couple shot glasses. We downed a few.

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Buzz walked back into the studio room, picked up his guitar, and started wailing on it. No song you know, just an extended, straight up blues loop that would keep Stevie Ray on his toes. I sat back just to listen. Then he did a Lightnin Hopkins song. “You know that it's a sin to be rich but it's a low-down shame to be poor.”

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Then Buzz did some funky thing with his settings and he began to play Voodoo Child. The walls leaned in. The floor began to roll. I sat on a little low seat in the gathering dark. And out of nowhere came the clear sound of a chuckle. It turned into a belly laugh. And the faint red glow of a cigarette appeared next to me hovering in the air. The smell was unmistakable. Indian tobacco.

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Buzz knew it too. He knew his old friend was there. He let out a low-key rebel yell, shouted “Robert my man, this one's for you.” And he went into the full screech of the Voodoo Child. It was wild. It was a moment. It was that place where everything is just to the left of where it's supposed to be.

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Buzz died a few weeks ago. I wasn’t there but I felt him go. It was almost like he stopped to say goodbye. Buzz now lies in the same clearing next to Robert. I expect they will jam it out into eternity, trading licks like two old brothers, arm in arm, loaded for the good fight. And if they run into Jimi, or Stevie Ray, or Lightnin, you can bet there'll be a jam.

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Rest in peace, gentlemen.