Leaving mid-afternoon, my next stop will take me 42 miles to the college town of Ruston, Louisiana. Although seemingly devoid of any significant places of history beyond Louisiana Tech, the town is the home of famous singer-songwriter Jeff Mangum. Mangum and his band, Neutral Milk Hotel remain one of the most popular and endearing bands to emerge from the American independent music scene in the 90's.
Neutral Milk Hotel circa 1998
Credit: http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/artists/304x304/neutral-milk-hotel.jpg
The band provides a surprisingly original way to engage with Southern culture. Their music combines elements of traditional folk music with psychedelic tinged, feedback driven guitars. The template they set has become one of the de facto sources of inspiration in popular music today, with popular bands like the Arcade Fire citing them as major influences. So in an effort to soak up that unique local heritage, I will explore the Louisiana Tech campus where Mangum DJ'ed as a teen and shaped his musical taste.
Louisiana Tech University
Credit:http://www.byuaccounting.net/mediawiki/images/9/93/Collegecampus.jpg
Ruston's colorful history of musical influence will help me better understand the exciting and unique Southern culture that helps shape the face of popular music and art forms in places far from the South itself. The far-reaching nature and importance of Southern culture exists as a driving force behind the heightened reality exhibited in Wolf Whistle's recollection of a Southern history screaming to be heard.
Coca Cola Bottling Plant
Credit: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/
Coca_Cola_Bottling_Plant_in_Minden,_LA_IMG_1434.JPG
Leaving Shreveport around 10:00 AM to allow myself some time to rest, I would then set off to Minden, Louisiana. Arriving roughly around 11:00 AM, I would acquaint myself with the quaint, small town charm on display at places like the Coca Cola bottling plant that provides most of the tourism and capital for the town.
My next stop will be the far less traditional, Germantown settlement, just outside of Minden. Founded by German Christian Mystics in 1835, the town was idealized as a utopia where members patiently awaited the Second Coming of Christ. Needless to say, the colony was unsustainable and the socialist bent to life there ultimately proved unrealistic.
Led by the enigmatic Countess Leon (Elisa Leon), the settlement was relatively successful for a period and existed as a bizarre holding pattern for Puritan-like behavior and belief amidst very different surrounding cultures. My time spent exploring this strange settlement and its unassuming neighbor, Minden, will help forge an understanding of the rich, unusual assortment of cultures in the South. More info on the bizarre history of Germantown.
Germantown, LA
Credit: http://www.hnoc.org/images/1974.25.31.63.jpg
Waking up on day two of my trip, I depart at 8:00 AM for Shreveport, Louisiana. One of the oldest and largest cities in Louisiana, Shreveport is a city filled with history. For a period of time during the Civil War, the city actually served as the capitol of Louisiana. Since the war, the city has adopted a rich heritage of innovative music and bizarre outsider art.
Lead Belly's Grave
Credit: http://www.deltablues.net/lead3.jpg
My first stop would be the gravesite of legendary Blues guitar player, Lead Belly, just outside Shreveport. Blues and unique forms of music have an inescapable presence in Wolf Whistle, often serving to strangely bridge the gap between racial divides and temporarily placate the racist subtext frequently present in the characters' dialogue.
Moving along, I would make a quick stop at the now decrepit, Fannin Street, previously the seat of blues culture in Shreveport. Now there remain few remnants of the street's previous seedy glory (blues clubs, dive bars, brothels, and the like). Nonetheless, the area would give me a fleeting glimpse of the innovative subculture that erupted in the wake of Civil War violence as well as a brief taste of the kind of Southern seediness that Nordan revels in exposing.
Fannin Street
Credit:http://www.cr.nps.gov/delta/blues/images
/sites/fannin_street.jpg
Finally, I would spend the remainder of my time enjoying the elegant R. W. Norton Art Gallery that showcases over four centuries of art. This gallery would be a relaxing way to mull over the relationship between art and the South that is so frequently examined during this road trip.
Rather than spending my day peeling back layer after layer of the innovative Blues sound stemming from the city, I would slowly work my way through The Residents' God In Three Persons. One of the paragons of artistic integrity in American music, The Residents have long been said to have been formed in Shreveport. The band fuses the cryptic and the catchy in a baffling flurry of art-rock weirdness and post-punk skepticism and remains one of the most important and unexpected developments of American underground music. Their whimsically dark music would be a good companion to the intense otherworldliness of Nordan's writing.
