That's How I Got to Memphis
Cover song, Dorothy Allison & Southern Queers.
*Paid subscribers get my homespun version of Tom T. Hall’s tearjerker “That’s How I Got to Memphis” at the end of this letter. Thank you dearly for your support.*
Dear Reader,
I’m sending you this letter early, being that on Sunday I’ll be returning from a gig, zooming North on the highway heading back up to where the chilly winds are howling.
This Saturday (Dec 7th) I’m playing at the Raised by Sound festival in Memphis, doing a duo set to celebrate WYXR radio. I love independent radio and I love Memphis. So I’m happy to head back down there for a couple of days. This is my first time in many years not living in the South and it’s been a bit of a culture shock. Some of which I enjoy, since it was time for a change, but being a New Yorker turned Southern based artist has been a big part of my identity. Which means now things are shifting for me, and I am growing into someone new.
I want to take a moment in this letter to you, to speak of the death of author Dorothy Allison. A loss of a beloved artistic elder for so many of us, including myself who never met her, but was shaped by her work. She was a writer who expanded my world at a young age and a voice I trusted. I first read her in high school and it shook me to my core. I was a kid living in a precarious situation about to tip over the edge into oblivion, hungry for someone to tell the truth for once. She did that and more, introducing to me the idea that despite cultural differences, working people from North and South had common struggles and common enemies.
Thank you to Bottom Feeder’s Banquet for sharing this interview. I suggest subscribing!
I’ve been reading tributes written to her and watching her interviews through out the years. She carried such hard fought dignity. It all got me thinking about my deep love for Southern queers. The world that took me in and encouraged me to write songs in my early days of wandering the Southeast. Where I would camp out on communal land in the hollers of East Tennessee, or play in the living rooms of gay punk houses in Florida, or party in the abandoned buildings turned fantasy world for the night in New Orleans. I’ve learned enough about family from these communities to survive the brutal outside world thus far. I learned about the ragged art of keep on keeping on. About doing your work with intention and furious bravery while the rest of the world ignores and undermines you, only to sing your praises decades later. On and on it goes.
May we all bless Dorothy Allison on her journey to the land of the ancestors. I am so very thankful for her work and her commitment to working class people everywhere.
thank you for reading, stay warm and
don’t take any shit.
xo alynda mariposa segarra xo