the matthew show revisited: week eighteen
My 2012 began in 2011, with the passing of Jason Jackson. To say that we were friends is to leave out most of the story. We drove each other insane, stayed on the phone too long, and collaborated fitfully for nearly two decades as we struggled with our demons. In the end, his won out, and I was left to decide what that meant for me.
Enter one Fetzer Mills, Jr., who I'd known in Second Life for quite a while, and who stepped out from behind the digital veil to offer me and the band a trip to Folk Alliance in Memphis. As part of that visit, he booked us an evening session at Sun Studio, where the ghosts of American music do not rest easy, infusing that small room with an energy that commanded reverence even from my normally irreverent self. And what would we play in that room? Why, one of my friend Jason's best songs, one we could never quite pin down on wax while he was alive.
Earlier this month, the architect of that session left us as well. I can still hear Fetzer laughing in the control room as we bashed borrowed guitars through ancient amps and made our own kind of history. Humans may be mortal, but rock and roll lives on. Jason and Fetzer knew that, and the world is better for it.