On Friday morning I picked Leslie up at a bike shop in Wicker Park to head towards New Orleans. We'd met a few years back in Boston, ran into each other six months on the streets of New Orleans and got to know each other at Detroit's Serbian American Hall, watching Macedonian saxophone legend Feras Mustafa play to a paltry crowd of 20-odd people.
She's essentially been on the road since 2007, criss-crossing the USA and Europe, playing in Balkan and radical marching bands, pedicabbing and working odd jobs to make ends meet. Of late she's been living on a boat in Bushwick, chopping firewood to trade for rent. Excellent road trip companion.
Central Illinois' early March landscape of barren soy fields slowly faded into a deep blue dusk, marked by occasional violent bursts of rain. We made it to Memphis just in time to snag a meal of authentic barbecue- jumping from the car, babbling to the bewildered servers about our drive so far and how we'd come straight here from the road to grab a bite. We met up with old friends and headed to The Cove, Memphis's best pirate-themed bar for a drink as a tattooed, bearded punk bluegrass band blared in the corner. Our kind of place.
The next morning, we took a quick drive-by trip of the city's tourist traps (Elvis overload!!) and headed out to our first true destination, NOLA. We had a perplexingly difficult time locating food in Jackson Mississippi (no restaurants open on a Saturday afternoon??) and made it into the French Quarter just after nightfall.
We are staying in the awesomest, creepiest old hotel ever. Oh, the photos you'll soon see.
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