Dixie Craggers Summer 2015 Mixtape

North Clear Creek swimming hole at the Obed

 

At my mother's behest, I played "Country Roads" at my very first guitar recital. When you grow up in a house where Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and The Statler Brothers fight for stereo time, you don't have much choice in the matter. Shortly after that recital, I began to take my guitar to the basement of our church where on Tuesday nights, old men with aged stringed instruments sat in an enormous circle pickin' and grinnin' music from the mountains. They were called the Skillet Lickers.  I struggled to keep up.

But I came of age rebelling against the music of my mother. The discovery of Sham 69, Minor Threat, and The Buzzcocks set my ears on a path that lasted well over a decade of my young life. The effects were deep and lasting. These days though, if I listen to music in my truck at all, I'm more prone to listen to Doc Watson or Uncle Tupelo than Reagan Youth. Like circles, we end up where we began, "but only in leaving can they ever come back round."

This summer's mixtape pays homage to the music of my roots. It opens with a blazing fury of Appalachian fiddle that will set the feet to tapping on even the most jaded urban ears. Acts like Benjamin Booker and Lee Bains III successfully cross the streams of Chuck Berry and Creedence Clearwater Revival with the likes of Bad Brains and Black Flag, respectively. But it all remains heavily anchored by country purist revivalists like Melissa Payne, Nick Ferrio, and Sturgill Simpson. In a time when country radio has not only neglected but totally turned its back on traditional country music, what could be more punk? Listen to it HERE.

Enjoy!

1. Possessed By Paul James - There Will Be Nights When I'm Lonely Intro (TWBNWIL)
2. Possessed By Paul James - There Will Be Nights When I'm Lonely (TWBNWIL)
3. Diarrhea Planet - Heat Wave (Aliens in the Outfield)
4. Nick Ferrio and His Feelings - Night Garden (Nick Ferrio and His Feelings)
5. Melissa Payne - High and Dry (High and Dry)
6. Sera Cahoone - Shakin' Hands (Deer Creek Canyon)
7. Jason Isbell - Different Days (Southeastern)
8. John Moreland - Heart's Too Heavy (High On Tulsa Heat)
9. Brandi Carlisle - Wherever is Your Heart (The Firewatcher)
10. Lee Bains III and the Glory Fires - The Kudzu and the Concrete (Dereconstructed)
11. Sturgill Simpson - Just Let Go (Metamodern Sounds in Country Music)
12. The Drive-By Truckers - Mama Bake a Pie, Daddy Kill a Chicken (The Fine Print)
13. Benjamin Booker - Violent Shiver (Benjamin Booker)
14. Dresses - Blew My Mind (Sun Shy)
15. Manchester Orchestra - I Can Feel a Hot One (Mean Everything to Nothing)

Listen to it HERE.

#dirtbagswag whips 006: Caleb's B2500 & The Making of a Dirtless Dirtbag

#dirtbagswag

Caleb James is the anti-dirtbag.

He is always clean.

He hates being dirty.

He openly hates dirt.

He hates sleeping in it.

He hates being covered in it.

He perpetually makes fun of me for my dirty fingernails, greasy hair, tattered and unwashed clothes. I don't know how he does it, but after a week in the mountains, Caleb looks like he just got out of the shower.

In fact, if you saw Caleb in the wild, your first thought would most likely be, Man who let this insanely good looking John Stamos-Rob Lowe hybrid with cheek bones like granite and back muscles like a sack of potatoes out of the super-top-secret underground-Calvin-Klein-underwear-model-laboratory? 

But don't let his dashing good looks and disdain for dirt fool you. Caleb loves mountains. And he loves the freedom and feeling he gets when moving vertically in their midst; whether in the Southeast or the Mountain West, either steep jug hunting or thin ice climbing, whether on foot or the sharp end of the rope. So he's always just dealt with the dirt.

Caleb does it all and he looks good doing it.

That is, he dealt with it until he found his 1996 Dodge B2500 conversion van at a dirtbag deal in Salida, Colorado where he works in the summers. He drove it back to Chattanooga, Tennessee where he studies outdoor education and business; sets boulder problems in the campus climbing gym; fixes bicycles; and takes Greek-lifers top-roping at Rocktown, SUPing on the Tennessee River, and leading ski trips to North Carolina.

Caleb has swagged out his van into a full-on dirtbag adventure mobile complete with bed, gear storage, and an enormous roof rack. But he hasn't sacrificed his penchant for the aesthetically pleasing either. "Tito" is decked out with interior mood lighting, shag carpet, and a Nintendo 64.

At the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, students often mistake his van for an ambulance. And while that mistake would have made sense in the early 90s, Caleb's Dodge conversion van is, in fact, a lifesaver of sorts because now he doesn't have to sleep in all that dang dirt anymore.

whip specs

make and model: 1996 Dodge B2500
moniker: "Tito"
under the hood: 5.2L V8
gas mileage: see above
dirtbag mods: safari sized roof rack; DIY paint job; shag carpet yanked from his parents' old house; 12" Kicker subwoofer; Nintendo 64; eagle hood mount (sits on the spare tire cover). The bed comes with the van.

Caleb graduates in May and plans on dirtless dirtbagging across the United States before returning as a guide for the summer in Colorado. I'm hoping to meet up with him in the mountains at some point. You can catch him and Tito at a crag near you, but remember to kick the dirt off your shoes before you do.

The Dixie Cragger's Fall 2014 Mixtape

Bouldering season is here in the Southeast; Rocktown via @a_harrison

#dirtbagswag is down, but it isn't defeated. Not yet. Time to climb is hard to come by right now, never mind trying to write about climbing. But #dirtbagswag is back, back for now, and back with the Dixie Cragger's Fall Mixtape for your autumnal sending.

"Place is space which has historical meanings where some things have happened which are now remembered and which provide continuity and identity across generations." wrote Walter Brueggemann. Many of the songs are rooted in a yearning for a specific place and/or time. The yearning to belong and to have a sense of place is a deep and meaningful pursuit. Land gives us meaning and well-being. Place expresses the wholeness and joy of belonging.

A few months ago, I moved to a new city for a new job. Tony Horwitz is right to observe in Confederates in the Attic, that Atlanta is the "Anti-South," a cultureless concoction of urban sprawl and Northern industrialism, "a crass, brash city made in the image of the Chamber of Commerce and overrun with corporate climbers and carpetbaggers." So in many ways this playlist is self-therapeutic as I cope with this exile from the people and place that I love.

Thus, when Matt Woods laments, "My boots belong in East Tennessee, I carry her hills inside of me. When I lay down my head, she's in my dreams," I'm singing lament with him. But it is hopeful lamentation, because like Woods, who finds himself dislocated on the windy, prosaic plains of west Texas, I too can sing "I'll get back there someday, if I don't blow away."

If you've been listening to these seasonal playlists for a while, maybe since the beginning (2011), you won't be surprised to find an array of country, bluegrass, and folk music; all of which fall under the umbrella term of "Americana." And you won't be surprised to find them interspersed with an assortment of old-guy-who-still-reads-punknews.org punk songs. And all that is sandwiched between two Manchester Orchestra tracks (the latter of which is as near a perfect song as has ever been written). If you're right in the place where you belong or you're living in exile someplace outside -- or within -- the Mason-Dixon, there's something here for you.

Listen to it on Spotify HERE.

1. Manchester Orchestra - The Only One (Mean Everything to Nothing)
2. Chris Wollard and the Ship of Thieves - No Exception (Self-Titled)
3. Drive-By Truckers - Part of Him (English Oceans)
4. Deep Dark Woods - All the Money I Had Is Gone (Winter Hours)
5. Old Crow Medicine Show - O Cumberland River (Remedy)
6. Matt Woods - West Texas Winds (With Love From Brushy Mountain)
7. Chuck Ragan - For All We Care (Till Midnight)
8. The Wonder Years - Local Man Ruins Everything (Suburbia, I've Given You All & Now I'm Nothing)
9. Possessed by Paul James - Songs We Used To Sing (There Will Be Some Nights That I'm Lonely)
10. Steve Martin & Edie Brickell - When You Get to Asheville (Love Has Come For You)
11. Blue Mountain - Mountain Girl (Dog Days)
12. Honeywagon - New Slang (The Shins cover) (A Bluegrass Tribute to The Shins)
13. Uncle Tupelo - Looking For A Way Out (Uncle Tupelo 89/93)
14. Billie Bragg & Wilco - Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key (Mermaid Avenue)
15. Peggy Honeywell - Green Mountain (Green Mountain)
16. Have Gun, Will Travel - Finer Things (Fact, Fiction, or Folktale)
17. The Menzingers - The Talk (Rented World)
18. The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit - Very Best Of (Old Excuses)
19. Hackensaw Boys - Alabama Shamrock (Love What You Do)
20. Manchester Orchestra - Colly Strings (Like A Virgin Losing a Child)

Listen to it on Spotify HERE. 

Listen to The Dixie Cragger's Summer Mixtape HERE. 

The 3 Stages of Belaying Someone Crushing Your Project

Marshall makes quick twerk of my project Ride the Short Bus 
and looks like a Greco-Roman god doing it.

This summer, I started climbing hard -- well, hard for me. Climbing 5.12 was actually in the realm of possibility if I would ever take the time to actually work on something for more than three burns. And since I was spending a week at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch (where the routes are short and the grades are relatively soft), I thought I would take the time to actually "project" something: Ride the Short Bus, an Obed-esque tiered roof 12a in a pretty impeccable and secluded area of the Ranch. And it didn't hurt that my friend Marshall had tagged along for the ride; a climbing coach and an all around master of psyche, Marshall helps people send.

So after a few pathetic displays of human strength and endurance, Marshall tied in to the business end of the rope to show me some things. And boy, did he. The following are the three stages of my response to his on-sight/flash/whatever/crushfest.

Stage 1: The Student "You are the master, and I am the learner. Teach your ways. Show me your beta." 

In this stage, you are genuinely interested and excited about seeing someone better than you try your climb. You're asking yourself what can you learn from this person? How will they work the crux? Where will they take a rest? What do they do differently? You are inquisitive and open to new possibilities.

Stage 2: The Stoked "Heck yeah! He just cruised that crux! Maybe I can too!"

During the second stage, your psyche dyke has been breached. By now, you have yelled ample "yeah!"'s and "come on!"'s. Your partner is crushing and you are stoked. You are stoked for him and you're stoked at the possibility that maybe you can crush too.

Stage 3: The Stupefied "Are you effing kidding me? There's no way. He never even shook out."

By the third and final stage, your partner has clipped the chains and you're not even sure he took time shake out or chalk up. "What part was I supposed to watch again?" you ask yourself. "He moved so fast I didn't even notice his beta." You are left perplexed and dumbfounded. You begin to question everything you ever thought about yourself. You contemplate your existence and begin to ask if it's really all worth it. "What is the meaning of climbing?" And thus, "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I even here?" "What has this all been about?" You recognize your physical, mental, and human inferiority but instead of getting into the fetal position and crying yourself to sleep on the bathroom floor like you did on prom night, you reluctantly tie in to try again.

"Try hard. Fail often. Succeed next time." - Dave MacLeod

photos by Logan Mahan and Jamie Van Tassle

#dirtbagswag whips 005: Kyle's Mighty Morphin' White Ford Ranger

Kyle emanates the #dirtbagswag spirit

For those of us who remember the every-movement-over-exaggerated, gratuitously-electric-guitar-laden-soundtracked, live action children's television series, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, few things were as egregiously epic and anxiously anticipated as Tommy Oliver's revelation as the White Ranger. Together with his talking ninja saber, "Saba," the White Ranger summons Tigerzord and finally defeats the evil Lord Zedd and his minions (or at least, that's what I learned from wikipedia). 

Or who could forget Tommy, the White Ranger, skydiving -- on a snowboard! -- in the opening scene of Power Rangers: The Movie? (That, I actually remember.) Basically, Tommy was a total bad astronaut and was asked by Zordon to be the new leader of the Rangers , completely usurping power over Jason, the Red Ranger, who was a total poser anyway. Ivan Ooze and his Ectomorphicon Titans never stood a chance. 

Like most of our goateed, bleached tipped, spiked haired heroes of the nineties, Tommy Oliver faded into obscurity. Or, according to the internet, became a washed-up, poorly tattooed, mixed martial arts fighter doing appearances at sci-fi, comic book conventions. But the legend of the White Ranger lives on, forever a figment of our childhood nostalgia. And, of course, as my friend Kyle's 2008, white, Ford Ranger. 

Tommy in the Rockies 

Kyle bought his truck used from a commercial fleet; meaning it has no bells and whistles or fancy thing-a-mabobs. It's just a truck, as a truck should be. And he has driven it to climbing destinations all over the United States. He has to, because he lives in Florida. The Power Rangers needed Tommy to create the Ninja Falcon Megazord and fly Ivan Ooze outer space to his cosmic end. Likewise, Kyle needs a Ranger of his own to get to higher elevations. And it's a beautiful thing.

After a multi-week, cross country road trip with little to no rain the whole time, it finally deluged in Colorado Springs and Kyle learned the hard way about not having a truck bed top. Back at home, Kyle set Tommy up with this sweet dirtbag rig that keeps him and his girlfriend snug and dry during the cool, wet, southeastern climbing seasons and stores all of his climbing gear and vegan friendly kitchen.

Kyle and Tommy spent the summer in central Florida, working on a farm and learning about permaculture. But not without going climbing at the Obed first. And rumor has it he wandered out west again too. You can watch a beautiful and short travel video of a climbing trip Kyle, Tommy, and myself took a few years ago HERE.

Tommy at the Obed

Whip Specs

make and model: 2008 Ford Ranger
moniker: "Tommy,"  AKA "Dirtbag Dragon," AKA "Piece of Trash"
under the hood: 4.0 L SOHC V6
dirtbag mods: truck bed cover, shelving unit, raised platform bed with essential storage cubbies underneath.

#dirtbagswag