Did The Druids Make Any Music? (Because That Would Be Convenient To Make This Flow)

Atlanta won't be winning any awards for having the pulsing heart of a great American city, but I have my affections for it.

Among other things, it does have two of my most-favorite names for roads, off of Interstate 85:

1.) North Druid Hills.

That just sounds really cool. I don't live there, but if I somehow found myself living there, I would spare no opportunity to say, with a solemn pretension, that I lived in the "Druid Hills."


2.) Beaver Ruin.

I laugh every time I see this exit. Every time.

Beaver Ruin Road.

So ... blunt.

I'm proud to say I've never walked that road of Beaver Ruin.

P.S. The other road next to it on the exit sign -- "Lilburn."

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But on to why I'm really here tonight ...

And not speaking of which ....

Bon Iver was a trascendent performance on Sunday evening down there at the Varity Playhouse.

The well-known story -- for fans like me --goes that Justin Vernon's life went into the shitter, so he retreated for three months to a remote cabin in the middle of winter in Wisconsin with no plans but isolation and whatever might come from that.

He wound up making some beautiful music with barest of means, including in that chopping wood to keep warm and killing deer to provide his means.

And I'm a bit jealous of his transformative experience. You don't come by them easy.

What impressed me about him last night -- among other things that I won't go into because ... well, I don't personally know anyone else besides my wife who likes him -- is that he took whatever it is he brought with him from that cabin and shared it, expanded upon it, and made it into something that we all were a part of.

Electricity sometimes ruins musical artists who made their names without it, but not in this case, where something is being carefully built with each tool available used to construct the greater masterpiece.

He dubbed his voice a million times over while in that cabin to create a texture of sound that you could squeeze in your hands.

When he implored the audience to sing the end to his song, it wasn't a showman's ploy.

It seemed he wanted a bigger piece of something, woven by sound waves, to touch.

I don't know to what he extent he planned the touch and texture of his music -- but the bass drum, each time it was sounded, felt as if it were physically rescusitating my heart, which hasn't been beating like it should these days.

I love transformative experiences.

Music that blesses you with feelable matter.



and ...

Bon Iver -- Re: Stacks