Ep. 25 - Juke Joints and the Blues with WABG-AM's Poe

Transcript

Drew (00:15):
Welcome to Whiskey Lore, the interviews, I'm your host, Drew Hannush, the Amazon best selling author of Whiskey Lore's Travel Guide to Experiencing Kentucky Bourbon. And this is going to be, I have an odd way of bringing you into an interview. This is an interview that I just happened into. I was not expecting to interview anybody on the remainder of my trip down through the Mississippi Delta, but I just so happened to be looking for Robert Johnson's grave site. When I bumped into someone who suggested that I go talk to this guy named Poe and I'm like Poe? So I turn around and I look, and I see this white building with a radio antenna and being an old radio guy, myself in a very similar kind of building. I thought, yeah, I need to go over there and check this out. He's like, yeah, he'll put you right on the air.

Drew (01:12):
So I walked in with my microphones. We actually did an interview where he interviewed me first for his show. And then I came back and started talking with him a bit and then jumped into my interview with him. And you can hear the entire episode on Whiskey Lore, aware. I have fed parts of this interview in for you to listen to there as part of the story of juke joints. But we went beyond juke joints and we talked about some other stuff during this conversation. So I thought I would present it to you guys in total, including some of our banter at the beginning, which you're kind of ease dropping into, but then we'll jump right into our conversation. So this is Poe from a little radio station right there on the outskirts of Greenwood, Mississippi on money road. And what I loved about doing this interview is that Poe was out there mowing the lawn actually, and then saw me come up and he's like, come on in.

Drew (02:18):
Well, you know, as soon as he learned my story, he's like, I don't want to put you on the air. And I walked in and it was like time travel for me. I used to work in a radio station that was similar, maybe a little larger, but not much larger. You had inside the studio, all of these old bumper stickers and pictures and all that stuff up on the walls. It really felt like I was diving back into the seventies, eighties radio station thing, you know, the whole WKRP in Cincinnati. If you've ever seen that, how real that show actually was in relation to how radio was back in days. So we're going to pick this up where I'm bantering a little bit back and forth with him, and then we will get into the interview. And so let's ease in to my conversation with Poe, from WABG-AM radio in Greenwood, Mississippi.

Poe (03:19):
So how long were you in Nashville? About two years. Okay.

Poe (03:23):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Got friends there. Now. I've had the opportunity to interview Gretchen Wilson. She's one of my favorites. She's one of my favorites. She is so down to earth and so straightforward. I love talking to her. And her publicist invited me to a little gathering. They had in Nashville at Big and Rich's place. They got this mansion on the outskirts of Nashville and upstairs on the third floor, they got this, it's sort of like it at an auditorium. It's got a full stage and a bar and all kind of, it's like a, it's like not a tutorial. And they, they, it does the, they open this this window and you can see the skyline of Nashville while they're performing. And it's a bar mixed and they got this gun rack and lounge in the back and stuff, you know, animals

Poe (04:22):
And stuff is in coolest place.

Drew (04:25):
Have you ever been to Paisley Park? No. So I went to Paisley park and there, yes. Okay. A princess home and they don't let you take pictures in there or anything. You just have to enjoy it for when you're going through and that's it. But it's like a little museum as you go through it now, but he had a full auditorium in there for doing performances and he would invite the locals to come by when he was working up for his concerts. And then he had another little club right next to it in the same building, which was also his home. It's like, wow, man, that's a, that's living large. Yeah, absolutely. So you got your own version of it.

Poe (05:10):
Yeah, I get, yeah,

Poe (05:12):
I love this place though. I really, really do this. This is it for me. But when when he

Drew (05:19):
Said there's a little radio station over here, the first thing I thought was was the George Clooney movie. [inaudible]

Poe (05:32):
Soggy. Bottom.

Drew (05:33):
Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So so part of my podcast is built around trying to learn more about juke joints and that whole progression of where, how they started and how they developed over time. And what's interesting is I talked to Robert at cat head in Clarksdale and he wrote a book on juke joints. He moved here in the late Robert or Roger. Roger [inaudible] Roger. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Roger embarrassed now. Cause I was talking, take him, Robert, cut it out. You called him Robert to somebody else. No, I call him Robert to him. I feed him. Correct. You it's his fault. Yeah. Folks call me

Poe (06:20):
Anything other than Poe I correct him. Right? Mr. Paul is not. Dr. Is Joseph James Pope. Yeah, it's just

Drew (06:30):
So so he gave me a little bit of, of background, but you know, he got to work with certain blues musicians and talked a little bit about some of the little juke joints that were in the area around there. But of course I'm always looking for the whiskey angle to it. And we were talking about moonshine and that they would have moonshine there. Did you hear any moonshine stories from these little from these blues performers that came in that always, always

Poe (07:04):
The moonshine was sorta like the elixir for the joke, joy wasn't wine, it wasn't beer, it was moonshine. And they'd go out to the woods and they'd knew who the distillers work and they knew where to get their moonshot. And they had their moonshine on Saturday nights and Friday nights when they came to the joke, Joyce, they were already wiRed. And plus you had a couple of bottles or a couple of Mason jars behind the Bach and the bartender could give you a couple of shots, the boot and shot. Yeah.

Drew (07:44):
So this wasn't fine aged spirit that was coming in. This was

Poe (07:49):
Be careful. Yeah. Be careful. Yeah.

Drew (07:54):
So what was the I mean, there were a lot of different specific joints that have closed down or have faded here. I mean, are, is there still a culture or is it pretty much kind of faded into the distance now? It's

Poe (08:11):
Fading. There are a few left. The last major one I think is Reds over in Clarksdale for the Mississippi Delta, at least. One of my favorites, one of my favorites was Gibbs place in Bessemer, Alabama. And I knew Mr. GIP and he passed away last year and he was so dedicated. He was almost a hundRed. He made it to 99. His birthday would have been in January. He passed away in, I think November of last year. But Mr. Henry GIP Gibson and Gibbs place, that was the joke joints. I don't know whether the family is going to try to keep it. But what happens is with joke joins the real character of the joke joint is that person is just like pull monkeys in Marigold, Mississippi when poll monkey died. It's not the same. It's not the same. It's just not the same. And it's the same thing with Gibbs. Yeah. Red Peyton over in Clarksdale, he's hanging tough. He's tough. So Reds it to me is one of the last original, hard core joke joints in this area. Now there are some others in Louisiana and some other places, but around the Mississippi Delta here for me, I love ground zero blues club. I love bill luck and he's a good friend of mine. And I love some of the other little places around Clarksdale, but the yeah. He's arranged place. Okay. Yeah.

Drew (09:51):
And did you frequent these places? Absolutely. Yeah. I just

Poe (09:55):
Got over here to to, to grade wood. About 12 years ago, I got to the Delta about 20 years ago, 1999, 2000. I came out of Minnesota to Clarksdale specifically Clarksdale cause they had a little radio station over there. W R O X a legendary station. And a friend of mine, Steve lad invited me out of Minnesota to Clarksdale to help him relaunch wr Rolex. And I came down for that and something went wrong and we launched it, but the owners and that's why I have my own station because owner other people can be so screwy. Sometimes they hired Steve to revitalize the station, get it up and running. Steve brought me in, he had another guy that he brought in to handle another part of the station. And they were the three of us. George Heinz. He still over there.

Poe (10:50):
Steve has since passed away, but I loved Steve's radio, his ethics, his integrity, everything about the guy was just outstanding. And he was the only person that could tear me away from Minnesota. When I came down here and started working for him, it was like, okay, this is going to be good. We got the station up and running. We had a format similar to the one that I have here. We do blues. It centers around Mississippi, Delta, blues, but classic rock and stuff. Factors in for me, stuff is music that everybody knows it could be staying alive. It could be the BGS. It could be a Led Zeppelin. It could be anything. Yeah. People know the song, people know Stairway to Heaven, whether you're black, whether you're white, whether you, you may not know the name of it. And you may not know it's by Led Zeppelin, but you know, the song it's sorta like soundtracks and different like that for me, that stuff. So I mix classic rock blues and stuff as my music format. And that's what we did over in Clarksdale. And we were doing very well, but the owners decide, we appreciate what you guys did, but we're going to change the format to hip hop and they changed it to hip hop and we left. We left no hard feelings. This is not what we signed up for. So I came over here and Steve went to WDI. He stayed at WDI for a while before he passed away. Okay.

Drew (12:29):
Yeah. So here you got to pretty much be a one man show and figure out what you wanted to do.

Poe (12:36):
Don't have to figure anything out. I knew exactly what his role

Drew (12:38):
With whatever the moment brings you. That's it

Poe (12:41):
That's go out in the field, cut some grants for a while, push your mower out there in the field, turn it into a beautiful lawn out there and get the tractors in here a little later on grass. And when you get ready

Poe (12:52):
To talk, when you get tired, go inside, you've got plenty. You've been thinking about out there. Just come on in here. Key the mic. Say what you gotta say. You can ramble too. You don't have to think about what, like in broadcasting school, think about what you're going to say. Key the mic, say it and get out that's radio.

Drew (13:11):
So you have a distinct advantage over what were your early days in radio? And my early days in radio, the reason that you played stairway to heaven was because you didn't have a computer that was going to play your next song. You needed a long song so that you can go to the restroom

Poe (13:29):
And come back. My favorite

Drew (13:30):
Was I used to work all day, Sunday on a day-timer. So I would come in at six in the morning, I would start the show. I was run America's top 40 and whatever Casey Kasem. And then from there I would do my own show for the rest of the day. I'd have my, all my food there, except in the morning I would go in. And the first song I would play is Do I Do by Stevie Wonder off of the greatest hits album, because it was 10 minutes and 20 seconds long. And I could re drive over to, McDonald's hoping that the record wasn't going to start skipping while I was sitting in the drive-through waiting for my biscuit and then get back. But you know, at, at that time of day, I don't know how many people were listening to me, but still it's funny because whenever I hear Do I Do by Stevie Wonder, I get hungry.

Poe (14:24):
That's a good song.

Drew (14:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So so we were talking about you frequent frequenting, these little juke joints. So, so tell me the atmosphere. What, what was it like? And was it it was like on particular nights of the week that you went, no, it's not, this is not a historical

Poe (14:41):
Thing. Now this is not like I'm one of those old guys that was back there with Robert Johnson. This is like a couple of weeks ago or a month ago or before the pandemic, I was over in Bessemer, Alabama at Gibbs place. And we had Debbie bond who is a super blues singer. She's a Red head. Her husband is British radiator, Rick. And she's got a good band and a couple of backup singers. And she was performing that night and it had a mixed crowd of black and whites over in that area. They also pulled in a lot of young people, a lot of young college students and people just had a blast. You get to dance in you, you enjoy the music and just chill. It's junk joints is sorta different than, than other places because people actually really get involved. And, and mostly nobody is a stranger. Everybody knows everybody, or everybody acts like they know, you know, it's, it's just a little family condo of fellowship of it's time to party. Nice.

Drew (15:53):
But they kind of take on the personality of the owners. Oh,

Poe (15:56):
Absolutely. Absolutely. It pulled monkeys is not Poe monkeys anymore. It's still there. The building is still there. They have not revitalized it or tried to relaunch it yet. I don't think they will. It's it's just a landmark now and unless, and until Gibbs people do something, I think that's, what's going to happen to Gibbs place to the joke, joint, the place to go to kick back, relax, let your hair down and just be a part. I mean, just if you want to dance, dance, if you don't, you can go outside because most joke joints are small places and they're real crowded, you know? And the, the sweat, the dancing, have you seen the movie black snake moan? I have not. Oh, you got to see that one. That's your classic joke. Joy right there. And up north here in Mississippi, one of the performers in that in that movie, along with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci and who else was in there? David banner was in there. It, it it's it was a real, real good meat movie and they had some Delta performers, the band RL Burnside's grandson was in it. And I can't think of his name, but he is one of the best slot guitar players you'll find anywhere he was in the movie to it. It was a good movie and it was all about joke joints and the blues. Okay. Well, no, I have to watch it. Black snake moan,

Drew (17:33):
All Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson,

Poe (17:35):
Christina Recci. What is the guy's name?

Drew (17:40):
I just laughed because the only reason I didn't watch that movie, I think is because you also came out with Snakes on a Plane somewhere around seven. And for some reason I was getting the two of them mixed up snakes on

Poe (17:50):
A plane, a little bit of

Poe (17:52):
Run into that one and get into that. I love Samuel Samuel Jackson movies. That one I could get into that one, but a black snake moan. That is one of my favorites. That is one of my all time favorite.

Drew (18:05):
Very nice. So in Robert Johnson's era, you used to, you know, the performers just used to go from juke joint to juke joint. Is it still kind of that culture or is it more kind of bringing people in or is there house band, how does that kind of work today?

Poe (18:23):
Red's plays. He will have somebody like some of the local musicians come out and play. Yeah. And that that's pretty much it that he, he sticks pretty much with the, with the local folks. You'll have bill Abel plays there a lot when he was alive T model forward, I don't know how much you know, about T model forward, but he was one of the local musicians, one of the old school blues man around here, he was something and he was a Jack Daniel's man. He's got a song called Jack Daniel's town blue.

Poe (19:04):
So it's Jack Daniels.

Drew (19:07):
Jack Daniels has gotten a lot of free advertising between Sinatra and

Poe (19:12):
Joanne, the duke guns. Yeah, yeah,

Poe (19:14):
Yeah. But Red in the Juke Joints would bring in people like that. People that, you know, could could really work a crowd and good, good. Could do some down-home blues down-home music. Yeah. Yeah.

Drew (19:30):
So I always get this kind of broken down the place looks like it could fall apart at any particular minute. Yeah. It's like that. Okay.

Poe (19:40):
Yeah. That's a joke joy.

Drew (19:42):
So, so still moonshine or have they had to I mean, cause Redd's is a known place, so I'm sure they can't just be bringing in something from the stills out in the country.

Poe (19:56):
What's going to stop them. Yeah. You bring your own, whatever, you know, you want to bring your own woman. You bring your own woman. If you don't, maybe you can pick up one there.

Drew (20:07):
Oh, so it's a B it's a BYOB pretty much. Yup. Pretty much nice. Yeah. Oh, that works.

Poe (20:15):
Yeah. Red's ranch is one of the last ones left though. Gibbs place. If you haven't seen that, when you Google it up and look at Mr. Mr. Henry GIP Gibson would have, he would, he was an outstanding guy, loved him. He had a certain spirit about him, part of what I do in radio. And this format here, I told you about the music, classic rock blues and stuff. But when we put it, when we put this station together, about 12 years ago, I had two other partners in one was a historian. And so my job as the managing partner was to come up with the policies and the formats and that kind of thing. And the mission statement, of course, I had to clear it with the other partners. But basically when I look at a radio station, my objective is to serve the public interest.

Poe (21:06):
Like it used to be the communications act of 1934. When radio stations first came into existence, it was to serve the public interest. Well, the corporations have gotten away from that. The purpose in their minds, I think is to make money as much money as you can possibly make when they lose or don't make X amount of money. They feel that they are losing money. They made $500 million. This quarter, they made $499 million in the next quarter. They figure they are losing say, and that's profit. To me. That's not what radio is about. Radio is about serving the public interests. So when we bought this station, my mission statement was to promote and preserve the music of the Mississippi Delta, bring people of all races closer together and build continually build a radio station that informs educates and entertains. And that's what this station is all about. We're not about making money. We want to make money. We need to make money. It's always a plus, isn't it? Yeah,

Poe (22:15):
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's

Poe (22:18):
Not the central focus. The central focus is to serve the public interest, to serve your community and do the best you can to make a positive contribution to making your community better. And that's what we try to do because we don't get a lot of support, but that's okay. So you are now global we're global because you are on the internet streaming.com. So,

Drew (22:44):
Okay. What is the address again?

Poe (22:45):
Awesome. A m.com and I'm proud of him and we don't want to go digital and we don't want to go into a M stereo and all that kind of stuff. We're not concerned about that because there's nothing wrong with am analog and our frequency, if it's got static. So what, you can still hear it. And if you want to hear our content,

Drew (23:08):
You'll listen. A lot of these great old songs actually have some extra character when there's a buzz around them. Yeah. And

Poe (23:14):
One of my friends in Canada, David Witter, he is deeply into radio and music. And he sent me some old, old songs and I've got to get them on the year. I got to get them on the year and he's got the popping in the, in the background and all that other kind of stuff. But it's great music. And that's what we wanted. We want to do. We want to introduce songs and we mix and match, and we have no problem with artists. Like I've got artists around the globe who will send me their music so that some of our listeners in the Mississippi Delta and other musicians in the Delta, we have people like super chicken and Steve Colbus and folks like that. And they're over in Clarksdale, they are deeply into preserving the music of this region. And a lot of people outside the area know them or know of them.

Poe (24:14):
So they listen to us to hear what they're up to. And we interview them. And Steve Colbus was over here for one of our festivals, our money road, unity festival, and a super chicken is a friend. And I've interviewed him several times and we rebroadcast. We do interviews. We do blues news and interviews. We do classic rock blues and stuff. We do everything, Mississippi. Nice. So people around the world have gotten accustomed to that. So we get people from India. We get people who love Robert Johnson. And parcage slim is a young man. Now he is in Nepal, somewhere or Naples. It's somewhere between Timbuktu and the Himalayan somewhere. And he has been asking us to play his music. He's got a resonator guitar. He knows Robert Johnson's music and he plays it. He's got his accent, but he, when he plays that resonator, yeah. It's like Robert Johnson. Wow. It's unbelievable. And people from around the world send us their music and say, Hey Paul, can you play this? Sure, got a guy in Australia. Same thing, same thing, Joe. Materra he's got a new song out. He wants to wanted us to play it. We play it. Are you the

Drew (25:33):
One that's bringing all the people from Australia up here, everybody I keep talking to in Clarksdale, or like talking about how many Australians,

Poe (25:42):
A lot of Australians here from Brisbane to Sydney, to you name it. And they love the music. They love the blues and they love this atmosphere that we have here. This is a sort of a magical mystical kind of place here for a lot of people. And even for me, I love this place.

Drew (26:00):
Thank you for taking me in the time machine, back to my old radio days. So it feels comfortable in here.

Poe (26:06):
This is, this is the joint. This, this is my little Jordan. It's not a joke joint. It's the Oh Brother Where Art Thou. Amen. We're still here. Well, thank you very much.

Drew (26:21):
Have you want to hear some amazing music from blues to country to rock, make sure to check out Poe's little radio station blasting across the internet. You can find it at awesomeaam.com. If you want more information on Robert Johnson, the blues and whiskey, make sure to check out the Whiskey Lore podcast, season four on apple, Spotify, and your favorite podcast app. I'm your host Drew Hannush. And until next time, cheers. And slainte mhath. Whiskey Lore is a production of travel fuels life LLC.