Read Online True to the Roots by Monte Dutton - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Monte Dutton
Tags: General Fiction
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Foxx.
They're cool. I tip them. Most everyone else—and quite a crowd gathers—does too.
I had heard of a place called the Continental where, supposedly, country and rockabilly were played. What I find out, actually, is that the music performed there most of the time is punk. On Sundays the featured fare is country. Had I arrived a day later, I would have seen the Fandanglers, Tweed Schade, and the Lonesome Prairie Dogs. On this day, however, my options are Failsafe Nation, Pretty Alien, Pornshine, Nadsat Fashion, Dead Blonde Girlfriend, Naked Underneath, and the Modeles. I pass.
The people are also quite interesting. I see one woman whose fashion sense catches my eye. She is wearing black cowboy boots, powder blue tights, and a bright blue, frilly skirt. What really draws my attention is her hair, which is pale blonde except at the tips. The bangs in front are electric blue, one side is hot pink, and the other side is fluorescent orange. I also watch a young man—I'm speculating that he is monstrously stoned—conk himself over the head with something that looks like a snowboard. I don't really understand why someone would be playing around, on a warm summer afternoon, with what is essentially a skateboard without the wheels, but that's what he's doing. He tries to stomp on one side, apparently so that when it flies up in the air, he can catch it. Instead, it hits him rather hard on the noggin. I stifle my laugh because I don't particularly want to draw his attention.
Thad Cockrell's story is a compelling one. There's a lot more to him than what appears at first glance. He has a lovely, soaring tenor voice that belies the rugged frame of a onetime college wrestler. He is a graduate of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and from there he went on to Southeast Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Today religion is a vibrant part of his life but not his life's work. He seems to rebel against authority, or at least conformity, in both his religion and his music.
This wouldbe preacher—a graduate of "Jerry Falwell's college," Liberty—loves the stage even more than the pulpit. The honkytonk, as it turns out, is his sanctuary.
"You answer to God," Cockrell tells me shortly after polishing off a plate of ribs at the Rodeo Bar. "If you read the Bible, Jesus was accused of hanging out at tax collectors' houses. Back then, that's why they didn't have bars and stuff. It was more community based, you know, in people's houses.
If Jesus were around today, the Southern Baptists would be really upset because Jesus wouldn't hang out with them as much as they think He would.
"It just never made sense to me, growing up in the church, that most of the people who go to church don't hang out with anybody except the believers. That doesn't make any sense to me. Jesus didn't come for the healthy; He came for the sick. I guess I just find no consistency in that. Besides, it's a hell of a good time.
"We ought to be inclusive in our religion, not exclusive. Yeah. That's the way I feel."
Cockrell's motto, according to his official bio, is "Puttin' the hurt back in country." "There's no 'alt' in my country," he says.
He is the son of a Baptist preacher, born in Tampa, Florida, raised mostly in Oklahoma, and now living in North Carolina. Most of the music is secular, but he wrote a gorgeous gospel tune entitled "He Set Me Free" that is often mistaken for one of the old standards of the Louvin Brothers.
"I was in dc the other night, opening up for the Tarbox Ramblers," Cockrell says, "and I sang that song. This lady bought the CD , and she said, 'I said to my friend, what a genius that guy is to take that old gospel song and redo it like that.' She apparently had no idea that I'd written it. That's a compliment, but I got up in the middle of class in seminary and ran to my house, wrote it in fifteen minutes, and ran back for the rest of my class."
One love song, "Pretending," was evoked by family, not
They're cool. I tip them. Most everyone else—and quite a crowd gathers—does too.
I had heard of a place called the Continental where, supposedly, country and rockabilly were played. What I find out, actually, is that the music performed there most of the time is punk. On Sundays the featured fare is country. Had I arrived a day later, I would have seen the Fandanglers, Tweed Schade, and the Lonesome Prairie Dogs. On this day, however, my options are Failsafe Nation, Pretty Alien, Pornshine, Nadsat Fashion, Dead Blonde Girlfriend, Naked Underneath, and the Modeles. I pass.
The people are also quite interesting. I see one woman whose fashion sense catches my eye. She is wearing black cowboy boots, powder blue tights, and a bright blue, frilly skirt. What really draws my attention is her hair, which is pale blonde except at the tips. The bangs in front are electric blue, one side is hot pink, and the other side is fluorescent orange. I also watch a young man—I'm speculating that he is monstrously stoned—conk himself over the head with something that looks like a snowboard. I don't really understand why someone would be playing around, on a warm summer afternoon, with what is essentially a skateboard without the wheels, but that's what he's doing. He tries to stomp on one side, apparently so that when it flies up in the air, he can catch it. Instead, it hits him rather hard on the noggin. I stifle my laugh because I don't particularly want to draw his attention.
Thad Cockrell's story is a compelling one. There's a lot more to him than what appears at first glance. He has a lovely, soaring tenor voice that belies the rugged frame of a onetime college wrestler. He is a graduate of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and from there he went on to Southeast Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Today religion is a vibrant part of his life but not his life's work. He seems to rebel against authority, or at least conformity, in both his religion and his music.
This wouldbe preacher—a graduate of "Jerry Falwell's college," Liberty—loves the stage even more than the pulpit. The honkytonk, as it turns out, is his sanctuary.
"You answer to God," Cockrell tells me shortly after polishing off a plate of ribs at the Rodeo Bar. "If you read the Bible, Jesus was accused of hanging out at tax collectors' houses. Back then, that's why they didn't have bars and stuff. It was more community based, you know, in people's houses.
If Jesus were around today, the Southern Baptists would be really upset because Jesus wouldn't hang out with them as much as they think He would.
"It just never made sense to me, growing up in the church, that most of the people who go to church don't hang out with anybody except the believers. That doesn't make any sense to me. Jesus didn't come for the healthy; He came for the sick. I guess I just find no consistency in that. Besides, it's a hell of a good time.
"We ought to be inclusive in our religion, not exclusive. Yeah. That's the way I feel."
Cockrell's motto, according to his official bio, is "Puttin' the hurt back in country." "There's no 'alt' in my country," he says.
He is the son of a Baptist preacher, born in Tampa, Florida, raised mostly in Oklahoma, and now living in North Carolina. Most of the music is secular, but he wrote a gorgeous gospel tune entitled "He Set Me Free" that is often mistaken for one of the old standards of the Louvin Brothers.
"I was in dc the other night, opening up for the Tarbox Ramblers," Cockrell says, "and I sang that song. This lady bought the CD , and she said, 'I said to my friend, what a genius that guy is to take that old gospel song and redo it like that.' She apparently had no idea that I'd written it. That's a compliment, but I got up in the middle of class in seminary and ran to my house, wrote it in fifteen minutes, and ran back for the rest of my class."
One love song, "Pretending," was evoked by family, not
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