How to…travel on the cheap in the United States of America

Travelling without spending in the States requires a mixture of kindness and knowledge. Kindness on the part of generous people in America and knowledge based on conversations and experiences along the way. Here are our tips for travelling on the cheap in the U.S. of A:

Accommodation:
Couch surfing rocks. This international network of nice people allows you to search for free beds in people’s homes across the U.S. (and the world). You get to meet and live with the locals in exchange for good conversation and the odd beer. We have stayed with some incredible people from musicians and comedians to hipsters and surgeons. Accommodation varies from a pile of blankets on the sitting room floor to a B&B style private room.

Being friendly and meeting people. It‘s amazing how far a smile and a British accent goes in the States. We‘ve met people on beaches and in cars (fellow ridesharers) who have kindly invited us to their homes. Americans are so much more willing than the British to go out of their way for a stranger, giving us lifts across hundreds of miles and buying us meals. We’ve been bowled over.

Travel:
Craig’s List rideshare gets you where you want to go, as long as you can be flexible with the dates. Simply google Craig’s List in the area you’re staying about a week before you want to leave and post an advert in the rideshare section. We were very successful in the southwest, but not so successful in the south. Since petrol is so cheap in the States, splitting fuel costs nearly always works out cheaper than taking public transport, although it‘s not as good for your carbon footprint. You also get to meet some great people who sometimes are prepared to take the slow route to show you the sites and the best places to eat.

Greyhound special deals. The Greyhound is miserable - not dangerous, just depressing. Avoid if you can, but if you must then check their ‘Hotdeals’ for cheap tickets. Booking more than three days in advance allows the person travelling with you to get a half price ‘companion’ ticket.

Megabus has reached the States and is cheaper than Greyhound. Service is limited mainly to the northeast, but it’s expanding all the time. Chinabus takes you from one city’s China town to another and is again cheaper than the Greyhound, although service is more limited (mainly northeast).

Amtrak is more expensive than the bus, but you can get some great deals. The rail pass could work out if you are planning to travel extensively during a two or three week period. The website also offers ‘hot deals’ which can be cheaper than the Greyhound on certain routes. The trains are very comfortable so sleeping on them overnight is possible, thus saving money on accommodation.

Food and drink:
Tap water is potable, so refill your bottle. Restaurants are usually more than happy to oblige.

Happy hour. Most bars offer deals during ’happy hour(s)’ on drinks and food. It’s always worth asking before placing your order.

All-you-can eat buffets. Some restaurants, especially those serving southern cookin’ and pizza, have lunchtime and/or dinner buffets where you eat as much as you can for a reasonable price. Like Mama Hamils lunchtime feast for just $8. You’ll be full for the day.

Giveaways. Look out for free events serving free food in the local entertainment news (like the street gig and hotdogs we found in Nashville). Products are sometimes being promoted on the streets so keep walking by in different disguises to stock up on free samples.

Supermarket tasters. Some supermarkets leave out delicious and plentiful tasters, which can mount up to a sizeable meal. Costco gives away loads of food, although you will need to go in with a member. Treasure Island in Chicago is also generous.

Free breakfasts at Holiday Inn. Apparently it’s easy enough to walk in with a confident stride and help yourself, although we haven’t tried this ourselves.

Dumpster diving is a popular food shopping experience in some parts of the country. Again, we haven’t done it ourselves, but are led to believe that there are rich pickings to be had for free in the skips out the back of supermarkets. Post-midnight is prime diving time. Here you will find trays of pasta sauce where maybe one jar broke and soiled (but didn’t spoil) the rest; out of date bread, crisps and other dry goods that will last forever; dented tins of food etc. If you’re prepared to wash your find you can stock up for weeks.

Fun:
Free music. Check out local entertainment listings (usually in a free mag) for free gigs and events.

Museums often have a free or discounted entry day each week. Have a look on their websites and plan accordingly.

Other stuff:
Clothes. Travelling through the U.S.A.’s many climatic zones requires many changes of clothes. So if you get caught short in a snowstorm, as we were, head to the local thrift (second hand) store for bargains galore.

Internet. Libraries offer free use of computers and Internet for up to two hours. Most cities also offer free wifi hotspots in cafes, bars and public places. Useful if you’re travelling with a laptop. Google ‘free wifi hotspots’ to find the nearest places.

This is how we have survived a month in the States on our last few pounds and the tumbling exchange rate. It takes a little more time and effort but has greatly enhanced our experience and understanding of this enormous country. However, don’t take it too far or you could end up being mistaken for a hobo.







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It takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry

We left our sunny, idyllic retreat in the North Carolina mountains and headed north, destination Chicago. Back to the real world. People, traffic, roads...and the dreaded Greyhound bus.


I braced myself as we entered Knoxville's Greyhound terminal, knowing what to expect. The waiting room presented a depressingly predictable picture: grim-faced broken people looking forlornly into their future through a miasma of poverty, anger, body odour and rubbery takeaways.

They were the same sad characters of previous encounters: the heavily tattooed thug, just out of chokey; the struggling young mother, cursing at her unruly child; the lost, lonely Mexican, hunched up beneath his cream plastic cowboy hat; the red-eyed hobo, two weeks shy of a bathtub; the sullen scrawny redneck, desperately drawing on his last Marlboro...

Over at the counter the same miserable, monosyllabic staff moved slowly behind the counter, scowling at this pitiful ragtag of humanity. From high up on a wall the same old scare stories screamed out from Fox News, where hysterical reporters brought news of an 'Alabama bloodbath'.

These places must surely be some of the most miserable places in this great country. If there is a hell then surely the condemned travel there by Greyhound. Not then, the kind of place you wanted to spend a minute more than necessary. And tonight the bus was late.

The passengers were becoming restless. A slightly unhinged-looking hick standing nearby huffed heavily and said loudly to no-one in particular 'Call George and have him order me a boddle of Ger-ray Goose.'

I shared his irritation. We had a connection to make in Cincinnati and, whilst we had left ourselves an hour and twenty minues to makes the two miles between train and bus stations, we were starting to wonder whether that was enough.

Half an hour ticked by, 45 minutes, then an hour. Finally our carriage arrived.

The driver, a squat little man sporting an ill-fitting jacket which flapped around him like a penguin with sudden weight-loss, could offer like reassurance that he would make up any of the time lost. He snarled at us from under his ragged smear of a moustache: 'what were you thinking of, only leaving that amount of time to make your connection?'

I was gobsmaked. I still can't find the words to describe such a service. So instead I'll leave it to Tanis, a friend of our back in the mountains: 'It is pitiful, lowbrow, and ultimately chavish.'

An hour late, we boarded the bus and headed out into the gathering darkness, chugging up the Interstate and over the Kentucky border. We passed large brown tourism signs for horse racing, the state's famous 'bourbon alley' and even for a local restaurant, 'Colonel Sanders Cafe - KFC birthplace.'

Sadly no local delicacies for us, as we headed on to the town of London, pulling in at a Burger King. Different London, same plastic restaurant, same cardboard food. Once more we were prisoners of the Greyhound and the Interstate: dull, lifeless, predictable.

Except for one thing: this being Kentucky the god-botherers were also in evidence. The Ten Commandments hung from in a frame over the counter; leaflets at every table asked 'Do you know for certain that you will have eternal life?'

Keep eatin' them burgers...

Back out on the road the religious zeal continued. 'Jesus can turn March madness into pure gladness' a church sign proclaimed. Clearly the 'buckle of bible belt', which we had been told we were entering upon arrival back in Nashville, is rather large indeed.

It provided little comfort to us in our current predicament - time was against us. The air temperature was dropping (38F / 3C); our anxiety was rising. Would we make it?

An hour later the traffic started to thicken and the sky suddenly lit up with the glare of a million lights: Cincinnati, our transfer point. The bus rolled downhill towards downtown, crossing the Ohio River, the state boundary between Kentucky and Ohio.

An historical faultline along which the nation was divided during the Civil War it also marked a transitional point for us - we were leaving the South behind and entering the North. I had little time to ponder the significance of this before our bus pulled into the terminal. 45 minutes late.

The empty streets of Cincinnati were soon speeding past us as our taxi headed to the train station. Our friendly Senegalese cabbie gave us a potted history of the city's background before we pulled up before an impressive but decidedly empty-looking building. Dim lights shone from inside but not a soul moved.

'Are you sure this is the train station?', Lara asked nervously.

We heaved our bags out, entered a cavernous entrance hall and gasped in the gloom. It was a fabulous art deco interior, replete with marble pillars, ornate lettering and huge murals depicting stages of the region's development.

This was bizarre. All this grandness and yet no people. A landlubbing Marie Celeste where time had stood still and people had moved on. It was a museum (quite literally), not a train station.

Finally - right at the back - we found it: a modest little sign pointing to closed door 'Amtrak.' We walked through, entering a small art deco waiting room and a completely different travel experience. A friendly fellow behind the counter was only too happy to serve us and the other handful of passengers who sat around on handsome wooden benches.

Sensing our bemusement he outlined the history of the station. We were sitting, he assured us, in a station that once saw 200 trains a day (400 during World War II), a key stop on the rail lines heading east and west. Today that service has been radically reduced. To just one. Six days a week.

I was gobsmacked. How could this be? The railroads, once the glory of America, the vital arteries which opened up the West, traversing mountains and deserts and defying Indian attacks in order to carry freight, passengers and freighthopping banjo players, now reduced to this. One train a day? It wasn’t even a skeleton service.

Despite this ignominious decline, our Amtrak employee obviously took pride in his work, recounting the sad story of the railways as he personally escorted the small group of passengers down onto the platform.

We shivered in the cold as he told us of the establishment of Amtrak, the back in 1971, created out of the nationalisation of the private rail companies. As he told it, the company was deliberately neglected by a government which had decided that rail had no future, hoping the passenger service would simply wither and die.

The next year, 1972, Cincinnati station saw its platforms reduced from twelve to one. The future looked bleak and the line itself would probably have disappeared if it weren’t for the determined efforts of an influential Senator from West Virginia.

Today the service still runs, leaving New York and chugging slowly westwards, arriving at Cincinnati at 1am, not ideal for the locals but thereby allowing said Senator to appreciate his beloved West Virginia countryside during daylight hours. A small price to pay surely for preserving this vital public service.

It was a small train as well, composed of only three passenger carriages, a dining carriage and a sleeper. The ever-helpful staff escorted us to our seats and we sank back into the huge, comfortable seats, luxuriating in our acres of space, two seats apiece - a decent mini-bed for the rest of the night.

The onboard atmosphere couldn’t have been more different to the Greyhound and its paranoia, pent-up aggression and hopelessness. It was friendly, relaxed and surprisingly jolly at such an hour.

Train and bus: they couldn't be more different experiences in the US, yet another example of the great extremes which characterise this country.

I found myself wondering how could this supremely wealthy nation, rippling with massive economic muscles, swaggering with technological might, could have such a poor public transport system.

They had built the railroads through hostile terrain and opened up the West, erected lovingly-designed buildings and inspired many a romantic song but then somehow they abandoned them, convinced that rail had had its day and roads were the answer.

Was it down to the American love of cars and the power of the auto industry? Did it stem from a personality trait buried deep within the American pysche? The desire to be independent, free from government intervention, the master of their own destiny? Or is the country simply too big to cross quickly by train?

I still didn’t have the answer as I woke up hours later, the bright winter sunshine crowbaring open my heavy eyelids and flooding my vision with the flat icy cornfields of Indiana. They stretched on morosely for mile after mile, the relentless monotony broken up only by clumps of bare trees, chunky red barns and grain silos, dark shadows against the swirling snow.

The scenery was't the only thing to have changed during the night; the accents were noticeably different too, the drawl of the mountains now supplanted by a nasal twang. ‘Howyoodoin’?’, a lady enthusiastically greeted us. The intonation was unmistakable - we could only be drawing in to one place: Chicago.

Soon the small towns gave way to one long urban sprawl, the sidings crowded in on both sides and we drew in to ’the Windy City’.

Chicago. The hub of the country’s railway network, a city that grew upon the iron road, its astonishing population boom driven by the expansion of the railways and the industry that followed it.

Another train station echoing to former glories, and a huge, grand waiting hall straight out of The Untouchables (which indeed it was). I felt I were back in a museum again rather than the nerve centre of a modern, fully functioning public transport network.

Entering the street outside the station looked rather an anomaly, squeezed under the towering, sleek skyscrapers, hidden away like an embarrassing old uncle. It was light years from Japan, even aged in comparison to home. Would they ever catch up?

Back on the Cincinnati platform we’d been assured there was a chink of link at the end of this long, dark tunnel: Amtrak enjoyed its highest-ever passenger numbers last year and President Obama has already announced more investment in train services.

Is this the first step towards a resurgence of the railroad? On behalf of all Americans who don't own a car I truly hope so: as our experiences have shown it takes a train to laugh, it takes a Greyhound to cry*.

*With thanks to Bob Dylan







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Moonshine in the mountain moonlight

"Howoooll!" went the hillbillies as they gazed up at the full moon. Glug went the moonshine as it slipped down their throats. This was the sunset/moonrise scene atop a fire tower overlooking the Great Smokey Mountains on the North Carolina section of the Appalachian Trail.

After three weeks of travelling between America's sprawling southern cities - Austin, New Orleans, Jackson, Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga - we finally escaped into the wild, travelling up into the North Carolina mountains. Wesser Creek is a totally different world, the kind of place that Davy Crockett might have lived and just over the hill from where Cold Mountain was set.

We were late to the rendezvous point, but no matter, for our hillbilly chum was happily entertaining the passing Jehovah Witnesses with his banjo playing. Loaded up with our Couchsurfing host's tie-die, the roads started to narrow, the rivers started to proliferate and the scenery turned to trees and mountains. Fresh air!

Isaac and Tanis, befriended over run and banjos on a Belize beach, live in an 1850's wood cabin high up on a hillside in a forest next to a creek. It was the warmest day of the year here, so far, and spring fever was in the air. The earth was warming, taking a relieved breath and letting the melting snow gently seep in and transpire out. Daffodils were budding and wood anemones were blooming. The red cardinals were chirruping and the wild turkeys gobbling (while remaining mysteriously hidden).

Infected by nature's stirrings - everything was waking up - we quickly packed up the car and went camping. Lake Fontana's dammed water level provided a sandy campsite on the lake bottom. We paddled out to our secret cove and spent a night under the spring sky around a campfire listening to some of the world's finest banjo music. The Freight Hoppers reside in North Carolina and keep the spirit of old time music alive.

An hour's canoe paddle across the lake, in the company of a beaver slapping his flat tail on the water's surface, is Hazel Creek. This former thriving timber town was evacuated in the 1940's in preparation for a reservoir for which the waters never rose. The trees have now grown back and all that remains are a few stone walls and almost a thousand graves. It's a spooky negative of a bygone era.

Back at the cabin, tired and dirty, we set a fire burning underneath a large metal horse-trough filled with spring water. Within a couple of hours the water was hot and we could sit outside underneath a star spangled sky and soak in this hillbilly hot tub, taking in the mountain air and calls of the tree frogs.

We were treated to a mountain feast of fresh river-caught fish, corn bread, fried potatoes and ramps. The latter are potent roots of wild onions that have been known to get children sent home from school for the lingering odour they leave on the diner's breath and pores. They taste damn good though.

It's a mighty fine life in the mountains. The purpose of being is to have fun and appreciate the natural world. People go slow and enjoy. Suits World in Slow Motion travellers just fine! So the rest of our stay revolved around sampling local ales, walking up mountains and through forests, listening to the banjo and looking out for the evasive wild turkeys.

Tom couldn't have been happier, jamming with a local banjo ace and being presented with his hat as a memento. And I couldn't have been happier when we finally spotted a rafter of wild turkeys and howled at the moon.

The rain and the cold were about to set in when we left Wesser Creek, so we left with our magical memories intact. It'll be another few weeks before the folk of North Carolina will be able to camp out under the stars and howl at the moon again. I do believe that the turkeys have set in for the season though.

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Mission Mississippi: A step too far?

"Are you guys homeless too?" asked a camouflage clad hobo with a split lip. I began to wonder if our frugal wanderings had gone a step too far.

Eating a packed lunch on a bench in our new cold weather thrift store clothes with Tom's burgeoning beard, perhaps we did have more in common with the bums on the benches around us than we realised.

I immediately scoffed "No," in response to the hobo's question, but then thought about it and, technically, yes we are homeless. We live out of a bag, we eat a free lunch where we can get it (a hotdog from a free music show in Nashville on this particular day), we use free internet at the library (incidentally Nashville must have the most intellectual hobos in the world given the numbers in the city library), we buy our clothes in the second hand (thrift) store, we don't have a car and instead ride the Greyhound and we surf couches. It's a fine line.

I don't want to look like a bum, so on that day I swore to smarten myself up, or at least choose a different bench on which to eat lunch.

My promise to self didn't take long to break when we met our Couchsurfing host for the evening who took us home for a dumpster dinner. Josh hasn't bought food from a supermarket since February 14th 2007 (a fussy girlfriend apparently). Instead he dumpster dives. In the middle of the night he pops round the back of the neighbourhood grocery store (the larger the better) and goes 'shopping' in the skips.

I've heard of freegans before and thoroughly applaud their cause. There is far too much waste in the world. People in the UK and the US throw away about one quarter of their food each year. However, when presented with a cooked from frozen burger on an out-of-date bun with green beans, all of which you know have been rolling around the bottom of a filthy skip, it does make swallowing a little hard. Gulp. We ate it though and we were fine. Josh reports no illness whatsoever from his three years of dumpster diving.

So yes, we're on a really tight budget, but no, I don't want to be a hobo. Perhaps it's time to dip into the overdraft, instead of the dumpster, after all.

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The deep South - A musical odyssey

‘I’m going to Jackson, I’m going to mess around. I’m going to Jackson, look out Jackson town.’

- Johnny Cash and June Carter

“Are we going to Jackson just because of Johnny Cash?”, Lara asked?

No, I replied. But I had to admit that he was at least a partial motivation for it.

The state capital of Mississippi lay on our route, the second stop on our musical odyssey through the Deep South.

Leaving behind the jazz of New Orleans we headed for the blues of the Mississippi delta. And not without some trepidation.

Back in The Big Easy Fox News had screamed at us about a recent jailbreak in South East Mississippi: ‘Lookout folks - it’s lockdown in the county!’, a worried-looking chap with a large microphone reported excitedly, ‘these guys are bad and dangerous!’

Prisoners on the run in Mississippi; I was sure I’d heard that somewhere before.

Back on the road the string of Mardi Gras beads led all the way up through Louisiana and across the border, seeping into Mississippi gas stations, cars and the roadside diner where we pulled up for dinner.

Sat amongst red-eyed revellers I looked up from my BBQ pork po-boy to catch the new President’s address to Congress. Somewhat boy-like himself, Barack Obama gave a confident address, commanding the attention of the house and even a few of my fellow diners.

Again I sensed the renewed wave of optimism, one which has appeared since our brief visit in December, and to which people are drawn, desperate for a candle in the gathering economic darkness.

It‘s particularly interesting to witness the first few days of the first black President’s administration unfold here in the south, a region forever associated with the horrors of racial discrimination and still struggling, many believe, to fully shake off its hangover.

Entering the state capital of Jackson we look out for the visible effects of the unofficial segregation we've heard about, where the racial divide often seems to replicated economically.

Tied intimately to this are crime patterns and our host, the delightful Lizzie, stakes her town’s claim to the apparently much-vaunted crown of ‘crime capital of the US’ (Americans seem as obsessed with this as the British are with house prices), but it doesn’t wash with us.

If our part of town is anything to go by it seemed a pleasant enough place - letterboxes at the end of drives, basketball hoops in driveways, BBQs on lawns - and populated with perhaps the friendliest locals we have encountered all trip.

Once again our accents went down a treat, provoking gentle curiosity and kindness at every turn.

As an aspiring young musician Lizzie soon introduces us to the local music scene - it’s not the delta blues but we do catch a blistering performance of zydeco music,a Louisiana speciality.

Every Jacksonian under the age of 30 seems to be busily engaged in making their own albums and we soon find ourselves in Lizzie’s own recording studio, contributing suitably plummy English accents to an her self-penned anthem ‘Happy Minutes’.

With the infuriatingly-catchy lyrics still whizzing around my head I remember Johnny Cash and - now being in Jackson - I ask around about the 'Jackson' song.

No-one seems sure - it's more likely to be Jackson, Tennessee, Cash's home for many years.

More curious American words enter my homemade and burgeoning American English dictionary. Round these parts everything seems to be described either ‘awesome’ or ‘big ass’.

I’m not the first to notice that for many Americans, in Basil Fawlty’s words “It’s all about bottoms, isn’t it?”

Leaving Lizzie to another jamming session we headed north and soon I found my feelings for this land turning once more from admiration and love to irritation and loathing.

Without our own set of wheels we were prisoners of the pitiful public transport system. In these parts, this meant there was only one option - the Greyhound and its regular helping of stony-faced staff and ‘no soliciting’ signs, the unwashed and the unwanted.

It pained me even more to stick to the interstate, speeding right past the towns of the delta, the breeding ground of the blues and a place I’d been eagerly anticipating for many months. Better luck in Memphis.

I glared out the grimy window, the flat unrelenting landscape only broken up by bulbous water towers and roadside hoardings advertising for medical centres (most of them baptist), the latest Willie Nelson concert and one naming and shaming two grim-faced fellows for ‘convicted sex crimes against children’.

Public lynching may be a thing of the past but here the stocks still seem to remain.

The blue skies were gone by now, their place taken by dark swollen clouds which turned to cold drizzle as we stopped in another anonymous town for a short break.

Our amply-proportioned fellow passengers piled out and waddled over to a nearby restaurant out to restock with fried crawfish and fries.

Friday night Fish and chips, Southern style.

A lone Mexican alighted amongst them, his cream plastic cowboy hat shining out like a beacon and bringing a smile to our faces, a reminder of the millinery delights south of the border.

Down in Mexico he wouldn’t stand out from the crowd but here he looked lost and alone, adrift from his homeland in search of a better income.

An hour up the interstate the Tennessee flag fluttered in the strengthening breeze and Memphis hove into view.

Home of the Blues, Soul and Rock ‘N’ Roll, surely here we would find our much-sought after live music here.

After a vain attempt to catch the blues in the raw form, unadulterated, deep down and dirty, at a small venue out in the suburbs we slid through the snowy roads back into town, driven to the juke joints of Beale St.

Once hallowed haunt of blues artists they now seem a hollowed-out core, commercial operations catering for the Hard Rock café crowd and offering watered-down fare.

The picture was the same the next day at the legendary Sun studios, where Jerry, Johnny and Elvis cut their first records - and at Graceland, the gloriously over-the-top home of the latter.

With their music still ringing in our ears we headed on once more to another great music city lying to the west - Nashville.

Another Greyhound. Another stony-faced, round woman on the desk. More pungent passengers and hopeless hobos.

Their spirit crushed, our fellow passengers sat morosely in the waiting room, drawing back into the hoods of their loose-fitting leisurewear some kind of proxy amniotic fluid.

Gordon Brown’s weary face stared out from CNN, his drawn features a stark contrast to those of the sprightly new US President. The coverage showed them talking earnestly over coffee and tilting their heads behind large dais at a press conference.

The rolling newsbar brought the latest economic woes: Northern Rock loses billions in the UK since being nationalised; Ford sales have plummet 48% in the US. Barrack and Gordon stood shoulder to shoulder: these problems are ‘global’.

An hour later we were heading west and, if the large roadside hoardings we passed were anything to go by the lands we were entering are even more redneck: gun and knife shows, fishing appliances and baptist pastors staring out from their lofty perches.

We stopped briefly at an old bus station in a town called Jackson. Is this the town Johnny sang about? There was no time to find out, as our fellow passengers hastily stubbed out their cigarettes on the tarmac and we continued.

The snow remained on the ground as we headed east and we found ourselves amongst low hills, the first since Mexico.

The generously-built lady next to me tucked into a meal of fried chicken and corn bread and we passed a large tour truck painted in the Stars and Stripes, ‘Freedom and Family Tour’ emblazoned boldly across it.

Country music. We had to be nearing Nashville, ’the music city’ .

I couldn’t help listening to Bob Dylan‘s ‘Nashville Skyline’ in anticipation.

Half an hour later the aforementioned skyline itself gleamed at us, the smart towers of downtown glinting orange in the sunset.

The streets looked smarter, the atmosphere more austere in comparison to Memphis. Everywhere I looked I saw a church - we were, as our couchsurfing host, Jason, put it ’in the buckle of the bible belt’.

Together with his wife, Tamee, he has counted 17 churches between his house and the café where we dined: baptist, evangelical, church of god, seventh day adventist to name a few.

Such is their popularity that the police have to come out to direct traffic on Sundays.

To the backdrop of live music (cajun, once again) our conversation turned to the musical delights of this city.

Not only the home of country, there’s hillybilly here, and rockabilly, and in the engrossing Country Music Hall of Fame we read all about them.

Dolly Parton, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard, they all crooned at out us from video screens, replete in their cowboy hats and rhinestone jackets.

The streets outside rang to the sound of the fiddle and the southern drawl, drifting out from venues on Broadway and even loudspeakers at road junctions.

Yet to me one voice stood out from them all: the deep, sonorous sound which sends an earthquake through me every time I hear it.

“Hello, I’m Johnny Cash”

And so it was that we found ourselves in a cemetery, after dark, in the small town of Hendersonville.

With the help of Jason’s whizzy iPhone (every American seems to have one - cricked necks and arthritic fingers must be a big problem here) we located the grave of the Man in Black.

He lay next to his wife, the love of his life, both graves etched with passages from the bible. It was a modest plot on a small grassy slope, overlooking people’s backyards, a couple of gas stations and a hotel.

I stood and looked at the final resting place of my musical hero. Jackson to Hendersonville.
Mission complete.

But the musical odyssey continues. We‘re making for the mountains. There‘s a man waiting for us there, and he‘s brandishing a banjo…







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Elvis.com: Taking Care of Business

"Nothing really affected me until I heard Elvis" - John Lennon


We boarded a plane today, something I never thought I’d be doing on our travels around the world without flying.

This was no commercial airliner though, and indeed it was going nowhere, parked up on a piece of tarmac just off a busy highway.

Clearly the former owner had been a person of some means: this jet was blinged to the max. There were lush thick sofas, leather seats, a double bed, gold seat belt clips, even gold leaf basins in the toilets.

But then this wasn’t any old plane: this was the Lisa Marie, and this wasn't any old owner - this was the former plane of none other than the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll, Elvis Presley.

And whilst the Lisa Marie may once have flown through the clouds, taking Elvis on tour or indulging him in spontaneous missions (taking his dog to a vet in Boston, visiting Denver for peanut butter sandwiches, visiting the Rockies for half an hour to show his daughter snow) today she was going nowhere, parked up on a piece of tarmac just off a busy highway.

She stands as a dusty display in an outdoor museum, just one of the many exhibitions at his old stomping ground, now a pilgrimage site for his legions of adoring fans, the Mecca of rock and roll: Graceland.

Welcome to elvis.com : Taking Care of Business.

TCB. Elvis’s favourite acronym was emblazoned on the back of the Lisa Marie and his other jet, Hound Dog II, on his cars, throughout his house and even on his clothes.

It seemed rather a naff slogan for such a cool cat, surely more befitting of a small-town haulage company rather than a man who could make girls swoon with a single shake of his hips.

Indeed the slogan seems more pertinent since ‘The King’s’ death, Elvis bequeathing us not only a great musical legacy but a whole retail park dedicated to his memory.

For the dedicated Elvis fan the dollars start flying out of your pocket the minute you turn into Elvis Presley Boulevard.

If you've time on your hands (and at Graceland you need it) you can stay at Heartbreak Hotel (situated on Lonely St, naturally) or park up your RV (those enormous bloated caravans Americans seem to insist on taking with them, as it they’re anticipating an alien invasion) on the campsite behind.

The house is, of course, the big draw and Elvis's former manor perches on the top of a grassy slope opposite the visitor centre, accessible only by shuttle bus.

The visitor is shepherded straight through the front door of the building, more a large house than a great mansion and straight into the Presley family’s inner sanctum for a voyeuristic glimpse into their private, intimate, lives.

It felt strange to walk through their rooms, inappropriate - almost ghoulish - to intrude into their world, handing over fistfuls of dollars for a thrilling peek at how the family lived, commenting on the furniture and the crockery, staring at the framed photos of beaming parents and happy children.

I couldn’t help being aghast at the ludicrous décor of course, frozen as it is in a weird 1970s timewarp, a decade notorious for bypassing all acceptable boundaries of taste.

Not one to be outdone Elvis smashed past these boundaries with great zeal, choosing to decorate each room to its own individual theme.

The visitor moves between these rooms rather like contestants did between zones in the Channel Four game show The Crystal Maze.

There was the TV room (black, white and yellow colour scheme, mirrored walls and ceiling, and a bank of three TVs for simultaneous viewing - an idea borrowed from President Johnson, apparently); the pool room (thick, heavy material from floor to ceiling, like a dingy bordello) and the lounge (a ‘jungle’ room, complete with slippery leather furniture, indoor waterfall and thick, green shagpile from floor to ceiling.

A fellow visitor standing next to me couldn’t help but be impressed: “I gottasay, boy, he’s classy!”

We proceeded to the raquetball room, one a playground for Elvis and friends, now lined with rows of platinum discs and, inside glass cabinets some of his legendary costumes: sequined jumpsuits with massive lapels, tight at the crotch, flared at the ankle and split down to the belly.

From the screens on the wall the King struts about in such costumes, the final word in bad taste.

This coverage of his later live shows showed a decidedly pudgy Elvis, sporting the kind of sideburns you’d expect find in a zoo behind bars, gyrating before adoring fans and sweating heavily through innumerable Las Vegas shows.

The mawkishness cranks up another notch still when we come to the ‘meditation garden’, the final resting place of the King himself. Private family graves; public shrine.

In front of a tinkling fountain, his grave, between those of his family lies festooned in flowers and toys, limp star and stripes and notes of heartfelt professions of adoration.

Fans still flock here from far and wide. One enormous wreath on display was sent from the ‘United Elvis Presley Society Belgium' (United? Was there a split into factions, I wondered? Perhaps a divide along ethnic lines, the Flems disapproving of the Walloons interpretation of Blue Suede Shoes).

Away from the house there was more of course: an exhibition dedicated to Elvis’s many films, another to his many cars, and one entirely about his days in the draft.

The latter provided a particularly fascinating insight into the Elvis phenomenon.

When they heard that E.A Presley was due to be drafted the various branches of the armed services vied for his services.

One glance at the images of the impossibly handsome young batchelor - already a pin-up for many -willingly doing his duty and its clear why they would have been keen to have him in their ranks.

The propaganda value alone during this time of the Cold War must have been almost incalculable.

A grinning Elvis poses happily whilst having his head shaved at an Arkansas boot camp, a rugged Elvis in military fatigues tinkles with his tank deep in the Bavarian woods. Soviet propagandists must have been green with envy.

Yet even a hardened, cynical military general cannot have calculated the value of Elvis once he’d passed to other side. Beyond the grave Elvis is still generating millions of dollars.

The merchandise stands wall-to-wall, at the exit of each exhibition and in every shop in between them. There’s Elvis posters, pens and steering wheel covers, keyrings, CDs and films, t-shirts, ringtones and playing cards, dolls, monopoly and karaoke sets...

But it doesn’t stop here: for the more ambitious there’s an opportunity to let Elvis into just about every corner of your life.

You can get married at Graceland’s ‘Chapel in the Woods’ or listen to Elvis every minute of the day on Elvis Radio.

Indeed if you have the money there seems to be no limit.

Fancy a go on Elvis’s pool table? All yours for $100, with a certificate of authenticity and a Polaroid of the moment thrown in.

Or perhaps you’d like to splash out on a replica Elvis jumpsuit, complete with buttons and sequins. Yours for only $3,300.

Elvis might have passed away some 25 years ago but the tills are still ringing. The King is dead, long live Elvis®.

When the shy boy from Tupelo, Mississippi strolled in through the doors of Sun Studios back in 1953 he didn’t know he’d be launching a music career that would define a generation and change
the world.

Such was his popularity that when he died, aged only 42, in August 1977 hundreds of thousands turned out to see his casket.

As we chowed down in the ‘Chrome Grille’ café (sat in a Cadillac, of course) I munched metaphorically over the Elvis phenomenon and couldn’t help drawing a parallel between Elvis and the United States.

Big, brash and lovable; thrilling, exciting and new.

Extravagant, excessive and greedy; tacky, tasteless and wasteful.

Could he have appeared in anywhere else other than the United States?

Like him or not, even today Elvis retains his legions of devoted fans. Indeed he seems as popular as ever, a simple search for him on google returning 52,600,000 results.

And whilst people still come to Graceland, streaming through the gates in their hundreds of thousands every year, his songs will keep spinning and the tills will keep ringing.

The King is dead, long live Elvis®. U-huh.







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Midnight Cowboy in Memphis

Memphis. The city that brought the world blues, soul and rock ‘n’ roll.

Home to Graceland, the legendary mansion of Elvis Presley, and Sun and Stax studios, the recording studios which introduced us to the King of Rock 'n' Roll along with other greats such as Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Isaac Hayes…

My ears were salivating at the thought of it all.

That is if they weren’t dropping off. It was cold - very cold - and my great floppy lugholes were bearing the brunt of it.

I was starting to bitterly regret the run-in I had with a rather enthusiastic barber back in Guatemala and wondered what on earth was going on with the weather in this country.

The day before we’d been in Jackson, Mississippi, where the sun was shining and the thermometer was reading 25°C (77°). We had been wearing t-shirts and sunglasses as we caught the Greyhound out of town, passing on the way an electronic billboard flashing a tornado warning.

And yet four hours later up the interstate, as we alighted at Memphis, Tennessee we were greeted by the kind of icy blasts you’d encounter in the depths of winter back home.

The thermometer had plunged to a meagre 3°C (38°F), and it was falling fast.

The rain was beginning to turn to hail and by the time we’d reached our new lodgings the promise of snow hung in the air.

As I stood shivering on the doorstep of our couchsurfing host, cursing the holes in my shoes I realised I couldn’t put it off any longer: the music would have to wait, it was time to go clothes shopping.

I loathe this mundane activity and was looking forward to it with a looming sense of desperation when the door opened and our host, a strapping Argentinian biochemist named Adolfo, opened it.

“Hi you must be Tom and Lara; would you like a beer?”

Things got even better as pizza was produced and Aaron, a fellow Memphis couchsurfing host, schoolteacher and fount of local knowledge, offered to give us a lift to the city’s finest thrift stores.

As we rode out there the next day he gave us the lowdown on the city. He seemed keen to tell us about the crime rate - the second worst in the US apparently. Lots of murders, crack, shootings, the lot.

I’d heard it all before. Austin, New Orleans, Jackson, and now here. The words wafted over me as I ruminated on this apparent obsession of Americans with crime.

It seems to be almost a source of local pride, each city hotly contesting for the sacred title of ‘most dangerous city in America’.

This baffles me given the number of cops there are over here. With all these fine fellows patrolling the street it's a wonder there's any crime at all.

You almost can't move in this country for bulky men in immaculately pressed uniforms and gleaming cruisers, officers of the law from the sheriff's department, the city police, state troopers and other assorted agencies.

It's almost as confusing as the number of radio stations here, all four letter acronyms beginning - now we're east of the Mississippi - with a W.

Still, looking out the window, it was easy to believe Memphis’s claim, the sprawling blocks of low-rise buildings growing progressively shabbier the further we headed out of downtown.

A sign hung outside a launderette, reading: ‘Jesus is Lord. Starch Pants’ (if that won’t make you wash your smalls, nothing will); another, outside a fried chicken outlet, offered ‘legs and thighs. Spicy’, suitably sited next door to a strip club.

We were approaching our destination, the suburb of Nutbush, and two large thrift stores, purveyors of used clothing to the poor, the unemployed and cash-strapped backpackers.

Inside the Disabled Americans Thrift Store, browsers perused pungent old clothing and cast-offs whilst a jumpy-looking cop with closely cropped hair scanned them with beedy eyes, his hand twitching on his belt.

Our accents were soon - once again - attracting considerable attention. Was I from Ireland? a heavily bearded customer with steamed-up glasses asked me, another - a heavily tattooed lady with a tough Tennessee twang - complimented my English tones - ‘your accent is beautiful.’

Gosh, I liked this town already.

And it got better when I reached the racks, the store proving, along with its neighbour next door, a veritable treasure trove of high-quality clothing for the aspiring yet budget-conscious cowboy.

It is always our aim to try and appreciate a country from a local's point of view; as part of this, I indulge, when the chance presents itself to indulge in another Tintinesque tendency and take the 'Thompson and Thomson' approach.

The hapless Scotland Yard detectives, faithful companions to the boy reporter, always like to adopt the traditional costume.

Here in Memphis that meant only one thing and soon I was striding out into our new wintery world with a brand new uniform. This consisted of the following:

One pair of cowboy boots - $10
One pair of jeans - $5
One thick corduroy jacket $5
One heavy check shirt - $3

Combined with my Mexican cowboy hat I thought I cut a fine figure, ready to blend in perfectly with the locals around me.

Striding down the street on my two inch heels I thought I looked like Jon Voight in Midnight Cowboy; Lara reckoned more like Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. Better steer clear of the rainbow flags for a while.

By now the snow was falling thick and fast, it was starting to get dark and there was little sign of a bus.

A shopkeeper had kindly looked up bus times for us, one of her customers had even offered us a lift and now we met yet another friendly local who offered us a ride.

‘Mah name’s Werr-sleh. People call me White Lightnin’. Wow - a bona fide musician, and a guitarist to boot. He reminded me of the purpose of our visit to Memphis - to seek out the blues - and we thanked him for his club recommendation, Wild Bills, a place we’d already heard of

White Lightin’ had another piece of useful advice: ‘You’re in Nutbush, maaaan - this is the hood’.

Time to go. A bus finally hove into view and we hopped aboard this skeleton service, the air inside so cold we could see our own breath, the seat cushions soaking wet from the leaking roof.

Once more I wondered what one would do without a car in a town like Memphis, marooned like a stranded sailor in an ocean of concrete.

We made to downtown and the one saving grace of the city’s public transport system - the Main Street Trolley.

This lovingly-kept line runs old trams which come complete with varnished wooden benches, odd knobs and levers. Ours also came with a friendly driver called ‘Mow-reece’ who complimented me on my new garb.

As the tram rumbled gently over the heavy rails I relaxed into its warm, comforting embrace reflected on the fine people of this city and the south in general. Once again the South had impressed us: the warmth of its welcome, the friendliness of its people; the kindness of strangers.

Half an hour later, as we kicked the snow off our boots back at our lodgings and brewed a restorative cuppa the news came through that we were in the middle of the heaviest snowfall for forty years, some parts of West Tennessee receiving up to a foot of snow.

We were back to survivalist shows back more. Snow-bound and stranded in the deep south: would Tom and Lara survive?

Stayed tuned and find out next week only on WISM.







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