American Music Tour of the South.

Three or four years planning - 1,747 miles executing:

(This image above is the label from a bottle of Guinness that my uncle Jim, Frances' dad, bottled at his pub in our home place of Essexford, Co. Louth Ireland.)


My Irish cousin (Frances), my wife (Mags) and I began discussing this music trip several years ago and now that Mags has retired, the rubber hit the road. Oct 1 to Oct 14.

It was the music that got us interested in this trip originally.

Frances' late husband (Red) was a great Blues singer in Dublin.

I have heard him sing, live once at a family wedding but mostly on CD and he really was a great singer.

Reportedly during an interview on Irish Radio , many years ago, Red was asked why he didn't sing professionally. He was certainly good enough.

He supposedly replied "Because I have bills to pay". Good answer I thought.

Reminds me of the old joke "What's the difference between a musician and a large pizza?" answer "The pizza can feed a family of four". Not funny if you are a musician.

Frances and I grew up in the same part of rural Ireland. We were neighbors in addition to being first cousins.

Essexford is a crossroads on the Louth / Monaghan Border. Three miles from Inniskeen the center of Patrick Kavanagh Country

Growing up here in the 50's and 60's was as rough and tough as you could get. So we were confident The South wouldn't intimidate us.

Mags has been visiting Essexford since '75.

She was amused back then by the unwarranted sense of superiority she encountered.

The parish, Killanny, was predominantly poor, despite the impression its huge Gothic church might give.

Essexford was so rural a location it was surrounded by two bogs, yet it had none of the beauty of Donegal or Connemara.

Mags, being an astute woman, quickly figured out that sense of superiority was a veneer. Covering, at least in me, a significant inferiority complex.

We encountered a similar complex in Listowel, the place where Mags grew up, in our travels earlier this year.

The misplaced Listowel sense of superiority was echoed by a young woman we met later on this trip in Clarksdale, MS of all places.

It's interesting that Essexford is tangentially associated with one of Ireland's greatest poets, Patrick Kavanagh. Meanwhile Listowel is directly associated with a number of literary figures, John B. Keane to name but one, and with the annual Writers Week Festival.


Sorry, I digress.

Road Maps vs Google Maps:

One of my travel mottos since retirement has been "Google gets me there too fast".

So road maps it was.

According to Hertz we drove a total of 1,747 miles.

Mags and I actually visited a book shop to buy our maps, Barnes and Noble no less.

They had several but not all of the Rand McNally Maps we needed. I found it amusing that they told us to order what we needed online and it would be delivered to the store for free.

Instead I had them order them for us and notify us when the product arrived.

We needed maps of Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. But we also crossed into Arkansas twice, the first time just to bag another State and the second time to visit Helena to check out a Blues Festival we heard about.

I wanted to avoid Freeway driving so by using my Maps and Google I planned out each days drive to avoid them.

The broad outline was Atlanta, Chattanooga, Nashville to Memphis following the Natchez Trace as much as possible.

Memphis to New Orleans via the Mississippi Delta stopping at Clarksdale MS, Natchex MS and Vicksburg MS along the way.

I first planned out routes on Google Maps ,from the comfort of my own home, that met my needs and then saved them off line in Google Keep.

Once I figured out how to re-use these maps they were great. In conjunction with our paper maps.

I must admit I am a Google fan, despite working with Microsoft all my active career.

I have even moved my phone service to Google Fi recently.

Google Fi worked great on this trip BTW.

(Update: April 2020 - Google Fi during a software update designated my phone number in-active. I noticed it immediately because I couldnt make or recieve a call.

But not before they had returned my number to its original povider.

They gave me a temporary number.

It's now months later and I still have the temporary number.)

I also simplified our trip planning significantly be deciding to stay exclusively at the Marriott Hotel chain, where possible, throughout the trip.

And with two exceptions we did stay, happily, at Marriott.

Tip for using saved Google Maps:

When you launch a saved Map the "Start" button does not show up.

You must remove the starting point from the displayed map and then the "Start" button appears taking you from your current location to your first stop.

A quick look at the 1,747 mile trip:

Atlanta to Vicksburg via Nashville and Memphis

Vicksburg to New Orleans to Atlanta