J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - February '11 #11: "Peace Beneath The City" by Iron & Wine

So I got into Iron & Wine there for a while, and the wife loves that sound, so do the kids, so it's getting heavy play here at the compound. I write about it in last month's J.J. Krupert list, and somebody responds that they thought the dude went to VCU nearabouts the same time I did. So I go to Wikipedia, because honestly I didn't know shit about who did Iron & Wine other than it was a guy with a beard, and what do you know... it's a guy that was in art school same time as my ol' lady. It was a guy I knew who lived with dudes I still keep in touch with. In fact, it was a guy who used to sit idly on this little raised theater platform where a bunch of us would always sit, in Shafer Court at VCU, looking like a ragtag bunch of college kids I guess, except like a bunch of long-haired degenerate Allman Brothers roadies. I used to go sit there before classes, and sometimes, the small entourage of comers and goers seemed more interesting than class, so I'd just stay there. People watching. Chit chatting. And there was a guy who sat there too, quiet guy with sad eyes, never really said a whole lot, but was there a lot of times. That was Sam. He is know the Iron & Wine guy to the rest of the world.
Funny thing about that time, and that little group that hung out there, members of that little cluster became members of the well-known Lamb of God, the core of other groups like Alabama Thunder Pussy and RPG. We called it the Southern Rock bench. And looking back at that group as well, thinking about my homey Dave Moore, doing his painting thing to this day in ways I don't think anyone else does (I've got two of his paintings in my raggedy ass house, and proud of it), and just the general crazy vibe of VCU at that time in the early '90s. One thing we've been training our children to think in terms of college is not so much that it makes you accessible to higher paying jobs, but that it opens you up in your personal development. You'll meet people there who will expand what you are into, and you'll meet people who will help you grow into what you are supposed to be. That's some important shit, far more so than worrying about a job.
VCU cleaned itself up a lot since we were there. Shafer Court is all bricked up. I don't think HR of Bad Brains rides his bicycle to free shows on Friday afternoons anymore. I'm not sure if the art school is as important as it once was, since they've been pushing the second-rate business school instead. Which is sad. A lot of shit came out of Richmond that got drawn into Richmond because of that place. A lot of great shit is still gonna come out of it. I write, don't make music, so my window hasn't hit the peak yet, like it has for Iron & Wine or Lamb of God. But it does make me feel better knowing another dude who was just sitting around on that Southern Rock bench with me is now selling out shows and making some chill ass music, and being successful with his creative side, not as some punk ass businessman telling you constantly enough how great his useless thing is until you finally start to believe how his useless thing is awesome and buy into it.
Honestly, the fact is I met my ol' lady there, and had our first conversations on that Southern Rock bench, including talking about how I had a hard time chatting up women, and she gave me a piece of paper as a joke that said "Do you like Raven?" with a box for yes and a box for no, and I kept that piece of paper in a notebook, and five years later we were an item, and what, like 18 years later we've got three kids and five acres and two pigs and eight chickens and one future. I think back to her, the beautiful but crazy hippie chick - probably the closest melding of my ideal "redneck, hippie Mexican woman" that I was searching for that you could come across, and now her on this herbal path, talking at the plants and concocting mad medicines in our kitchen apothecary and building some serious healing powers, but with a spark of creativity and art, and not in a sterile "health food store" way. And I think about myself back then - longhaired goofy gangsta hippie freestyling ass degenerate drunkard - and how to this day I still throw words, still fight at the sprawl trying to crawl into the tall grasses around the edges of my brain, and I know we came together at a Power Site during powerful times. And we're still building our powers now, in our new home of ten years-plus, establishing our compound. I think that's a hard thing for a lot of people to understand when you yourself know you are on a path, there's a destiny you will get to. You are not meant to be obscure or unknown. And when I find out by chance that the guy who was always sitting next to me is the Iron & Wine guy, that kind of drives that destiny home. Not everybody gets born into these paths, or is blessed with a partner who can help blast you (and you her) into that direction. I am a lucky motherfucker, but it was not by accident.
STEAL "Peace Beneath The City"
NEXT: there is no Zulu word for "lost"!