Dan Levitin convinced me — so today’s poetry break is really a song. I can remember sitting on my front porch back in Greensboro, having a gin & tonic — watching a storm blow up. You know those days, where the air has that gold-ish shimmer, and smells of drying grasses with an edge of fall…
Dixie Storms by Lone Justice
I received a letter, like so many others
Mama said, “How’s life in the city?
My your sister’s grown
And you just missed those awful dixie storms
Thank God they’ve passed
Those awful dixie storms”
I left so long ago
I’d forgotten just what for
But they say
When a big city beckons
You have no choice but to go
And here, there are no dixie storms
Thank God, there are no dixie storms
And the smoke on the street
Makes me wonder why I stay away
From those gentle dixie storms
When I was younger
How I would wonder
What made the sweet Georgia rain
Make me feel so warm
And how God made a dixie storm
And how I loved those dixie storms
And the rumble in the sky
Brings a shudder to my soul
Oh how I loved those dixie storms
Dixie Lullabies: Dixie Storms (Lone Justice, of course); Greensboro Blues (Bruce Piephoff); China Grove (Doobie Brothers); Southern Kind of Life (Kasey Chambers); Sunflower (Alice Peacock); Rock a Bye your Baby with a Dixie Melody (Rufus Wainwright’s version just crawls all over you); Sweet Caroline (Dave Matthews’ take is just cool); Sweet Meant to Be (Carlene Carter); Here Comes Floyd (Cheryl Wheeler — a bizarrely happy hurricane song); Love Me Tonight (Don Williams); Misguided Angel (Cowboy Junkies); Oh Atlanta (Allison Krauss); The Tide Will Rise (Bruce Hornsby); Steal My Kisses (Ben Harper); Lay Around & Love on You (Delbert McClinton); Cotton Fields (an old song energized by Buckwheat Zydeco); Blues for Dixie (Asleep at the Wheel); Mountain Heir (AJ Roach); and Beyond the Sea (Bobby Darin — it’s not southern, but it has that feel?).
Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments. –> Rose Kennedy
Take care,
Aly
History Thru the Looking Glass 
You left off Nick Cave and Johnny Cash – “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”!
I definitely should have “I’m so lonesome….” but for this playlist I would choose the Hank Williams’ version. I absolutely love Johnny Cash, but he transcends southern-ness for me….if that makes any sense?
He’s in pretty constant rotation around here — I think for this post I would have used either, “5 ft High & Rising,” or the ubiquitous “Jackson,” but that might ring cliched.
Aly
“Jackson” is good, but I’m kinda fond of “Hey Porter” for Southern-ness.