Willie Mays and the Redneck Trump Truck
Winchell World's Ear Candy XV
These stories are about my life and how music is inextricably involved in those journeys. Enjoy this week’s story, and much love to all of you. Our story today includes an album that has been out for over 50 years, and I only first heard it a few weeks ago.
It would be an understatement to say that I have wanted to jump out of my skin several times over the past two weeks. I know I am not alone. The tension in the world is palpable, strong. We feed that tension by how we choose to engage the world, the people around us. It’s as if we all need a collective cocktail to take the edge off. Literally, I have wanted to punch people straight in the face this week. It has been difficult for me to gather my thoughts, but, as I finally am able to put pen to paper, one thing stands clear: I can’t do that life any longer; anger, hate, fight.
Valentine’s Day, Shannon and I had a nice dinner in the Southside neighborhood of Birmingham before heading to Uptown to watch the musical “Six”. It was a wonderful evening, but something hung in the air, that palpable tension seething through our culture right now. It is a feeling that something is just off, and we all know there are definitely things that are ‘off’. As we drove our car up 18th Avenue into the heart of downtown Birmingham I looked to my right at a parking lot we have passed many times before. Adorned on what would otherwise be a non-descript side of an abandoned brick building shone a massive, beautiful mural of Willie Mays. It’s been there a bit, but I just noticed it. When Major League Baseball came to town last summer to celebrate the Negro Leagues at our hallowed Rickwood Field, Willie Mays became the central figure, especially when he left this battered world just a couple days prior to the actual baseball game on June 20th. Willie’s history with Birmingham is deep, and his spirit is duly memorialized throughout town.
Saturday mornings are a sanctuary for me to get out, do errands, decompress, and seek some calm in the world. The Saturday morning after Valentine’s Day included my once a month travel through downtown to pick up my monthly supply of locally sourced honey from Foxhound Bee Company. The drive from our house includes a historic trail of Birmingham sites and goes through the historically black areas known from the city’s past; the places Martin Luther King preached, the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the site of the 1963 terrorist bombing by Ku Klux Klan members that took four childrens' lives. These streets are the same where “Bull” Connor, Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, just months before the church bombing, turned dogs and fire hoses on protesters in downtown Birmingham. This city was a warzone of people just fighting for the right to be called and treated as human. And, the very people trusted to protect them turned on them.
That previous evening I had made a committment in my mind to visit the Willie Mays mural after my honey pick up. I wanted to see it in daylight, study it, and photograph it. The parking lot housing the mural sits near the Birmingham bus depot; it is within stones throw of where our granddog Max goes to daycare, and only the distance of a few baseball fields to the massive railroad tracks that split through our city. No one was in that parking lot when I arrived. On the overcast winter morning I got out and stood awestruck while I clicked as many images I could of the immortal hero. As I walked back to my car, a few folks were now bustling in the area; a musician hurrying through the lot with guitar in tow heading to who knows where, a security guard moving north perhaps after a long overnight shift, and a man on a sidewalk talking away on his phone. What I heard next was not a bus, nor a train. No, rumbling into the parking lot was a black 4 x 4 pickup truck, jacked up with huge tires, and adorned with two flying flags: A confederate flag and an American flag. Multiple Trump stickers on the back window. I’ve seen it before, in different forms. Some have Trump and Confederate flags, some Alabama and Trump flags, many combinations of the triumphant parade of red neckism. I am seeing them more frequently, and why wouldn’t I? And, they don’t just exist in Alabama. It is a scene so specific that I thought Amazon had to have some sort of kit. They do. There was something different though about this drive by, I actually locked eyes with the driver for several seconds. It was a bit eerie, and it stuck with me most of that day.
That palpability I mentioned at the top of my writing was heavy that moment. It’s like the possums on our patio; we see each other, but know not to get in each other’s shit. That would be bad. I don’t know who they are, where they were going, or what they do. I certainly can connect the dots by the flags they fly, and,…… namaste. You go your way and I’ll go mine.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
Birmingham, as many southern towns, has survived alot. I cannot imagine the pain of those families on that September in 1963 or those mowed down by Conner’s hoses and dogs. It doesn’t take a genius to see how the history of racial division has cut towns in two, and upside down. It’s a familiar scene. What isn’t familiar to us, in this moment of time, is the firehose of polarizing change being shot in our face on a daily basis. We have to find ways to stop that blast in every one of our lives.
I can be the person I believe I am supposed to be and treat the people around me well. Even if it is a cold stare between enemies, we can walk away to live another day. I can advocate for the disenfranchised and under privileged, love my neighbor, friends, co-workers, and speak truthfully. I can have hard conversations. I can find joy and have a good time. I am not going to be the person who makes a hugely divisive world more divided.
I can’t change what is going on in Washington D.C.. That die has been cast, and there is a good chance that well over half the people you come in contact with on a daily basis voted for what is happening now, and are reveling in it. There is a Redneck Trump Truck near you, and if not, you will run into it soon enough. We have a choice, to live what we believe and want to see in the world or fight an absolutely worthless war in the echo chambers of social media and the anger fantasies within our minds. For me, that last part is not an option any longer, and I am sorry I have played along with those things and allowed them to grab way too much of my soul.
The people around you need YOU more than ever; the authentic you and me. They don’t need an avatar of you or I. They need the real us. Frame it however you want: War, the end times, a struggle, resistance. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we engage the people around us authentically as we face each new moment. I’m not saying it is easy. Right now, nothing is easy. I’m not saying there won’t be disagreements, engagements, and retreats. There will be all of those. But, we have to find a better way to turn this hell hose off.
Since the beginning of 2024, during this madhouse of a clown show we live in, music has helped me calm down, get balanced, and keep some modicum of sanity. On February 3, the daily album suggester, 1001 Albums Generator, conjured up Stephen Stills, “Manassas” for my listening pleasure. Until that day, I had not heard, “Manassas”. I had never seen it. As a matter of fact as time has moved on a bit I cannot recall seeing it in any record store bin that I have ever visited. None of my brothers had it growing up. I have never heard any of the songs on any radio station or pop up on any playlist. The album is 100% brand new to me, and I have listened to it over 25 times in this, the shortest month of the year.
I am past being upset if I didn’t get to something right when it hit, or came out. The Willie Mays mural has been shining over Birmingham for nearly a year now, and I just saw it in real life. I’m good with that. I continue to say that if music stopped being created this very second, there is enough music that we have not listened to to last lifetimes. The idea of getting embarrassed because something new from decades back comes into your life is simply ridiculous. These findings should be celebrated. And, today, I am sharing and celebrating “Manassas”.
By the time Stephen Stills was a mere 26 years old, he had already amassed accolades of rock stardom that most do not attain in an entire career. As the pen master of Buffalo Springfield’s massive 1966 hit “What It’s Worth” and a historical quick run with Crosby, Stills & Nash, and Crosby, Still, Nash & Young, through the late 60’s, Stills found himself rambling through the new territories of a solo career and dealing with the cleanup from his meteoric rise. He was retreating, retreating from personal battles, stardom, and seemingly trying to figure this thing called life out. His method of dealing was to form another super group, and in late 1971 the retreat was Miami where he assembled a cast that included heavy duty musicians from The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Byrds, and bandmates from CSN&Y. The massive undertaking was named, “Manassas” and the result of the marathon gauntlet recording experience resulted in a themed, four-sided double album named eponomously for the group.
“Manassas”, the album and group was released to successful, but not hugely successful, acclaim. The album went on to attain Gold status in the U.S. and had a moderate radio hit in “Johnny’s Garden”. The band toured the world for most of 1972 in support of the project.
“Manassas” is divided into four distinct story and music lines: Side One: “The Raven”, which is dedicated to rock, blues and latin influences. Side Two: “The Wilderness”, dives into country, bluegrass and folk. Side Three: “Consider”, which is acoustic, folk and finds Stills balladeering. Finally, Side Four: “Rock & Roll Is Here To Stay”, which is a wonderful rambling of jam, progressive, and blues based rock. Hearing side four just now in 2025 put an instant thought in my head: “Someone in the early days of Widespread Panic had this album on their turntable, on repeat.”
“Manassas” is a 21 song album and comes in at 72 minutes in length. The segue between the sides and styles is flawless, and whether literally retreating in his lyrics in such songs as “Colorado” and “Johnny’s Garden” or dealing introspectively into his regrets with doomed relationships (“So Begins The Task”), Stephen Stills recorded a masterpiece for the ages that I am so thankful is now a part of my world. For me, it stands every bit as solid as the classic CSN&Y “Deja Vu” or Buffalo Springfield’s “What It’s Worth”.
I hope you give “Manassas” a listen. If you already know it, you are lucky to have had it all along. If you haven’t listened in a while, give it a knock the door. I have included both Spotify and Apple Music links to the album. I don’t have “Manassas” on vinyl yet. I have made the decision to try and find it in the wild instead of simply ordering a copy online. The hunt will be worth it. That’s how I found my first copy of “Deja Vu”.
Thanks for reading. Hold the ones you love, and put some honey in the world, we need it, even those dudes in the Redneck Trump Truck.
