She`s got that swing

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SundayJournal
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THE NEWS & OBSERVER
SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2003
Southern Extracts: Ghosts
in Beaufort, S.C. PAGE 3D
Sunday Reader: “The Eyes
of the Fat Man” by Deno
Trakas. PAGE 2D
www.newsobserver.com/sundayjournal
She’s got
that swing
—
RALEIGH
ometimes the most unlikely friendships
come zinging into your life, arriving
with the sweet force of a song. “’S Wonderful,” the brothers Gershwin would say,
these chance meetings that can jazz up your
whole perspective.
Bobby Moody’s mood has been swinging
up since The Lady Byron rolled in to Raleighwood in her big Mercedes a few
months back.
WRITING
Moody is like most local jazz
HOME
musicians who lament the paltry
venues available. His band, Moment’s Notice, plays weddings and
events, restaurant gigs, and the
jazz mass at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church. If it’s not exactly fame,
the 42-year-old Durham native,
who plays tenor sax and now lives
in Raleigh, had at least found a
Mary
fine, steady rhythm.
E. Miller
Then a fellow parishioner at St.
Ambrose told Moody that her
aunt, a jazz organist, had temporarily moved
to town and was looking to play.
They call her The Lady Byron, the niece
explained. Doesn’t read a note of music, but
she’s been playing gospel since she was 3 and
jazz since the 1930s. She was married to the
late jazz organist Brother Jack McDuff and
she knows everybody in the jazz and gospel
music world.
Past 70 now — how much so is as variable
as one of her soaring musical riffs — she still
tours with her Lady Byron Trio, and calls
Washington, D.C., home. She came to North
Raleigh to help her brother recuperate from
an illness, but was
missing the chance to
make music.
So The Lady met
Moody one morning
before mass. Since
she is old enough to
be his grandmother,
Moody expected a
grandmotherly type.
Then she appeared, a
laughing fireball in
an auburn wig and
skyscraper stilettos,
with ringed fingers
that can send chords
curtsying or cannonballing off the keyHer real name is Evelyn
board.
Latham, but they call her
Two minutes they
The Lady Byron.
talked. She allowed
that she was known
STAFF PHOTO
BY COREY LOWENSTEIN
for her gospel rendition of “The Lord’s
Prayer.” He invited her to play during the
service and “she tore up the church,” he says
with a delighted laugh as he tells the story, “I
mean, the people were rockin’.”
It’s been that way for Moody ever since.
With bassist Ernie Donadelle, The Lady
formed a Raleigh trio and found herself two
devoted fans and friends.
“I can’t say enough about her,” Moody
says. “She has so much energy and so many
great stories. I think she’s really just changed
my whole outlook.”
Every other Thursday night, these three
cook up several hours of jazz at April &
George, the wine bar-cum-art gallery in Glenwood South that has become one of Raleigh’s
see-and-be-seen spots.
They play all old standards like “Take the
A Train,” “It Don’t Mean A Thing,” “Misty,”
and “Georgia.” Dolled up in long sequined
gowns or slinky tops with spaghetti straps,
The Lady parks a glass of Chardonnay on the
floor by the pedals and greets everyone as
they walk in with her ivory keyboard grin.
Moody sings, and the later it gets, the better
they sound.
Name nearly any crooner or cool cat and
The Lady’s got a story. Basie, Ellington,
Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, even Lena
Horne, and Frank, Sammy, Dean and the rest
of the Rat Pack. The Lady says she has
played with all of them over the years, although her name doesn’t appear on any
record labels.
But she does keep a current credential
behind her black upright piano. The mayor of
Washington declared April 19 this year
“Lady Byron Day,” and issued a proclamation
extolling her many contributions to jazz.
Her real name is Evelyn Latham, but that is
her other persona, she explains, and saucily
warns, “Ooooh, you oughta meet her; honey,
she’s a real...” then leans over and whispers a
naughty word.
Outrageous, raucous, The Lady vamps to
the music and stomps the pedals when she
really gets rolling. Moody and Donadelle,
fingers flying over strings and keys, smile as
though they just got hired as gatekeepers of
heaven. They bring their families along to
this gig and between sets, pepper Lady Byron with questions. On a recent night, Donadelle, who is 45, yelled to his mother, “Who
did Grandma sing with?”
“Jimmie Lunceford,” she answered, and at
that, The Lady slapped the piano and giggled. “Oh, yes, yes, I knew that old Jimmie.”
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m u r a l
w i t h
m a n y
d i m e n s i o n s
Sunday Dinner: A cooking
class with the kids.
PAGE 10D
—
S
Painting
A towering barn on Red Hill Road wears a different interpretation of ‘American Gothic.’
the town
STORY BY CAITLIN CLEARY
■
PHOTOS BY TRAVIS LONG
CAMERON
A
woman waits for a visitor at a rural crossroads, two ribbons of blacktop that divide the acres
of green, arrow-straight tobacco rows. The mosquitoes hover in the air, and only the occasional pickup speeds by to break the quiet.
The late morning sun beats down on several old tobacco barns that distinguish this place
from hundreds of others. From ground to roof, the barns are covered with paintings — not faded
Lucky Strike logos or old advertisements for Grape NeHi, but art.
There are characters from Japanese
animation, a Diego Rivera-style mural
of farmworkers, and a dark twist on
Grant Wood’s famous “American
Gothic,” with pitchfork-wielding farmers, instead depicted as robot figures
with scary, machinelike faces. One barn,
painted by prominent graffiti artist
Stephen Powers (tag name “ESPO”),
echoes a Marlboro cigarette ad, reading,
“Welcome to Flavor Country,” the ubiquitous red and white pack labeled “Fiveboros.”
To the stranger who stumbles upon
the place, the barns seem like the result
of a surprise raid whose operatives
dramatically alter the landscape, then
quickly retreat to base camp. But this
raid was welcomed.
The woman stands in front of her
barn, which has been painted to look
like a baseball stadium teeming with
people. She smiles, extends her hand
and says, “Hi, I’m Jane Rogers, and
I’m a Barnstormer.” She wears a sports
jersey emblazoned with an orange
Barnstormers logo, a Barnstormers hat
shielding her eyes from the sun.
SEE MILLER, PAGE 5D
Out of view of passers-by, a graphic mural by members of a New York
artists’ collective dresses a barn on N.C. 24-27 West in Cameron.
Rogers is a blueberry farmer, a retired librarian and a woman who has
spent her entire life in or around
Cameron. Four years ago she became
a major player in the North Carolina endeavors of the Barnstormers, a collective of artists — painters, photogra-
1D, SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2003
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phers, printmakers, filmmakers and
graphic designers — based in New
York City and Tokyo.
At the urging of lead Barnstormer
David Ellis (“SKWERM”), the artists
SEE PAINTING, PAGE 4D
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Sunday Journal
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PAINTING
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1D
made their first pilgrimage south from
New York City in the summer of 1999
to paint Cameron’s barns.
Ellis had grown up in there in the ’80s,
the son of the pastor at Cameron Presbyterian Church. He painted his first
barn there at age 12, and a wall at Union
Pines High School (Go Vikings!) during
his sophomore year. Shortly after, Ellis
left for the N.C. School of the Arts in
Winston-Salem, then for a career as a
struggling artist in New York City.
After more than a decade living in
New York, Ellis decided to return home
with two dozen fellow artists in tow.
He wanted to give back what he could
to his hometown, to teach local kids
about mural painting, and to knit together what he has described as “the
two sides of my soul — rural Cameron
and urban New York.”
With help from Rogers and others in
the community, the Barnstormers painted
tobacco barns, tenant shacks, farm equipment and 18-wheeler tractor-trailers, paying tribute to the aging architecture of
Cameron and making their own mark
upon it.
The old barns that once dried tobacco
now served as the peeling, ramshackle
canvases of the Barnstormers, the countryside as their art gallery.
“To me this is a treasure,” said Rogers,
surveying the structures around her.
“This is an extension of an art museum.”
the Barnstormers.
Neighbors volunteered their barns;
businesses offered paint, scaffolding,
lights and generators. Residents opened
their homes to artists who needed a place
to stay. Rogers, a lifelong friend of Ellis’
family and the self-described “den
mother” of the Barnstormers, coordinated volunteers and fussed over the
young artists, packing them lunch coolers with ice, water and fruit.
“The first year, we went a little crazy,”
she said. “I was very excited.”
Artists storm the barns
They came into town like a storm, said
Judy Loving, and they brought the
weather with them.
Their plan was to paint 50 barns, but
it rained all day for several days. Frustrated by the pace and eager to paint as
much as possible, the Barnstormers
painted by night. Cameron residents
rigged up lights and generators, brought
out their tractors and trained the beams
on the barns.
The artists took inspiration from the
funniest places, Rogers said.
Some went to the supermarket and
saw a butchered pig, splayed out and divided into various cuts of pork. A few
days later, Rogers saw the barn mural,
which featured a diagram of a pig with
labels: sirloin, boston butt, pig feet, etc.
In general, Cameron residents were
supportive and judgment-free when it
came to the Barnstormers’ art. But there
were a few dashed expectations, a few
phone calls and disgruntled letters to the
editor, Rogers said.
“Some people thought that they were
just going to be pretty pictures,” Rogers
said.
A local nursery commissioned the Barnstormers to paint some of its tractortrailers.
“The people at the nursery wanted
them to paint plants,” she said. “And
well, that didn’t happen.”
Instead, the nursery got a mural featuring a graffiti-skewed version of the Teletubbies, their heads spelling out the letters
“ESPO,” courtesy of Stephen Powers.
But the week spent in Cameron was not
a lark for the Barnstormers, or an opportunity to make flippant art. Artist
Martin Mazorra, for one, felt a sense of
profound responsibility to the people of
Cameron.
“If you make something in your studio
that flops, you don’t have to go show it
to anyone,” Mazorra said. “Here, you’re
going to leave these people with some-
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2003
thing they’re going to have to live with.”
Cross-cultural exchange
The Barnstormers might have left their
mark on Cameron, but the town transformed them as well. Most were strangers
to rural life, many of them vegetarians yet
to enjoy a good old-fashioned pig pickin’,
some of them a little, well, out of their element.
Tommy Loving enjoys telling the story
about a couple of Barnstormers, painting
at night, alone. They hear a rooster.
“They thought it was some sort of wild
beast!” Loving guffawed. “They got down
off their ladder and hustled into their vehicles until somebody could come and
get them.”
The Barnstormers appreciated the departure from their New York norms. Not
only could they paint outside in the fresh
air, they could paint large and paint for
everyone to see. Which sometimes made
it difficult to get much work done.
“Truckers were blowing their horns,
people were stopping and sharing their
stock car stories,” said Mazorra, who
painted a barn mural that was a tribute
to Richard Petty. “People would just
pull up: ‘Yeah, I remember this race
down in Rockingham back in ’72 …’ It
was a much slower pace. People had
more time to talk.”
One day, volunteers put on a big pigpickin’ at the crossroads, and everyone
showed up, almost stopping traffic along
Red Hill Road.
Artists, children, farmers — even some
migrant farm workers passing through
stopped to eat, chatting with the Spanishspeaking Barnstormers.
“It was amazing,” said Judy Loving.
Mazorra and other Barnstormers
learned the history of Cameron from people like Earl Harbour, who owns several
of the barns. He would tell the artists
the stories of his family farm, when each
barn was built, how tobacco was put up.
“You really start to appreciate the history of the place and the sense of community they developed there,” said Mazorra, who didn’t experience much
culture shock, having grown up in rural
West Virginia.
“And we developed a sense of community, too. If anything, Cameron instilled that in us, and we took it home
with us.”
Rogers asked all the Barnstormers to
write down an interpretation of their
work, or a response to their experiences
SEE BARNSTORMERS, PAGE 5D
The Barnstormers painted tobacco barns, tenant shacks, farm equipment and 18-wheeler tractor
trailers, paying tribute to the aging architecture of Cameron, and making their own mark upon it.
The old barns that once dried tobacco now served as the peeling, ramshackle canvases
of the Barnstormers, the countryside as their art gallery.
Soul of an artist
Ellis says he always felt the need to
express things in a way that was bigger
than on paper. And so it was that the
morning his neighbor let him paint a
barn, and the school bus arrived, and
everyone looked and saw what he had
painted, Ellis knew exactly what he
wanted to do with his life.
“The change to the physical landscape
— it was almost theater,” he said, speaking from his studio in New York.
Ellis came back to Cameron with a
friend to see that same barn.
“It was such a good experience being
there that we decided to go down again,
on a large scale,” he said. “Some people
I knew very well, and some I just asked
and they surprisingly jumped in a van
and went down with us.”
The way most people tell it, Ellis has
always been one of Cameron’s favorite
sons, even after he left for New York and
news of him came less frequently.
“And then out of the blue, he called
[my husband] and asked if he had any
barns he could paint,” said Judy Loving,
who taught home economics at Union
Pines.
“David felt like he got so much from this
community that he wanted to give something of himself back. And I thought that
was real good.”
In New York, the Barnstormers’ work
on private property might have been
called vandalism, greeted with a ticket
and a fine. But Cameron, affected by
the downturn in the tobacco economy,
had reinvented itself using antique
tourism, and people’s old barns were
shabby and obsolete anyway. All of this
made for a warm welcome for Ellis and
his collaborators. The town of Cameron
immediately got to work preparing for
A playful sumo wrestler dominates the side of an old barn at Red Hill and Nickens roads in Cameron. Above, an 18-wheeler buzzes by a barn painted
with graphic images by the Barnstormers, a group of New York artists who have brought art and creativity to this rural pocket of North Carolina.
Patients should know side effects of antidepressants
I
f you develop a rash within hours of
starting a new medicine, you don’t
need Sherlock Holmes to help you
make the connection. But some drug
side effects are harder to recognize.
Psychological reactions can be insidious, appearing slowly over weeks or
months. Distinguishing between the
normal ups and
downs of life and a
PEOPLE’S
drug-induced depression can be difficult.
PHARMACY
One reader shared
her experience: “I
was stopped at an
intersection on an icy
day waiting for a
sand truck to pass
when I almost pulled
in front of him —
Joe & Terry out
intentionally.
“When I saw the
Graedon
young man’s face, I
said to myself, ‘I
cannot do this to him.’ After the truck
passed and I drove on, I wondered
what in the world was going on. I was
not depressed.
“When I arrived home, I was still
shaken from what I had almost done. I
read the daily newspaper while I ate
lunch. The first article in your column
that day was from a lady whose husband had committed suicide while
taking Reglan.
“That was the medication my doctor
had prescribed for my stomach. I
jumped up and emptied that bottle
down the toilet and wrote on it in large
letters, DO NOT TAKE AGAIN. I
thank God and the lady who wrote you
that letter.”
Reglan (metoclopramide) carries a
warning that it can cause mental depression and suicidal thoughts. Patients should always be cautioned
about such a serious complication.
Sometimes a medicine is essential,
and any psychological reactions it
causes can be handled with another
medication.
But often, rather than piling one drug
with potential side effects on top of
another, it makes sense to re-evaluate
the original treatment.
That is how a nurse reacted to a question about a teenager who became depressed while taking birth control pills:
“The 16-year-old girl in the column
was smart not to want to use Paxil. It’s
sad that her doctor is trying to treat
that side effect with another drug instead of taking her off the pill.
“I was given Paxil a few years ago for
anxiety mixed with depression. Taking
it was an awful experience. I was more
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the horrible withdrawal.
“No one had warned me about this
problem. The doctor did mention I’d
have to taper off, but there wasn’t even
a hint how hard this is.
“I had night sweats, dizziness and
Q
Paxil and other antidepressants can
save lives, but doctors must monitor
the medicines’ effects.
FILE PHOTO
electrical shocklike sensations in my
extremities. I ended up taking
Klonopin to help with the withdrawal.”
Antidepressants save lives. Fighting
depression and preventing suicide are
crucial. But doctors and patients must
be in close communication about medicines.
When the cure causes more psychological distress than it relieves, it is
time to examine other options.
Our Guides to Psychological Side
Effects and Antidepressant Pros &
Cons describe drugs that can trigger
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nightmares, confusion or forgetfulness,
and discusses issues of withdrawal and
interactions.
For a copy, send $2 in check or
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I really appreciate the tips, updates
and news in your column. When I
read advice about halting hiccups, I’m
reminded about the only surefire way
I’ve ever found to stop hiccups — and I
learned it from “The Bullwinkle Show”
when I was a kid. Honest!
Bullwinkle’s advice? Take seven sips
of water while holding your breath.
This simple trick has always worked
for me — and everyone I’ve ever
shared it with — for more than 20
years. Make sure each of the seven sips
is completely swallowed.
Many hiccup remedies involve
sipping or swallowing. In one, the
hiccup victim must drink from the
wrong side of the cup. (It’s necessary
to bend over.)
In another, the sufferer drinks several
swallows of water while an accomplice
presses on both ear flaps (technically
called the tragi).
Hiccups are thought to happen when
a signal to the phrenic nerve goes
awry. Stimulating that nerve in the
roof of the mouth by swallowing a
spoonful of granulated sugar or sucking on a lemon wedge soaked with
Angostura bitters seems to interrupt
the hiccup cycle. That is probably
what Bullwinkle’s advice
accomplishes. Thanks for sharing it.
A
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Is it all right to crush my daily
vitamins and mix them into soup,
Q
yogurt, salad dressing or other foods?
envelope to: Graedons’ People’s Pharmacy, No. MX-23, P.O. Box 52027,
Durham, NC 27717-2027.
Also, when I am cooking for many
people, is it safe to put ground-up
vitamin supplements into the food
before serving?
Putting vitamins into food for
other people is a bad idea. If they
are taking supplements, you could
supply an overdose.
And some medicines interact badly
with certain nutrients. In addition, it
would be very difficult to distribute
ground-up vitamin pills evenly throughout your dish.
Crushing your own vitamins might
be acceptable. Some vitamins are destroyed by heat, though, so keep them
out of soups, casseroles and hot beverages. Sprinkling them on yogurt or
cold cereal might work.
Make sure none of the pills you crush
is time-released. If you are grinding
them because they are too large, buying a smaller size pill would be much
easier than using a mortar and pestle.
Another option would be a liquid vitamin formulation.
A
Write Joe and Teresa Graedon, King
Features Syndicate,
888 Seventh Ave., New York, N.Y.
10019 or send e-mail to them via their
Web site: www.peoplespharmacy.org.
King Features Syndicate
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THE NEWS & OBSERVER
SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2003
Neighbors volunteered their barns; businesses
offered paint, scaffolding, lights and generators.
Residents opened their homes to artists who needed
a place to stay. Rogers, the self-described ‘den
mother’ of the Barnstormers, coordinated volunteers
and fussed over the young artists, packing them
lunch coolers with ice, water and fruit.
BARNSTORMERS
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 4D
in Cameron. Mazorra wrote this:
it is soo! dark …
what was that noise …
this barn is old …
these shapes look
like a car … no well
o.k. an abstract car …
Lasting connections
The Barnstormers have returned twice
since ’99 to paint. Most have formed connections with the people of Cameron, connections that compel them to send Jane
Rogers and others personal letters and postcards of upcoming shows.
Rogers, ever the careful librarian, collects
these things in a file six inches thick, along
with newspaper clippings and volunteer lists.
She calls the Barnstormers her kids, and
then remembers out loud that they’re not.
“We have made an impact on them,”
Rogers said. “And they have sure made an
impact on us.”
Rogers, retired after 30 years as librarian
at Cameron Elementary School, now has a
graffiti tag name (“HE IS”). One local
woman, inspired by the Barnstormers, decided to go back to school to teach art. Not
a few Cameron residents think of themselves as Barnstormers, partners in the
artistic enterprise.
This summer, the Barnstormers are coming back to North Carolina for a group
show at Raleigh’s LUMP gallery. It starts
Friday.
Rogers is getting a small contingent of
Cameron residents together to travel to
Raleigh to see the installation, called “Hive
Mind SoundSystem.”
There’s a possibility a few Barnstormers
will visit Cameron and paint a few more
barns while they’re in the neighborhood.
But according to Ellis, this might be the
last year for Barnstormers. The artists think
their collective work is done.
It’s a prospect that saddens Rogers and
other Cameron residents, who have come
to expect the artists’ arrival and an infusion
Tools of the Barnstormers’ trade, paint cans by the dozens, sit idle
inside a barn stall on Red Hill Road in Cameron.
of creativity.
“I won’t say it’s over ‘til it’s over, that’s for
sure,” Rogers said.
At the crossroads in Cameron, nestled in
the overgrown grasses by the side of the
road, is a mailbox with no address, and an
almost unrecognizable name scrawled in
graffiti: Barnstormers. People stop and put
in a note whenever they have something to
say about the barns.
That day there is nothing in it except a
cobweb and an empty beer bottle, but
Rogers makes sure to check it every now and
then.
“David said he wanted to give something
back,” Rogers said. “So. He has. Oh, we
had such fun.”
Staff writer Caitlin Cleary can be reached
at 836-5799 or ccleary@newsobserver.com.
5D
Storming with
music and sound
T
he Barnstormers are a loose
and constantly evolving crew,
with members who rotate in
and out from project to project,
bringing their different skills to bear.
Besides storming Cameron’s barns,
they have made time-lapse videos,
done collaborative projects in museums from Puerto Rico to Montreal, and painted live on a stage
with DJs in Osaka.
“Barnstormers has always been
more about collaboration,” said lead
Barnstormer David Ellis. “Like a
band, almost. Weaving and layering our styles. Sometimes it’s more
about that than the final product.
It’s art as performance.”
The Barnstormers work off the
idea of improvisation, listening to
musicians like Duke Ellington for
inspiration. They figure out how to
pull 30 artists together and make
something work.
Along these same lines, they’re
creating a work in Raleigh called
“Hive Mind SoundSystem.” It involves a motif common to Ellis’
work: speakers, music and sound. A
LUMP gallery wall will be stacked
from floor to ceiling with tweeters
and woofers; huge speakers, and
some the size of your hand.
Artists will customize their speakers with paint, wood and found objects, and the speakers will butt up
against each other, play off each
other. The Barnstormers will choose
their favorite 20 tunes, to be played
randomly from all the speakers. Sort
of like a giant mix tape.
“The joys of the iPod,” Ellis said.
“We’re going to see what happens
when those sounds battle it out.”
On another gallery wall will be
Area shown
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The News & Observer
BARNSTORMERS’ ART
WHAT: “Hive Mind SoundSystem,” an installation by the Barnstormers.
WHEN: Friday-Aug. 24. Reception Friday,
7-11 p.m.
WHERE: LUMP Gallery, 505 S. Blount St.,
Raleigh.
Call 821-9999, www.lumpgallery.com.
silkscreen prints and collaborative
drawings (one sketchbook passed
from artist to artist, collaged by the
crew’s printmakers).
But every great band eventually
disbands. So it goes with the Barnstormers, “so that it ends on a good
note,” Ellis said. “We all really love
and respect each other, but it is a lot
of work,” he said. “It’s almost unbelievable that we’ve had 30 artists going over each other’s work without
more misunderstandings going on.”
Staff writer Mary E. Miller
can be reached at 829-4818
or mmiller@newsobserver.com.
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Southern
Pines
Aberdeen
Thursday evening, just to play with Moody and
Donadelle at April & George, 414 Glenwood Ave.
The Thursdays when she’s not performing, Moody
and Donadelle will add other musicians who play
gospel and Latin. But catch them and The Lady
this week. And don’t forget the tip jar.
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STAFF PHOTO BY COREY LOWENSTEIN
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The Lady Byron, playing the piano, performs
Thursday at April & George in Raleigh.
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MILLER
5D, SUNDAY, JULY 27, 2003
CHATHAM
Robbins
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1D
Another story began.
“She’s amazing,” Donadelle gushed out of The
Lady’s earshot. “Playing with her is always a surprise; you don’t know where she’s going to go, and
she can do any of these songs. You look for cats
who can play like that, and she can because she
was there when it was all being written.”
Not that crowds are exactly beating down the
door.
Word’s gotten out that The Lady’s been playing,
and some local jazz musicians have showed up to
pay respects. Chris Keller, who met the Lady while
she was living in D.C. and Baltimore, dropped by
and wound up crooning “Satin Doll.” Later the
same evening, saxophonist Pee Wee Moore of
Durham shuffled up from his gig at Sullivan’s Steak
House to say hello, causing someone at the bar to
ask, “Is that Bo Diddley?” Moore, who played and
recorded with Dizzie Gillespie and James Moody,
might be one of the biggest jazz musicians to call
this place home. The Lady took him to the couch
for a tête-à-tête that sang of old friendships and
good memories.
“People don’t even know what they’re hearing,
what we’ve got here,” April Emanuelson Barnett,
one of the bar’s owners, said on a recent night.
She’s right. The two times I’ve been there, the
crowd was young, white, hip and they seemed to
find the music good background to their conversations. Customers streaming into Sullivan’s
(including the ones climbing out of their Bentleys
and Ferraris) stopped and stared in the doorway
for a least a few bars. But few people made requests and almost no one left money in the tip jar.
And maybe that’s why The Lady decided not to
move to Raleigh permanently. She’s booked in
D.C., and will join her regular Lady Byron Trio in
Europe for a month at the end of August.
But how’s this for friendship? For awhile at least,
The Lady’s promised to drive down every other
RALEIGH
Asheboro
C M Y K