Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2023 i Garden & Gun

EDITOR’S LETTER Follow me on Instagram and Twitter @davedibenedetto I’ve known G&G’s music columnist, Matt Hendrickson, since 1995. Back then he was part of the team launching something called a website for Rolling Stone, a concept then well ahead of its time. Not long after that, he became a staff writer for the iconic music magazine, where he covered everyone from David Bowie to Phish. And while his credentials were impressive, the perks of his friendship were even better, e.g., tickets to just about any show you wanted to catch. But most important, he always kept us plugged in to what we should be listening to. Not surprisingly, when I landed at G&G in 2008, Hendrickson was one of my first calls. Ever since, he’s been bringing his ear and…

Formula One racing has long been hugely popular in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. In the past few years, though, the U.S. fan base has swelled by millions, largely lured to the glitzy, globe-trotting sport by Netflix’s hit behind-the-scenes series Formula 1: Drive to Survive. The only thing that’s been missing for these new American converts is an American driver to cheer. Until the current season, that is, when Williams Racing chose Logan Sargeant to occupy one of F1’s twenty seats, thereby granting him admission into one of the most exclusive groups of professional athletes on the planet. Raised in Florida, the twenty-two-year-old has been racing since he was six, and relocated to Europe before his teens to advance his ambitions. But even while careening around tracks…

When herpetologist Mark Mandica’s thirteen-year-old son peered into an enclosure of frosted flatwoods salamanders in late December 2021 and said, “Dad, there’s eggs in there,” Mandica didn’t believe him. But on closer examination, Mandica spotted the jellylike orbs, attached to blades of grass. “We were overjoyed,” Mandica recalls. “We stood in the dark, hugging, because we’d been working toward this for a decade.” Back then, the little-known, little-studied amphibian—once abundant in longleaf pine ecosystems—was nose-diving to extinction. And Mandica, a researcher who pivoted to conservation work in response to global amphibian declines, was all too familiar with species loss: While working as the amphibian conservation coordinator at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, he cared for the last known male Rabbs’ fringe-limbed tree frog of Panama. In 2016, the lonely frog—dubbed Toughie—died.…

William Nealy (1953–2001) wasn’t everyone’s idea of a role model. He was a river hippie, high school dropout, long-haired rock-and-roll drummer, subculture cartoonist, and impenitent devotee of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, and narcotics. He lived on the edge of everything. To Daniel Wallace, however, he was flat-out magical. One of Wallace’s earliest glimpses, appropriately, was of Nealy in flight: leaping twenty-five feet into a swimming pool from the roof of Wallace’s Birmingham, Alabama, home. Watching the teenage Nealy surface in the sloshing pool and recline his head to let the water pull back his corn-yellow hair, Wallace—twelve at the time—found himself instantly spellbound. “It was just the wildness, the derring-do, his willingness to take flight—literally—into the unknown, an openness to experience and chance that so far in my short life had…

In 1990, William Hinkebein, then a young salesman for a Louisville cocktail ingredient company, visited a friend’s newly purchased Kentucky farm. The men rummaged through the barns on the property, and in one of them, Hinkebein found a tackle box. He opened it up. “It was like a wave hit me,” he says. Within were some hand-painted lures and reels, all from the 1930s and ’40s. “It reminded me of fishing with my grandfather. I could smell the cigar smoke.” The discovery sparked an obsession. As he traveled the South on sales calls, Hinkebein began visiting antique stores and attending estate sales, searching for vintage tackle. On one such trip, he came upon what would become his abiding passion: a Kentucky reel. The Kentucky reel, made from roughly 1810 to…

His name was Zephyr back then. He was about a year old and close to seventy pounds, with a brown, black, and brindle coat that told the story of a wild and varied genetic background (most likely the offspring of at least one Australian shepherd). The woman at the foster home said he came from a shelter in Missouri after living on the street. He was a tender loving fool, and my two kids and I were smitten immediately. We went home to await the judgment of the foster group. It had been many years since I’d had a dog in my house. I’d done the math a hundred different ways, but as a touring musician, I couldn’t quite get to a solution that didn’t rely on the kindness of…

The South’s Hottest Guitar Special Music Issue FEATURING:Jason Isbell, Cedric Burnside, Molly T uttle, John Osborne, Larkin Poe, Christone “Kingfish " Ingram, and More In January 2019, Jason Isbell got a call from Christie Carter, the owner of Carter Vintage Guitars, Nashville’s premier way station for collectible instruments. The shop had just gotten some new arrivals, and Carter wondered if Isbell might want to take a look. He went in the next day. He first played a 1973 Fender Stratocaster that Ed King—one-third of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s three-pronged guitar attack—used to write the lick on “Sweet Home Alabama.” Then he picked up a 1959 Gibson Les Paul that King had nicknamed Red Eye, a guitar with such notoriety that it was once stolen from him at gunpoint (then returned to him…

Nearly 170,000 guests will fill Louisville’s Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May for the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby. Yes, it is America’s oldest continuously held major sporting event, and a bucket-list experience for many. But before and after the stands brim with outrageous fascinators and fedoras, you’re likely to spot hard hats as the facility undergoes an estimated $320 million upgrade through next year. The project is adding upscale seating and hospitality areas, including the Homestretch Club, which debuted last year, and covered grandstands at the first turn. The paddock—where grooms saddle horses before each race—will feature a green space for more spectators and a perfectly framed view of Churchill Downs’ iconic twin spires. Beyond the track, Kentucky’s largest city is experiencing a similar rebirth, with…

“People’s experiences can show on their faces. Especially musicians”—Joe Ciardiello, who illustrated music legends for “The South’s Hottest Guitar Heroes” (p. 109) Joe Ciardiello ILLUSTRATOR When Joe Ciardiello looks at someone, he’s seeing more than his or her features. “People’s experiences can show on their faces,” says the New Jersey–based illustrator, who has spent his career creating portraits from those observations for the likes of the New Yorker, the New York Times, and Rolling Stone. “Especially musicians: When they’re performing, they have so many expressions.” Ciardiello—who has himself played the drums in blues, roots, rock, and jazz bands since he was a teenager—illustrated a few of his own role models for “The South’s Hottest Guitar Heroes” (p. 109). Among his favorite guitarists: Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks. “I loved getting…

Surrounded by ink-soaked sponges spilling from a tower of tin pails, scraps of paper smudged with color tests, and scribbled notes tacked to the walls, John Costin runs his thumb over a thin sheet of copper. Measuring thirty-one and a half by forty-six inches, the sheet serves as the key plate for Verdant Landscape, an etching of sandhill cranes he’s worked on for more than six months here in his Tampa studio, formerly an early-1900s dry goods store. “This is a plate that I generally do first, and it has all the detail on it,” Costin explains. “I’ve etched these plates I don’t know how many times, and I still haven’t finished. I dream about this bird.” Costin, who is sixty-six, became “fascinated with birds” as a teenager when he…

Taking the kids to Florida, whose waters lead the world in shark bites. Should we worry? In the hope of cutting back the raging hysteria about sharks at the onset of beach season, allow me to express a bit of shark love. Sharks are apex predators. As barometers of our waters’ health, they’re among the most elegant and vulnerable species in the ocean’s grand lattice. The question is: Why Florida? In ecology, it’s called encroachment, as in, the sharks preceded us on the South’s seaboard by some 450 million years. No shark can be made to care about Daytona’s racetrack, South Beach’s nightclubs, the super-trustworthy used beachmobile dealers, or the barely legal shell shops that bejewel Florida. Sharks do care about Miami’s Biscayne Bay, because that shallow, warm lagoon serves…

If I asked you to name an adult beverage made with orange juice, and if I were a betting man, I’d wager you’d say “screwdriver” or “mimosa.” (If you said “tequila sunrise,” I would also place a bet on how old you are and how you spent your twenties.) The mimosa in particular is everywhere, the doyenne of brunch. It’s a fun, innocuous drink that likes to swan about in the daytime, as if wearing a caftan. Otherwise, orange juice often gets relegated to a side role in cocktails. Some fine OJ concoctions have surfaced over time—the Bronx, the Income Tax Cocktail, the Ward Eight, the Monkey Gland—yet none have found a lasting perch in the popular imagination. It’s all but impossible to think of modern cocktail culture without lemon…

Spring in the South may be the best time of year to gather on the porch, with long afternoons and cool evenings begging for cocktail hours, casual suppers, and chats with friends that last long after the crickets start their song. New looks from makers in the region and beyond will help you refresh your outdoor space and offer a warm welcome to guests. BAR CART Press the weatherproof aluminum Luxembourg trolley from Fermob into service at the entrance to the porch for easy access to a batch of margaritas or ranch water ($1,392; fermobusa.com). TUMBLERS The artisanal look of these tumblers from Fortessa in Virginia disguises the fact that they’re shatterproof—perfect for the outdoors ($45 for a set of six; food52.com). LANTERNS Allsop’s ten-inch nylon lanterns run on rechargeable…

On Sunday nights in the nineties, locals from northern Mississippi’s hills and hollers, and sometimes a handful of adventurous tourists, gathered at Junior’s, an hour’s drive from Memphis in one of the South’s most unforgivingly rural landscapes. Inside, the revelers sipped moonshine from glass jars and danced as trancelike jams led by the now-legendary bluesmen Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside stretched into the early morning hours. ¶ Forty-four-year-old Cedric Burnside, a grandson of R. L.’s and now a Grammy-winning artist, grew up in this world. “By age ten, I was [playing] at the juke joint,” he says, “and I was about thirteen years old when I joined [R. L.’s] band full-time.” ¶ While he’s known today for his own interpretations of the Hill Country blues style his grandfather helped…

TEXAS TALK I had no idea Charley Crockett ever called Dallas home, but he will always be welcome here and we are proud of him (Music, October/November 2022). As for the observation that Dallas has done a poor job of promoting Deep Ellum as one of America’s most important music scenes, I agree and am committed to changing that. Of course, I would welcome Mr. Crockett’s help. Eric Johnson, mayor Dallas, Texas Bao Ong wrote eloquently and frankly about Houston (“Houston’s Wide Welcome,” February/March 2023). The weather and traffic are as described. He says he moved there for the food. I believe him. Gates Whiteley San Antonio, Texas S. C. Gwynne’s finding Texans to be friendly (“The Heart of Texas,” February/March 2023) mirrored my lifelong observation about North Carolinians. I…

One afternoon in the late nineties, about a year after Laura Vinroot Poole had opened Capitol, her trailblazing boutique in Charlotte, “the sunniest, most charming, and most radiant girl walked in and asked if I was hiring,” Vinroot Poole recalls. She was not, in fact. The shop was just getting off the ground and Vinroot Poole—owner, founder, and sole employee—could barely pay herself. But something about the woman, with her savvy fashion sense and effervescent British lilt, made her say yes. In turn, that staffer, Wiggy Hindmarch—a British national born in Singapore who had recently graduated from performing arts school, rebuffed a gig as a backup dancer for Prince, and moved to Charlotte from her family’s home in Newport, Rhode Island—soaked up everything Vinroot Poole had to impart. “She taught…

Anyone who has spent time cooking in California knows the Golden State offers an abundance of flavor. But there are some things it just can’t duplicate. Soft-shell crabs are one. Texas Pete, the hot sauce made in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is another. Chef Brandon Sharp, who in 2016 left his cooking career in California and moved back to his home state of North Carolina with his wife, Elizabeth, puts the two together in a restaurant-quality take on softies that is surprisingly easy to execute at home, if you don’t mind a little time with hot oil. Sharp, who grew up in Greensboro, started his career at a Mexican chain restaurant when he was in high school. He went on to attend both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill…

Feizal Valli pushes aside a thatch of plastic reeds and steps through a green curtain printed with ferns and banana plants. Black-and-gray hair cut in a modest pompadour, he wears black jeans and a black coat. From the Jungle Room at his new cocktail bar, set with backlit wildlife dioramas, he climbs wooden stairs bolted together like a high school shop class project. “We’re going backstage,” Valli says as he ducks to enter a low-ceilinged three-table hideaway that overlooks the backside of his bar, the House of Found Objects, which opened last November in a downtown Birmingham storefront. “We like to blur the line between patrons and employees. Here, we’re all actors in the play.” Below, clouds made of chicken wire and spray-foam insulation twirl on a ceiling mount above…

Honky-Tonk Warrior Luke McQueary 1 On a dreary January evening in Nashville, the line to get into Robert’s Western World stretches more than twenty people deep. Robert’s is the last vestige of true honky-tonk music on neon-soaked Lower Broadway, and onstage is Luke McQueary, who is absolutely shredding his solo on Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues.” The twenty-two-year-old guitarist and Kentucky native is a member of Kelley’s Heroes, a spin-off of the legendary Don Kelley Band, which ruled the Robert’s stage for more than twenty years and served as a vital incubator for rising musicians. Don Kelley himself retired in the early months of COVID, leaving McQueary, upright bassist Joe Fick, and drummer Billy Van Vleet to continue in his absence. McQueary’s father turned him on to Kelley, and by…