MAYBE MAMA WAS RIGHT

I’ve found myself driving the same roads my folks who adopted me took on vacations. I’m still as captivated by the terrain of this nation as I was back in the 1990’s. The red clay of Oklahoma still glows off the light from the sky. I still feel like a cowboy riding through the front range of Colorado. I can smell the pines of the North Woods that early native folks and trappers smelled. The dust of Texas roads still gathers in my throat, like that of a Texas Ranger tracking an outlaw. My fascination with history has always transitioned well into travel. A few hundred history books can only tell you so much. Not until you can smell, taste, and feel a place, can you begin to understand the events of the location. 

I had two very opposite voices in my life growing up. One said, “You’re not smart enough to go to college. Don’t bother trying. All you’ll ever be is a factory worker.” The other asked every day, “What do you want to be? You know you can do anything, right?” The second voice still echoes in my head, thankfully. My childhood was pretty complicated, but I came out on top. I listened to the right voice. 

Dad not only told me I could do anything, but that I could go anywhere. He showed me how big the world could be and how small I could be. From Yellowstone to The Alamo, and The Grand Canyon to Washington D.C., we traveled over the summers. I would sit in the back seat and draw or follow our progress in the Rand McNally atlas. Each green interstate sign told the name and distance to the next new city to me. 

I fell in love in Bend, Oregon. In that 11-year-old kind of way. We met at the pool of a Best Western. It was fancy, it was half indoors and half outdoors. If I recall, king of the mountain on an inter tube and diving rings were our first, and only, date. We had made plans to meet in the morning for another swim. She never showed up. After we drove away from that Best Western, I think it took me the better part of a month to mend my little heart. 

Dad grew up near a small town, he played college football in a small town, and he educated thousands of kids over the years, all from small towns. Dad also made damn sure that I knew the world was larger than my own county. His voice encouraged me to live big and get uncomfortable. 

If I’d listened to the first voice, the one that told me dreams were foolish, I wouldn’t be driving across the country. I would never have gone to college, or graduate school. There are a million “what ifs” that aren’t worth the time of day because another voice called me to the interstate. The roads I now find myself on have a familiarity about them. Sometimes I’ll pass a rest area or gas station that I feel like I recognize. While driving through New Mexico, I told my dad that I owed him. Decades ago, he chauffeured me around this country and now it was his turn to sit back and enjoy the view. 

-Mississippi Jake

“and I’m not worth a damn.”

Maybe Mama Was Right- Mississippi Jake

I COME FROM THE GENERATION OF COLUMBINE

“and how would you expect, that I could be fine.”

All is Well - Mississippi Jake

In second grade, I won a Young Authors award. It was about the tooth fairy and it got very dark, very quick. The tooth fairy was also a murderer. Anyhow, I won the award because of how vividly I had described the setting. Certainly not because of the story line. That moment engrained itself in my head. If an author, songwriter, poet, whatever medium, can transport me to a different place, I’m hooked. I often think of people in their settings, and of the influence of my settings upon stories. 

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I grew up in the Ozarks. Seven miles outside a town of 2,500 people. I lived in rural America, but outside of my quiet existence, the world seemed to fall apart. In ‘95 I watched rescue workers in Oklahoma City search for survivors after Timothy McVeigh exploded a truck in front of a Federal Building. Broadcast of the 96’ Summer Olympics in Atlanta spoke more about pipe bombs than gold medals. Only a few hours away from my home, in 1998, an eleven and thirteen year old boy pulled the fire alarms at their school. They waited with weapons outside their Arkansas school, while their classmates evacuated the building. Mostly, I will always remember hearing about a shooting in a place called Littleton.

I can vividly see the ditches out the truck window. I passed them every day of my life, but I remember what they looked like that day. The voices on the radio were still trying to make sense of the shooting at Columbine High School while spring flowers flew past my view. Young rabbits ran near the creek in Barry County while young people in Colorado ran toward lines of SWAT. 

Denver was a place far far away from me. The kind of places that only really exist when you’re out on vacation. Typically, my adolescent brain would have filed the story under “Not Applicable” because of the geographic distance. This time was different. I was approaching high school the next year. It seemed daunting all of a sudden and a little suburb near Denver didn’t seem that far away.  

On a recent trip west I passed Columbine High. It was strange seeing the physical building in person instead of through a CNN camera lens. Each generation has experienced their earth shaking events. Grandma had once told me her emotions as the radio squawked details of Pearl Harbor in ‘41. Most of us alive in the United States have a vivid recollection of 9/11. These events are our setting just as much as the streets we drive each day. 

The setting of a story is important. How we deal with the setting is even more important. Sometimes there is turmoil, and sometimes sheer beauty. It’s always shifting. There’s plenty of pain that’s going to happen in the world, that’s just part of it. All we can do is take real good care of the folks around us. 

- Jake Bradley Turner

WHEN THIS BODY FAILS ME, SPREAD MY ASHES ACROSS THE INTERSTATES OF AMERICA

THAT’S THE ONLY PLACE, I’VE EVER FELT AT HOME.

CONFLUENCE- MISSISSIPPI JAKE

I’m often asked, “Where’s your favorite place to play shows?” I don’t pick favorites. I enjoy all variety of scenery. That’s also a conscious decision on my part. I would lose my mind if I didn’t find some sort of joy in the change in tumbleweed species as you travel west. I’ll admit that nothing feels quite like dropping in to Duluth after autumn has crawled across the hills. 150 year old brick buildings punctuate the transition between rural Minnesota and Lake Superior. It’s also the headwaters of Interstate 35. There’s something intriguing about seeing the end or beginning of a highway I spend a lot of time on.  I look forward to seeing another sunset in New Mexico. The glow of the evening sun on the red mountains can’t be captured in photos. I’ve tried. I assume driving through the panhandle of Texas is similar to being at sea under a full moon. Only the lunar light and horizon lines further away than imaginable. 

Badlands

South Dakota

My favorite thing about travel is always the people. I have a community of folks all across the middle west. Ben Boggs is a standup fella I met this spring. After the show in Lexington we went out to a few University of Kentucky bars, met a few musicians based in Nashville. We swapped road stories over some beers and later that night I pulled the hinge pins out of the bathroom door. He never warned me that the handle was broken. In Tulsa, I danced around the basement of Barkingham Palace with some of my favorite humans. $8 champagne and punk rock sing-a-longs are what my soul needs every few months. After some disagreeable street tacos in Albuquerque, I had some Iowa transplants in New Mexico, let me take a shower and sleep in a bed. They sent me with a care package that included bananas, Oreos, and the biggest bag of beef jerky a human could ask for. Luke Hendrickson of Rochester, Minnesota, took me in, showed me the town. Then he put me in the most terrifying Uber ride of my life and we engaged in the most cathartic bitch session about the music industry. 

I’ve come to greatly appreciate my relationships with creative friends. Y’all really help keep me going. I love watching artists friends share their success on social media throughout the week. I enjoy getting demos recorded on phones, just to capture an idea. Keep sharing those creative photos. Tell those stories. Write those songs. 

I’ve compiled a Spotify playlist of folks I’ve had the honor of sharing a stage with. They’ve got compelling stories to tell you, and adventures to take you on. Enjoy.

A playlist featuring The Zach Pietrini Band, Zach Pietrini, Chucky Waggs, and others

I read a bunch of books about Frank and Jesse James

Their life on the run, and I figured I’d do the same.

I spent a few years in graduate school studying guerrilla warfare. I’m fairly certain that my Amazon used book purchases got me on several government watch lists. I assume you can only buy so many books on the Irish Republican Army, Che, Jesse James, and Ho Chi Minh before someone takes notice. Sorry, Suits. Nothing interesting here, just an aspiring historian and musician. 

My advisor always said folks study people in history that better help them understand themselves. That’s a little unnerving when your subjects of study frequently murdered at will and destroyed for pleasure. I focused directly on guerrilla warfare for my own research projects. Growing up in the Ozarks probably caused a predisposition to the topic. There were two major points about guerrilla warfare that always intrigued me.

1. To wage a successful guerrilla war, all you have to do is keep fighting.

2. A guerrilla can keep fighting as long as they have a friendly population.

Somewhere along the front range of Colorado it started to click. Like Frank and Jesse James, I would ride into town, make as much noise as possible, and then disappear into the surroundings. Like Mosby’s Rangers in Virginia, I’ve made friends along road who willingly provide safety and shelter. Words can’t express how it feels to have a home away from home in most states that I travel. A shower, a meal, and a couch can give a person a whole new outlook on life. It makes those lonely drives a lot less lonely when I know I’ve got friends at the end of the line.

I enjoyed the extremes of graduate school, but it was taxing damn work. The late nights and ridiculous reading lists didn’t bother me. What I couldn’t stand was the aversion to creativity in the work. When I attempted to describe the countryside and surroundings of my research, I was told those weren’t important details. When it came time to hit “submit” on my PhD program application, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to. I wanted to do things folks would call me a fool for attempting. I wanted to go see what I could do on my own and I wanted to be challenged to my core. (Sometimes when the money or the sleep just ain’t there, I remind myself that I WANTED this.)  

I started writing for Mississippi Jake during my college days. After recording the first Bootleggers album, I dropped a copy off with my advisor. The next day he walked into our meeting and said something along the lines of “We are going to have to keep our eyes on this one or academia is going to lose him to folk music.”

You weren’t wrong, Larry. 

-Mississippi Jake

I left that town like I was methamphetamine

‘cause my bones had grown restless ‘fore I was 17.

Music was hard to come by where I grew up. We had top 40 country and pop, or southern gospel tunes. Being in the buckle of the bible belt in the Ozarks, I was surrounded by a lot of gospel quartets and family singing groups. Those harmonies have few parallels, but my freshman year of high school changed everything. Speech and debate, punk rock, and the divorce of my parents. 

Speech and debate became this weird family of folks that transcended schools. The folks that I met have played a far larger role in molding me than they’ll ever know. I’ve had the privilege of watching a few of them do incredible things with their lives. Truth be told, many of them are my heroes. Several of them also introduced me to the most amazing music that’s ever been captured. My friend Crystal would bring mix cds for me. Jammed with as many songs as she could fit on a CDR. She meticulously labeled the cds with song titles and artist names so that I could dive further in to whatever struck my fancy. 

If I recall correctly, lunch in my high school cost $1.50 a day. I’d get a $10 bill from dad each week. Little did dad know, I was feeding a deeper hunger. There was a guy in school who was big into downloading music. Anything you wanted. I’d take the names of the bands that I loved from those mixed cds and figure out the names of their albums. For three dollars he would burn any cd for you. Each week I would come to him with a list of three albums I wanted, and I gave him my lunch money.

98 Mute - Slow Motion Riot

Rancid - Let’s Go

Bouncing Souls - Hopeless Romantic

H20 - FTTW

Flogging Molly - Swagger 

And every Punk-O-Rama and Rock Against Bush that were ever created.

My parents, who had adopted me, split up at the end of my freshman year of high school. I’m a rare case that my life drastically improved after they split. Dad and I were able to finally live life. I hadn’t been allowed to pursue music until that point, but dad could finally invest in that curiosity of mine. 

He and grandma spent the next few years helping me get the basics that I needed to learn guitar. I stopped giving my lunch money for burnt cds and started mowing lawns to save up for gear. Punk rock helped me understand a lot about myself. Over the years I’ve tried to figure out what it was that drew me in. What it was I had been looking for. How it was exactly what I needed.

The music that my friends showed in those hallways of any given SW Missouri high school at a debate tournament actually rocked my world. They got me through hell and back and prepared to do it again, if need be. Those songs were the soundtrack for drunken nights in Joplin in my early 20’s. They helped carry me through intense graduate school courses. Somehow they’ve all found their way into my own music. To all of those who have shared life and their music with me, thank you. At the end of the day, I am but an amalgamation of influences and experiences. 

I was raised on sweet tea and black coffee

I had more love than an orphan could hope for.

In wintertime, you could see the water in the creek from my grandparents’ porch. When spring exploded, all signs of creek and riverbank disappeared under new green growth. Each year, the sycamore trees reminded you of how grand they were. It was easy to forget how massive they were during the cold months. Bare limbs sort of blended into the winter sky. After each new burst of spring, you were reminded of just how close the sycamore trees were to touching the sky. 

Grandma and Grandpa got their water from a spring just a couple dozen yards from the house. The springhouse was prime real estate for live bait: crawdads, minnows, hellgrammites. Each prize in the Ozarks comes with its own cost, however. In order to get to the cornucopia live bait, one must traverse the springhouse steps. At story hour, when the librarian read about medieval, dark, and gloomy dungeon steps, my brain visualized the springhouse steps. A massive walnut tree loomed over the spring house. Not only did it make the narrow and steep stairway darker, it added the potential bonus of a twisted ankle in the late summer when walnuts feel like mana. 

I don't ever remember not seeing a snake somewhere near the spring house. There were snakes in all of those old buildings on my grandparents’ property. I once saw a black snake fall off of a cellar door onto my grandpa’s shoulders. One day, innocent Little Jake was throwing rocks into the creek. Until all of a sudden, the rock Jake was about to pick up started to rattle. I don't like snakes. If you have a snake as a pet, I’m excited for your joy. Please don't show me your snake because “[your] snake is so cute it will change [my] mind on snakes.” It isn't. It won’t. I don't fucking like snakes.

My five-year-old inherited my love of water and adventure. This brings me great delight. I think about my Tom Sawyer-esque adventures on Flat Creek in Barry County, Missouri. I learned a lot about how the world worked on those adventures, and I cherish them. And then I think about how frequently water moccasins were characters in those adventures. The thought of my baby boy anywhere near any sort of snake gives me the most intense anxiety. But I don't want to teach him that fear.

My dad talked a lot about respect when I was growing up. I remember being out on the lake before school with Dad. Steam came up off Table Rock Lake, and you felt like nobody had yet claimed the lake as their own that day. 

“You have to respect it,” he would say.

I remember him saying that about bodies of water, firearms, and electricity specifically. He didn’t want to foster a fear of these things, but wanted me to have a healthy understanding of their power. That always stuck with me. Last summer, I explained to my five-year-old how to safely, cautiously, and enjoyably, walk an Ozarks creek bed, as best I could. There’s a fine line between fear and respect. So I’m pushing myself to better understand my surroundings while not letting the unknown keep me back.  

-Little Jake

P.S. Sometimes I listened, Dad.

All's well that ends well

At least that’s what they say.

Each part of the midwest has its own fickle weather, prone to change swiftly, and often passionate in its delivery. I can recall recognizing that first really warm day of spring. A young boy in the Ozarks lives for sun-drenched days on countless adventures over the farm. On one particular day such as this, I stood at the top of our small pasture looking down at the farm and outbuildings. 

The sun had begun to slink behind the hills, and the evening chill was knocking at the door. I ran full tilt down the incline toward grandma’s house and probably freshly baked bread. My thrift store outfit and worn out shoes carried the last of my energy for the day. No care in the world. Until I hit the electric fence. It caught me right at the waist. It happened so quickly, but I remember the minor jolts of electricity as my body sporadically completed the circuit to the ground during my tumble. In a split second my impact had exhausted the slack in the wire. It slingshotted me to the ground directly on my back. The joy of the day, as well as the air in my lungs, evacuated. 

In my youth I didn’t think about the future too often. After graduating high school I had no real plans. I decided the week before classes started to attend institute of higher learning. I enrolled in a community college about an hour away from home. Tuition was cheap, and it wasn’t my hometown. Occasionally I attended classes, but mostly I played music and hung out with friends. Without direction, it was difficult to see reason to apply myself. I refer to this as my “first fifteen minutes of college.” 

My best friend had jumped into the big time: state school. While his tuition would seem to indicate otherwise, his college experience was just as lackadaisical as mine. We both stopped attending our schools, met up in Joplin, and found our new residence on the living room floor of a two-bedroom apartment. The couch was already spoken for by a fellow drifter. The landlords became aware that there were twice the amount of tenants as the lease allowed for. Us stowaways had to go. We drove around Joplin the evening we found out we were to be homeless, trying to figure out what to do with ourselves. 

Call it the pride of youth or blame the stars (apparently I’m a stubborn Taurus), but going back home to our parents wasn’t an option. We didn’t rightly know what alternative options were, but we weren’t going home. We spent a few cold and boring months sleeping in a ‘93 Chevy Lumina in a Wal-Mart parking lot. We couldn’t lean the seats back because that’s where my guitar gear and his bass rig were nestled.

Sometimes life will knock the wind out of you. There’s nothing wrong with laying there, watching the clouds, and collecting your wits. Sometimes the only plan you’ve got is getting through the day. 

-Mississippi Jake

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I haven't been moved in a while

“but I can feel my heart in my chest”

Middle West Cities

A few weeks prior to one of my pre-teen birthdays, I learned a lesson that I’ve never forgotten. I elaborately and enthusiastically told a friend about my extraordinary birthday plans. Myself, and a friend of my choosing, got tickets for a day at Silver Dollar City. Have y’all heard of Branson, Missouri? Silver Dollar City is their “Wild West” theme park. It’s kind of rad. 

This friend was not going to have nearly as rad of a birthday as I. His was also on the same day. This was NOT the friend I had intended to take. My dad has always had a way of asking about three questions and then somehow you magically understand the right thing to do. No praise, please. I’m certain he wasn’t really ASKING me to make the right choice.I invited the friend whom I had so obnoxiously gloated about Silver Dollar City to. We had a blast, but mostly I never expected that lesson to be so rigidly ingrained in my memory.

I recently turned thirty-three, and I can confirm that it is indeed a strange time to have a birthday. I had been pretty convinced that 32 was going to be my most memorable birthday of my thirties. Oh, young and naive, thirty-two year old Jake, you had no idea. 

Thirty-two was going to be a standout birthday because of how I rang it in. It was the second year in a row of being out of state for my birthday. Thirty-one was Chicago. Thirty-two was South Dakota. I sat in a Wal-Mart parking lot in the minivan, which was also conveniently my lodging for the evening, about to eat my first meal of my thirty-second year: A lunchable, Nutty Bars, and cheese crackers. 

There are many things about being a folk singer that make you question your life choices. The sheer amount of fast food alone should call one's sanity into question. Bad nutritional habits don’t skim the surface of questionable life choices, but this was the one I was facing at thirty-two. It was honestly with joy that I peeled back the top of that Lunchable. I knew I should be thinking,”why is this a meal that a thirty-two year old human is okay with eating?”

I thought a lot about the last year of my music career in that parking lot. I had played in new states and shared stages with new folks. Bigger tours and shows were in the talks. Creatively, I finally felt like I understood my process a bit. The less sexy side of music is the rest areas, McDoubles, and hours of lost sleep from the racking guilt that comes from not working every second of the day.  

With every passing year, I get a little more reflective on who I am and have been. I think in the last year I’ve learned more about how to enjoy life, regardless of what storms or gas station meals come along.

When all the doubts, can't shut their mouths

And the road never seems to end."

Photo: Jim Coppoc

*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*SNAP*

That was the sound my little neurotic fingers made every night I had to walk down our hallway to the bathroom as a kid. I had managed to purchase The Headless Horseman at the book sale without my dad noticing. I was a freaked out little guy. Everything gave me nightmares. My parents carefully censored what media I consumed because of this. I was a child obsessed with military history, and I knew it was a story about a Revolutionary War soldier. Insert shrug emoji. 

The dark hallway that was between my bathroom and bedroom felt like roughly one hundred miles. Now, a seven year old doesn’t really have a concept of what one hundred miles is, so translate to: an eternity of walking. In my minimum understanding of the cosmos, I KNEW that snapping my fingers would keep all the scary stuff away. All I had to do was constantly snap as I walked down the hall. Enter stage-right, my OCD. I also had to snap the same rhythm on each hand and an equal amount of times. I wasn’t sure of the consequences if I didn’t, but I sure as heck wasn’t about to find out. 

I also spent a lot of time during my childhood being worried I was going to go to Hell. I debated what “counted.” If right before you died, if you saw it coming, and you said “Jesus, forgive me,” do you get to go to heaven? I had heard of lot of different theories on what was required. Then I would spend my time worried that everything was just seconds from being my destruction. The Final Destination franchise has nothing on my young paranoid mind. Sitting in uncomfortable ancient Ozark church pews, I often enjoyed the stories, but the philosophy behind them didn’t often line up for me. As confused as I may have been, the hellfire that those Pentecostal preachers spewed from their mouths ensured there was no way I was going to gamble. A seven year old, with a worried mind, intent on not being on the losing end of Pascal’s Wager. 

There have been a lot of fears pass my mind over the years. Somewhere along the way I stopped worrying about them. There are things in this life that I can change and others that I can’t. What are you going to do about it? Worrying about things I have no power over only pulls energy away from working toward the things I can change. 

I used to worry about what people thought about the music I created. It’s hard not to when you feel like it’s a part of you. People ain’t always going to like the music I make, and I decided to stop losing sleep over that a while back. I’ll write the best chord progressions and melodies that I can. I’ll try to be as honest as possible with the words that I write and telling you the story, as I see it. Hopefully, it won’t be too existential, too often.