Back in June of last summer, I tapped out a letter to Black Crowes Drummer Steve Gorman about where the Crowes called home back when Atlanta was HQ, as part of the “Whats Wrong with Steve” feature on the official BC website. As a huge fan most of my life, I was surprised at how familiar I was with the areas he mentioned in his answer—-I’ve probably passed the house in Candler Park many times and have been a regular at Wax n’ Facts for years.
Read on for his amusing take on an Emory bar, the Pot Festival in Piedmont Park, and paying utilities with Chris Robinson.
June 2nd, 2010
Hey Steve,
I live in Atlanta, but didn’t move here till the beginning of this last decade. Even though it’s the Crowes’ former stomping grounds, I can find close to no remnants of you fellas here, save for a sticker of the old logo on a bathroom wall somewhere in Little 5 Points and a snapshot of a unenthusiastic Chris in the Silver Skillet on 14th street. Are there any landmarks of interesting Crowes history that I should be aware of? And please, if all possible, avoid playing at Chastain Park again. I got a bud who gets lost in the horse stables every time we go.
Alex in Atlanta
Alex
I am sure you’ve noticed that we’re playing the Tabernacle this time around. I can’t stand the thought of your friend suffering the indignity of another night spent lost in the stables, so I’ve taken action. You’re welcome.
As for remnants of us in our old stomping grounds, there are still a few to see if you know where to look.
Here are a few suggestions:
You can take the MARTA to Candler Park and see the house where Chris, Sven, our friend Clint, and I lived in 1987. When you get off the train, take the escalator down on the Candler Park side and walk in a straight line out of the parking lot. Cross the street and you’ll literally walk right into our old front door, at 292 Oakdale Road.
Mr. Crowes Garden (Chris, Rich, and some other dudes) and Mary My Hope (Sven, Clint, me, and another dude) both used the middle room of the house as a rehearsal space. I don’t think we mentioned to the landlord as we were moving in that we were planning to rehearse there, but you know how those things go. We packed about ten years of excitement into less than twelve actual months of living there.
Four people paid rent, $112.50 each per month, and about 10 other people crashed there on a regular basis.
Trust me that the house you see today bears little resemblance to the shit hole that we evacuated in the fall of ’87. Someone put a lot of time, money, and effort into turning that dump around, I assure you.
In those days, we hung out at the Dugout on Oxford Road in Emory Village. It was the best music club in town for a brief spell in the spring of ’87 but that era ended when the place got shut down for serving alcohol to minors. As the doorman of the establishment, I plead the 5th as to how that sort of thing might have happened. The Dugout is now, and has been for many years, a bookstore. If you go there, just picture me in the front doorway aggressively denying entry to each and every Emory frat boy that approached, while at the same time happily allowing any girl who looked at least 16 (fake ID complete with 1966 birthdate or not) to enter with a nonchalant wave of my hand.
You could swing by Wax n Facts in Little 5 Points, where I “worked” after the Dugout closed but more importantly, where Chris and I would regularly loiter for hours and hours arguing over which Nick Drake record was the best and strategizing about where we could find free beer on any given night.
Around the corner from there is the North High Ridge apartment complex, where Chris and I lived for about 6 months after the Oakdale house fell apart. In that time span, not one utility bill was paid on time or in full. Good times.
You can check out Piedmont Park, where we played the Pot Festival in 1992. That was a good day. We played on a stage at the bottom of the hill off of 10th Street, close to the Piedmont Avenue side. There were about six hundred million people there, or so it seemed, and I remember thinking very clearly during that show that we were pretty badass. I later lived in that neighborhood for five years and walked my dog there every day, so the park has a lot of great memories for me.
Finally (because if I don’t stop now, this answer will turn into a book and I am not planning on writing that until next year) you can go to the corner of Mount Paran Road and Jett Road in Northwest Atlanta. On the NW corner of this intersection, you’ll see the house that Chris bought after the first tour and where, in the garage, we put together the songs that became SHAMC.
Across the street, on the SE corner, you’ll find the house where, four years later, we recorded TSAOC. That’s another house we rented without telling the landlords what we were doing. To this day, I doubt seriously that whoever owns that house has any idea that an album was made there.
Okay, that’s enough of a jog down memory lane for today.
When you have checked these spots off your list, and paid proper homage at each, let me know and I’ll come up with some more.
SG
