Thad Beckman, Kurtis Piltz, myself and Danny Ryan at Charley Patton's grave, June 2000

'
Trailer Blues" is a work in progress. In June 2000 I went to Memphis and the Mississippi Delta to gather materials for my class The Blues. Three friends, Danny Ryan, Thad Beckman and Kurtis Piltz met me in Memphis. All of them are or have been professional musicians and share an interest in the blues. We traveled from Memphis all the way to Meridian in southeast Mississippi where we videotaped an interview with the blues author and noted record collector Gayle Dean Wardlow. After that we went back to the Delta which we criss-crossed for the next five or six days, visiting such places as Clarksdale, Greenville, Greenwood, Morehead, Dockery's plantation, Avalon, Friar's Point, and West Helena, Arkansas. We came back with about 15 hours of videotape, with the idea that I would use it to make a "trailer" both to promote my new course and to use in the class. Hence, "Trailer Blues."By the end of the trip I thought I had enough footage for something else also: a full length feature about four life-long friends on a road trip

That's why I've listed "Trailer Blues" here. Although there is a good deal of blues music and blues history in it, the real subject is the four of us. Thad Beckman, Danny Ryan and I have all known each other since we were six years old when we met in the first grade at St. Clare's grade school in Portland, Oregon. Danny and Thad met Kurtis Piltz in high school--at which point I was living in Seattle. I met Kurtis later when I moved back to Portland in the 70s.