If You Give a Mouse a Benadryl...

The arrival into Jackson, Mississippi was full of beautiful back country roads, fragrant night air, and stars that appears to pop off of the sky. It was also full of podiatric agitation as the fire ant that had attack my right foot the day before caused my foot to swell well beyond its normal size. Gina Allgood took the role of Dr. Mom the night before, however, giving me three Benadryls: one for that evening, and two more for the next two days. Unfortunately, the romance of the South distracted me and I accidentally wolfed down all three at once! This left me in a strange stupor that made the sunsets we saw driving into MS all the more spectacular, although I was comforted to know that the rest of The Break Free Project found them beautiful as well. Here I am a few days later in Jackson, feeling fully recovered and pleased as punch to be allergen medicine-free.

Action Jackson

We've made it to Jackson and had some studio time with our Jackson Ambassador, B2wice aka Juan Wilson. The catfish is delicious, Fenians pub open mic was a great time and we've even spoken to the (we're sure he's going to be) future District Attorney, Robert Shuler Smith.

Stay tuned for more pictures and stories from our time in Mississippi!

It's Allgood...

We were always taught that when someone opens their home to you, that you should take it with grace and gratitude. But what happens when someone not only gives you a place to sleep, coffee every morning, dinners of shrimp and wine, tours of the Bama Theater and countryside, and songs to sing along to on their porch on your last night in town because you've insisted that they continue to entertain you? If you have any ideas, please let us know immediately, or contact David and Gina Allgood. They live in Northport Alabama, and you'll recognize their house by the beautiful porch that winds around the front and side, their backyard oasis full of heirloom tomatoes and beautiful flowers and the grey water drain tank system that David has installed in the backyard that irrigates all this lovliness even in a drought and without wasting water from the city. Thank you David and Gina for your warm hospitality and for showing us the best of Tuscaloosa and this country!

Who Revived the Electric Car?

Tuscaloosa, Alabama-

James Pearce and his son Johnston know diesels. They have been working with diesel engines for years and after gas prices became prohibitively high, their knowledge of diesel mechanics intersected with their sincere desire to be innovative, frugal, cutting edge and environmentally conscious. Our Tuscaloosa guides and goodwill ambassadors, David and Gina Allgood (more about them above!) drove us out to Hubert and his wife Madeleine's property in the beautiful country outside of Tuscaloosa. There we were shown so many amazing examples of good old fashioned American ingenuity it made our heads swim!James and Johnston collect waste veggie oil and their friends and neighbors bring them their used motor oil for recycling. They run their trucks on the biodiesel that they make from the WVO and recycle the engine oil into heating fuel. Processing the oil is done in the shop using a system that the Pearces have perfected which is very energy efficient by relying on gravity to move the oil from tank to tank. We were nothing short of blown away by James and Johnston's expertise at recycloing waste oil, but it turned out that we hadn't even seen the most marvelous machine yet...the Electric Jeep that this father and son have been envisioning and working on since seeing the movie "Who Killed the Electric Car".
This electric blue, electric powered beauty has been outfitted by parts ordered from a New Hampshire company and before long will be ready to drive this busy family in even the hottest of Alabama summers. The Pearces are going to need reliable transportation as this is the year that Johnston leaves for Warren Wilson college in Asheville NC- the recipient of a well deserved scholarship-and their daughter Julia will enter boarding school an hour away near Birmingham. Thanks a million James, Madeleine, Johnston and Julia for showing us what is possible with alternative fuels and electic cars.

Here are a few of the pictures from our time in Tuscaloosa. We will always remember the beauty and kindness that we've seen here in Alabama and have so enjoyed making new friends and being inspired by the people we've met. Alabama is a beautiful state indeed!










Gina's teacher friend Alice shows us her beautiful backyard flowers

Mavi gets the shot- Birmingham, AL

Kate in Europa Antiques, Birmingham Alabama






More of Kenneth Easterling and his son Kenyon's delicious, worth-their-weight-in-gold peaches

Tree climbing at the University of Alabama Arboretum

Erin Jones of The Left Hand Handmade Soap Company displays her typical altruism

An oil well outside of Tuscaloosa

With our new friends at the Bama Theater balcony

David and Gina Allgood, Mavi and Jeff, Kate, Barbie, Catherine and Jeff

Gina and a lovely sunset! Now we're sitting in the parking lot of The Cleansing Tide Laundromat (everything has something to do with the Crimson Tide here in Tuscaloosa), filtering the grease that we collected from Keqin Pan, an owner of a local Chinese resataurant and heading off to Jackson Mississippi.

BFP's 4th Jam, Jam-a-lam, way down in Alabam, bam-a-lam!

fTuscaloosa, Alabama is the 4th destination on our runaway hamster ball tour de force! I say hamster ball because between an rv bathrom full of all our veggie oil paraphenalia, Julia's unwashed dreadlocks, a half-functioning refridgerator full of dubious leftovers, and a leaky wastewater pipe, we have a ongoing need for deodorizing. Unfortunately, all we have is a ceder-scented all purpose cleanser, so the ladyhawke smells oftentimes, like a stinky hamster cage, and there's some days where I imagine all four of us running in the wheel and some are the big hamsters who operate the wheel while the other two get spun around and around. You get the idea.
Tuscaloosa is currently home to the exuberant and talented Alyson Greenfield. She's itching to get the hell out of dodge and move to New York, which we don't understand, because in our typical style, we've been nothing but pampered and coddled and well fed by everyone we meet, but we're glad she's here for now. She booked us a show with her at the Bama Theater. She's the girl in the white dress in this picture. The Ladyhawke started to get cranky about 7 miles out of town and about 10 minutes before our show, but all our anxiety dried up like our pitstains when we saw our name in lights. It was our best show yet thanks to Alyson, Geoff Hug and David Allgood.

During our stay, we met Alex Chambers and Kit Boulding who hosted a modern day salon-style lecture series. We showed them ours and they us theirs.
Here's a picture of us going in to play some tunes. We learned about some sweet old timey cameras. and Alex shared the findings of Erasmus Gould, a scientist and thinker, whose documents he discovered in an old trunk in Chicago and whose eccentric scribblings about the history of high-fructose corn syrup only Alex can decipher. Or so he says. We also met Erin and Erik of The Left Hand Soap Company. I don't know why we don't have any pictures of them. It's a shame because they've got the sweetest dog named Bettie, 8 cats, and one tough-ass parrot and are the coolest family of anarchists I've ever met. Their soap, salves and lipbalms are dreamy. They gave us a bunch of free samples, which is just what a pack of stinky hamsters like us needs.



We spent the day in Birmingham and bought a basket of peaches from Mr. Kenneth Easterling a bona fide peach and tomato expert, who, along with his son Kenyon, have continued to grow these unbelievably delicious fruits on their farm in Clantow, Alabama. We talked about how important it's been for them to focus on just the peaches and tomatoes, their best sellers, even though Kenneth's father always grew a variety of fruits and vegetables.

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We also went to the University of Alabama Arboretum in Tuscaloosa,



And of course we still gotta filter our vegetable oil. Here's me, showing Alyson how it's done.

Jason King for President

As we careened down highway 11 through the "hood" of Birmingham, we pulled offroad and noticed some gentlemen who were sitting in front of their houses across the street from an old industrial building. They offered a friendly wave and, in the spirit of the Ladyhawke, we stopped and invited them in for an interview. They introduced themselves as Jason King and Damien Swanson, and they proceeded to take full advantage of our documentary and list off all of the concerns they had about the area's past present and future. Jason was particularly wise beyond his 26 years and at the end of our encounter, I felt like I had learned a great deal. My biggest take away from him, though, was that although he has a lot of problems with the South, he doesn't want to abandon it. Apparently, there were too many people who had made it big elsewhere and forgotten the home that reared them. I suggested that he run for political office. He admitted that he had never really considered it, which is why I think he'd be particularly good for the job!

Hungry for Grit

Somewhere between the struggle for cultivating dreadlocks as they blew like confused antennae out the window of the Ladyhawke and watching Jeff, Kate, and Mavi play like good Christian school children outside the First Baptist Church in Athens as we filtered grease through our huge sock, I found a bit of peace. Now that we have spoken to real, live Southerners and lived in Georgia for an entire day and night, I can safely say that I am actively looking for real estate in Athens. So long as the spirit of Michael Stipe's song "Shiny Happy People Holding Hands" remains in this city, I will always long for this town whenever I am away from it! While tour life has already proven to be somewhat trying, I think the transition of truly enjoying it came last night when Kate and I took a break from being the 3rd and 4th wheel and wandered around the city after our show and stumbled upon one of many ceramic bulldogs that pepper the area. I
think you'll agree that every dog indeed DOES
have its day...
(I can't remember if this was before or
after Kate fell asleep on the sidewalk)