NEVER 

luke the drifter

GET OUT 

OF THIS WORLD 
ALIVE.

Mark Schemanske
(1960 - 2015)
 

Dear friend Mark Schemanske could toss an 
essay like this out in his sleep, with both hands tied (or 
handcuffed, should the case be) behind his back. 
Your words & light will be sorely missed, mark.  
First published REVELATOR 1, page 1.

The Trail. The Lonesome Highway. Or just I-65. Whatever you call it, the asphalt ribbon that runs through western Alabama is the only place to start when you’re dealing with a man who breathed his last, flat on his back in a baby-blue Cadillac, on the way to do another show.

Hank Williams.  A rock star before there was rock, with a funeral so large that it had to be held in the Montgomery Auditorium, his coffin appropriately placed on the stage and 25,000 people showing up to see his last great (albeit silent) appearance. His life had all the entanglements and snares of the rockers, pop sensations and music casualties that would follow him down. Drugs prescribed by quack doctors. The drink.  Pills to pop. Morphine to shoot. Missed shows. Being thrown out of the Grand Olde Opry – though that didn’t stop “management” from placing a statue of the least favorite son right out front to greet the tourists. PAIN. Gut-wrenching, soul-racking back pain.  Heartaches that wouldn’t quit.

And of course, genius. A musical transcendence that nobody has since equaled. Williams’ songs would live forever, but his body didn’t make it to 30. Nobody before or since has torn the raw strings of the heart out, tightened them to a wooden guitar, and written such songs. But look for a specific spot where it all happened – the Robert Johnson crossroads, the school in Dartford where Mick met Keith, the Memphis studio where Elvis paid his money to record a 45 for his mother – and you’ll find none for Hank. Instead, you’re left staring at the white line of the endless road.

Did the road inspire Hank? We’ll never know. But if it did, it proved a harsh and unforgiving muse. Travelling was his life, and his touring schedule (like so many musical agendas at the time) ping-ponged him across the Southern states, forcing him to travel endless hours, criss-crossing the map with no real apparent logic.

Such travels give a man a lot of time to think. So we traverse the trail of broken lines to the various stopping points on the trail – the birthplace in Mount Olive, the boyhood home in Georgiana, his vacation cabin in Kowaliga, and his final astroturfed resting place in Montgomery – but we won’t be travelling in any real order. Are we sure Hank done it this way? Yes. Yes we are.

In our attempt to shadow the trail, one seeks to reflect on key events.  But the real focus of Hank’s life isn’t the places he stopped, but rather the place that always kept him in motion:   The Road. And always, the cheery refrain which the sound of the wheels turns into:  I'll never get out of this world alive.

 

Unlike the Robert Johnson of legend, Hank never sold his soul to the devil.  Instead, he spread his soul thin on a series of pavements, gravel roads, dirt paths. Every once in a while, he’d let that soul collect and burn brightly from countless stages, both small-town makeshift and big-time respectable. And to make that genius all the more ghostly, all the more difficult to pin down, he was always in the air, too. Radio broadcasts for Mother’s Best brought the troubadour into the comforts of your parlor room, even though he was miles away in a windowless studio.  Talking to everyone.  And no-one.  At the very same time.

 

But if you drive this drive for long enough, alone enough, you can almost hear that voice again, along this asphalt-ribbon-turned-tourist-trap,  colorfully designated  by the wise politicians who decide such things as The Lost Highway.

happy trails, schemanske.