Mark your calendars for June 17.
Jesco White, the original dancing outlaw, will be at Rhythm & Brews that night doing his thing onstage with Roger Alan Wade.
If you’re familiar with Jesco, I don’t have to tell what his thing is. But for others who haven’t Googled him yet or seen the original “Dancing Outlaw” documentary or the newer film “Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia,” he does a little tap dancing, plays the harmonica, does some singing and a lot of hanging out meeting people.
You really need to see the films to understand any of this, though. Jesco White is a true West Virginia character.
Storm Taylor was one of the producers of the latter film. Johnny Knoxville was the executive producer. Like a lot of us, Taylor first heard of Jesco through a bootleg VHS tape. He has since become good friends with the family and now travels with Jesco on occasion.
“I’m not his manager. No one manages Jesco,” he said.
After watching the taping several times, Taylor set out to meet the man to learn more about him.
“He is this iconic figure. He was on my bucket list, I guess. I just wanted to meet the cat, so eight years ago I tracked him down and spent a week with him. I redid the electrical in his trailer and reinsulated it.
“The more time I spent with him, the more I wanted to know what this guy was about. I still don’t know.”
Taylor said his buddy Knoxville had similar interests, so the two collaborated on “Wild and Wonderful.”
“We shot a ton of video over eight months, and every day we got something better. They don’t put on for film. They are just very captivating and dangerous and charming at the same time. Their lives are very dramatic.”
The film is available on Netflix. You can learn more about Jesco at jesconation.com.
- Are you one of those people who heard about the blistering version of “Bennie & The Jets” that Cornmeal did at the 2009 Riverbend Festival after the fact?
Certainly one of your friends could have called or texted you while it was happening, but of course, they would have to have been there also.
This year, you can use your smart phone to keep up in real time what is happening. Our Riverbend Web page – timesfreepress.com/riverbend – will include Tweets from not only some of our staff covering the event but anyone else posting about the festival.
You can read all of the stories we’ve written about Riverbend, as well as watch daily videos and view our photo galleries, but we hope the live Tweets will let you know when something exciting is happening.
You can also Tweet ahead of time about the bands you are excited to see, or you can tell everyone about the show they missed, though it’d be cooler if you wrote about it live.
I will also be posting stories, photos and Tweets from Bonnaroo over the next three days, and you can follow those at timesfreepress.com/bonnaroo. Both pages also can be accessed at current.timesfreepress.com. You will find other things to do in the area this week on that page as well.