12 Golden Country Fates: Going Back to The South pt 1
Whenever people ask me where I’m from, it’s always a three part answer.
“Originally from Memphis, twice removed, mostly grew up in Alabama, been in Denver for over six years.”
There is a gradient of how much of it shows depending on the time of day, level of sobriety, people I’m around, and literal location. I used to be embarrassed of my southern upbringing, then I stopped giving a fuck. Then everyone I ever met in Colorado decided to play the guessing game of “What state is your accent from?” and I ultimately hate all the regions now.
As I mentioned, I moved to Denver over six years ago. This place was our original refuge from The South. (us is: me, mom, dad, sisters, brother) At the time when we moved, there seemed to be a lot of Southerners running away to Denver. Was it for the weed? Of course it was for the weed. For any Colorado natives that ever had a problem with that, I would say “Fuck you, have you ever LIVED in The South?”
I was trying to get away from it my entire life. I fucking hated living in the middle of nowhere, Alabama. Everything about it was a living nightmare, or so I dramatize. I didn’t wanna be a God-fearing christian, I didn’t wanna be straight, I didn’t wanna be strung out on Lortabs. By the time I made it to Colorado and found the Denver punk scene, it was like, landing in some sort of miraculous safe haven I never thought I’d get to. I felt so much relief from Alabama. I was never going back to that piece of shit shithole place, NOT EVER.
Then I went back a few months later to move more of our stuff to Denver. That was weird. I didn’t really hang out with anybody, I just sat on the carport and painted galaxy portraits of zodiac signs the entire time. I totally disassociated from the fact that I was back there at all. Then we loaded up the van with more stuff and were headed back to Colorado. NOW I was never going back to The South.
So we’re out here living in Denver in the year 2014 and about a month after we got back from the van loading trip, my dad dropped dead from a silent heart attack. I was there for the whole thing, start to finish. He started going down in the living room, I rode in the ambulance to the hospital, I sat in the hospital room until he took his last breath. Horrifying. The whole family, just traumatized. Would not recommend.
Two years later an old friend of my parents comes to Denver for a visit, and she sees me, the starry-eyed first born child of the legendary Justin Shepherd, and has some big idea about helping me get my name out there.
“You should come to Memphis and live with me in my apartment in Midtown for the summer! I’m like a music publicist so we’ll do photo shoots every day, I’ll help you book shows at all the venues around town, and we’ll just like, promote your music and comedy! And I’ll pay for you to take drumming lessons!”
Does that sound ridiculous and too good to be true? Of course it does. Did I give a shit? Of course I didn’t.
So I say, “Yeah sure, why the fuck not?”
I am a Yes, man after all. Also, Memphis is respectively NOT Alabama. It’s where my mom and dad grew up and shit. Memphis is like, punk rock or something. Plus, I never got the chance to experience living in Memphis as an older person, so I thought this would be a cool opportunity to get in touch with my roots.
The experience was overall positive and I met a lot of really cool people. Living in Midtown was definitely the only way to do it. Smoking in bars where you can bring in your own bottles, with a bunch of wily southern comedians and musicians, was actually pretty fucking fun. Would totally recommend. Visiting your grandmothers out in the suburbs, now that’s a little different. But I guess you could say that I got the full Justin Shepherd experience. I am after all, what is left of his chaotic personality type. I follow in my dad’s footsteps in a lot of ways and there was truly something I needed to go to Memphis to discover about myself. I definitely got in touch with my roots. But of course, things would only get more complicated from there.
I moved back to Denver in the fall of 2016, and would not find myself back in The South until the grand ole New Year’s Eve of 2018/19, where the story of this year takes a lot of deeply complicated emotional turns. So I suppose I’ll find more things to write about this month after all.
To be continued…
