From the Thicket to the Holler
Lynn’s a little ahead of us. She looks to be nearly doubled over with laughter. When Bruce and I reach her, she’s catching her breath, pointing at the animals in the pen and at the legend describing them. “This is us! This is us!” she gasps. Ugly little beasts. Some kind of swine? But with tufts of long hair around their mouths. We look at the sign.
Sus barbatus. The Bearded Pig, native to southeast Asia, is the only species of swine that undertakes an annual migration. Led by an old male, they trod the well-worn forest paths at night and rest in thickets during the day.
Lynn points at me. “You’re the old male.” No argument there.1 “The annual migration is the MLA2 conference. The ancient forest paths are the music we love to play. The thickets are the contributed paper sessions that we sleep through.”
Maybe it was the sandpapery crisp hangovers that we all shared, having stayed up late after playing the night before, but it made complete sense. When we got back to the hotel we let the others know the band had a name. The Bearded Pigs.
That was 2003 in San Diego.3 Over the next ten years the band played several times a year, always at the MLA conference, sometimes at other regional or national conferences, mostly in the US, but also Australia and the UK. We were scattered across the US and England, so opportunities to all be in the same city at the same time were rare. From 2007 to 2013 we did annual bandcamp at Singarella’s house outside Memphis. There, we’d take a couple of days to work on some of those tricky sophisticated musical details like all starting and stopping a song at the same time. On Saturday night he’d invite all the neighbors over. They’d bring food and drink and we’d party through the night.
The MLA gig was always great fun, but as we approached the 2013 conference in Boston I decided it was time to end the annual migration. I'd been thinking about it for a couple of years. Some of us were retiring or moving to different jobs and wouldn’t have funding to keep coming. The gig had become a pretty big and complex production, with t-shirts and buttons and shipping equipment and renting equipment; it was a long way from us gathering in an empty conference room to play for each other and a dozen of our close friends. I wanted us to go out on our own terms. We talked about it at dinner two nights before and were all agreed.4
This was just after the Marathon bombing and everybody, locals in particular, needed the glorious messy release of rock and roll. I did the rooster crow on London Calling. Instead of ending with The Weight as we usually did, we closed with local boy Mister TomCat singing Dirty Water. It was the best MLA gig ever. We did our annual Memphis trip later that summer. In 2016, Singarella invited us to come out one more time – we called it “When Pigs Waltz.”5
In the years that followed, I’d occasionally fall into conversation with someone who’d refer to the Bearded Pigs in the past tense. I’d always tell them that the band was still a going thing – we just didn’t have the next gig lined up. I believed that. The band coming together in the first place was completely preposterous. It was inconceivable to me that we wouldn’t make it happen again.
Jean was one of our most enthusiastic fans, joining us in Memphis several times, adding significantly to the band lore. When she and Mark started designing their retirement home in rural Virginia I teased that I’d give her a year to settle in, but then the Pigs were going to have a migration in her direction, an east coast version of the Memphis bandcamp. The pandemic got in the way, but in the fall of 2022, I contacted Jean to see if she was still willing.
No to staying at the house – they’re in a “quiet” neighborhood – but she’d been thinking about it and had been scoping out houses we could rent. “Sounds promising," I typed. "Let me check with the rest of the band and see if they’re in.”
And then I didn’t. And I couldn’t figure out why. Months passed. I’d see the note on my list that I was supposed to contact the others, but I couldn’t quite figure out what to say. What was holding me back? It took six months, but finally the dilemma became clear. I sent Jean a message, “We need to talk.”
Getting together would be wonderful. But the highlight of the Memphis trips had always been that Saturday night party. The energy of performance. Introvert that I am, I don't know anything else like it. The band sends the music out. The audience drinks it in, all their own emotions and histories and dreams get sparked and they send it careening back to the band. The band feels the fire and fuel and digs deeper. The guitarist gets gutsier, the singer bends a note and remembers. The drummer's pulse becomes the beat that binds every heart. Sweat, love, hope, beauty, release. If I'm gonna rent a house and travel to Virginia for a week, I want some of that.
Turns out Jean had some ideas there, too.
Which is why we’re playing a fund raiser for the Rockfish Valley Community Center on June 8. We’ve rented a big house nearby and once everybody gets there we’ll have approximately one day after not playing together for nearly eight years to put together a couple of sets of music for an audience of people who have no idea who we are. Dancing on one foot up on the highwire without the faintest hint of a net.
Sounds about right. As it says on the back of the band t-shirt, “in rehearsal since 2002”.
Lord. I wasn't 50 yet.
Medical Library Association, not Modern Language Association.
Fun fact – the San Diego Zoo was the first to breed Bearded Pigs in captivity.
We didn't know then that the short circuit in my spinal cord would've made it difficult, if not impossible, for me to continue. I am forever grateful that I didn't know and that we chose to make that the last one, rather than being forced to.
During a break the Saturday of that trip I was in conversation with one of the happy neighbors. He said it was so great that we came back to do this every year. I gently told him this was the first time we’d been back in three. He was dumbfounded. Memory is a wonderful thing.
...I really thought you meant the Modern Language Association.
Rock on!