The Cornbread Mile

Music and Truth

Photo by Evan Mach on Unsplash

The internet, that big glowing and wheezing beast, abetted by the Chamber of Commerce and a fat marketing budget, will tell you the best place for live music in this town is The Morocco.

I saw a scissor lift outside The Morocco once, they hired a crew to get all the pigeon nests and pigeons out from the crevices of their bright blue sign.

I don’t know how you can claim to like music and hate birds in the same lifetime. 

The internet is a got-damn lie anyway. 

The Morocco is ok, I guess, for bird haters. 

The best place for live music is Fenner’s.

There ain’t a Fenner, the bar is just named after the street and I don’t know who the street is named for because it’s been there for so long, back before the pillars for the freeway took out most of the buildings on The Cornbread Mile.

It’s not even a neighborhood no more, just a dead end at some railroad tracks, and big round cement supports for all the traffic making a terrible hiss going north and south to everywhere and nowhere.

Fenner’s survived, because someone lived above Fenner’s and they couldn’t evict ‘em.

They still play real blues in Fenner’s.

There’s no emcee, no cover charge.

People are afraid they’re gonna get their car stolen at Fenner’s.

That ain’t exactly true. 

Rondell, who owns Fenner’s, would just prefer you to park in the Methodist Church lot, because Fenner’s might not have all their paperwork up to date, and you never know who might wanna shut ‘em down.

People say “Naww, they’d never shut down Fenner’s, Fenner’s is a treasure.” 

Those people forgot that the neighborhood used to be called The Cornbread Mile. There were clothing stores, and barbershops, and soul food restaurants, and bars with the best blues in the whole wide world. 

None of that meant nothing to the people who wanted a freeway. 

Most of the musicians and the chefs from The Cornbread Mile wound up going to work to build the cars that take that freeway.

But Fenner’s is still there.

And it’s better than The Morocco.

There’s a kid on stage right now, his first time up. 

He can play.

He showed up, told Rondell he played The Morocco, but he wanted to play Fenner’s.

He can play. 

His fingers go in the right places, the notes are the notes that the ears are supposed to hear, but he’s missing something.

Some people call it soul, some people call it heart, some people don’t know what to call it.

Some people chase pigeons and people away from places where they weren’t hurtin’ nobody.

In Fenner’s, music is the last remaining pillar of truth.

And you can tell when someone’s guitar is lying, on the last remaining stage in The Cornbread Mile. 

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Author’s Note: In case you’re unaware that things in the story really transpire in America, here’s a brief glimpse of what happened in Detroit. I love my city, but we destroyed much of its history and charm. Pockets of it still exit. This is an homage to those places.

Happy Thanksgiving.