Mississippi Transplant: Church Goin Mule
Mississippi Transplant: Church Goin Mule
"Every time I leave the Delta, I am reminded how grateful I am for it. I guess that is the benefit of living many places, when you find where you belong, you really, really, feel it. "
What does it mean to call Mississippi home? Why do people choose to leave or live in this weird, wonderful, and sometimes infuriating place? Today we hear from artist, storyteller, and manager of Jx Farms , Church Goin Mule.
Where are you from?
Born in Richmond, Virginia. I grew up across the South, fortunate to spend time with family spinning stories on concrete carports in Morganton, North Carolina, making memories in Memphis, Tennessee, learning photography beneath longleaf pines as a child in Thomasville, Georgia, dreaming of and making a home in the Acadiana region of Louisiana. It all led me to Mississippi and makes me both rooted and rootless,
When did you move to Mississippi and why did you move here?
Had the luck to move to the Mississippi Delta for real in October 2021. I began traveling to the Delta as soon as I got to Louisiana in 2014, it called me. Always been a fan of Blues music, and I’d go just to spend New Year’s alone, just to Be in the Delta, man. Any chance I got. In the pandemic, in May 2020, I traveled up to be in a shack by myself. If I had to be alone at least I could be with my favorite ghosts. And every time I left, I always asked, how could I make it here? What do I have to do? And every time in the Delta was mystical, from the sunsets and sunrises, to the people, to their stories, to the visions,
What does “home” mean to you? How does Mississippi fit into that definition?
Home is an awful lot like Love, or God, or Delta. It has its own complex history and Latin names and meaning, but home is how someone says a word, home is a feeling, I wouldn’t define it, in the same way that I believe to my soul Mississippi Is Home. I think where I live now helps me define home, neighbors knowing and helping, and me knowing and helping, too - home is waving to people when you see them on the road, home is the Church Bus parked diagonal in the grocery store parking lot, blocking traffic, because “Hey, how are you doing, I haven’t seen you in so long,” and home is time, home is love, home is attention and care, home is belonging, and for as much as I don’t belong, everyone has made me feel like I do,
What do you miss most about the place where you’re from?
Every time I leave the Delta, I am reminded how grateful I am for it. I guess that is the benefit of living many places, when you find where you belong, you really, really, feel it. If and when I have to leave, it will be a long hill to climb out of sadness and loss. I don’t miss anywhere I have lived before, but I know I will miss Mississippi.
How have you cultivated community in Mississippi? Who are the people who have made you feel rooted here?
I have landed into the most fortunate set of circumstances here. The neighbors have been neighbors and best friends for decades, and so the farm I help take care of is part of that family, and part of that community, and I was lucky to be made a part of it, to catch the very last happy coattail, to be a part of a Good Name. One artist Jennifer Drinkwater said her daddy said, “As good of a man they say Gerald Jacks was, he was ten times that,” and that’s whose farm I help take care of, that’s whose legacy I get to help carry,
The neighbors and the artists, the handyman, the pest control guy, the UPS guy, the men at the lumber place, the vet, the people at the Feed & Seed, the guys at the oil change place, they all remember me, my buddy Peaches at the juke joint up the road,
To be accepted by the neighbors has been the biggest blessing of my life, to have friends who help selflessly, who call just to check in, who bring little things over just because they thought of me, people who don’t have to care, but do.
The artists who come through the residency remind me of where I am, they help me understand myself and the land better,
The animals who are most inquisitive and attentive to the land, the seasons, their care,
When I got here, someone told me, “oh to have a neighbor who can help with tractors, who knows the practical things, that’s just like gold,” and the truth is, they’re all gold.
What’s the weirdest question or assumption you’ve encountered about Mississippi (or about you as a Mississippian) by someone who’s never been here?
I been thinking on this question the longest, and - I am not going to give you a good answer. I think I preach about Mississippi so much, I hope I show people it’s more than they thought,
There was one person, though, who said “well, in the city, I don’t have to waste three hours cutting the grass,” and I was sure enough gape-mouthed because to me, the privilege of cutting 26 acres (half of it put back to wildness and prairie for a little nature trail), the chance to sit by myself under the sun and running the land, to see the whole expanse of the property and see how the trees are and the grass is and how the passionfruit and broom sedge are doing in their season, and that one spot where there’s always a rut when it’s been rainy is doing, that nothing I do here is wasted, my time is very precious, and very much my own, to know the land very intimately from the dips and curves of mowing it,
How has living in Mississippi affected your identity and your life’s path?
It has allowed me to become myself in a deeper way than I thought possible. I am braver, and stronger, and maybe even smarter, than when I moved here a year ago. I used to be scared to get my oil changed or put air in my tires, and now I can open the hood and change a coil pack in three minutes, and pretty sure I could change a flat if I needed to. I can run a tractor and a zero turn mower and the other day I climbed up onto the roof to clean the gutters and clear off limbs. I set up a solar powered electric fence twice, and learned how to work a weed-eater and plant rye grass and put a saddle together and fix busted pipes and shoot a gun.
I used to be scared to ever ride a horse again and now me and my little pony gallop down turnrows and kick up dust.
It has helped me become more human, and the way people don’t talk about people here has helped me understand the length and depth of mercy and forgiveness, people here practice mercy in an astonishing way that I haven’t learned yet.
The Vietnam vet who lives down the road who rode from Mexico to Canada on his horse told another tough old boy who buys pecans and fixes motorcycles that “If she says it, she means it. She’s tough.” And that was all I could have ever hoped for from the people I love and admire,
What is something that you’ve learned about Mississippi only by living here? In what ways has Mississippi lived up to your expectations?
Mississippi surprises me every day. We have a public fossil park, and it’s there under a highway road, and it’s at the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, and did you know that Cat Island and Horn Island and all of those good islands down on the coast are also made of Appalachian runoff carried pure by water? And we have a coal mine here in the state? But that’s nothing compared to the value of neighbors, of knowing your neighbor, of really loving your neighbors, your neighborhood, your community. The thing about the Delta is, it’s so small, you got to Act right and Drive right, or the whole Delta will know you’re trouble before long. But even if you mess up, they’ll still love you. And they’ll tell a great story about it after, where everyone is loving and laughing and forgiving. I’ve learned about the Blues in a way that only living in the land helps a person understand, in a way that only this beautiful particular type of Delta heartbreak can bring to a person, that only the graves of the men who made the songs can tell you,
Have you ever thought about moving away? Does a sense of duty keep you rooted here? Do you have a “tipping point”?
No - I tell people all of the time, I’m here til I get run out or my family needs me somewhere else, and we were sort of talking about moving recently and it’s hard to even face the thought of it, there will be a lot of crying done,
What do you wish the rest of the country understood about Mississippi?
One of my favorite people and artists and mentors said, “If people don’t want to come here, if people don’t understand, that’s fine. We don’t want them,”
But she said it better. What she meant was, it’s our best kept secret. I’m not interested in convincing anyone.
You either get it, you feel it, or you don’t. A city isn’t for me, and the land might not be for you, it’s a big old world, room enough for everyone.
All I know is, don’t sit in judgement until you’re willing to experience something thoroughly. Been enjoying life by working on love and compassion and mercy, and Mississippi is good for that, the state is so different, the people are so different, if you only come just to see, you’ll know.
Mississippi is its own best kept secret of incredibly talented and skilled individuals, artists, authors, farmers,
At the gas station you can get in a conversation with anyone about Barry Hannah or William Faulkner, you can hear a wild story about that one time a boar chased a man up a tree, and go to anyone’s house and they’ll have some type of art they’re proud of, or a bookshelf with Mississippi and Southern authors, the man who comes to put gas into the tank for heat said he’d carry me up the road because he loves the old time Blues, too, and we could go dancing, and you just got to dance with your eyes closed if you think you can’t dance,
And I just mean, art and music and the fervor for life are close at hand and different here than I have ever known,
Do you have a favorite Mississippi writer, artist, or musician who you think everyone needs to know about?
I love Lewis Nordan, and I love Charley Patton. Nordan returned the myth to the land for me. And I like to think once I decipher every Charley Patton song, by understanding him, I will also understand the Delta. I love Mississippi Fred McDowell and Memphis Minnie and RL Burnside and Asie Payton and Junior Kimbrough. I love Barry Hannah, who I never loved until the third time I tried to read him,
Mississippi has ruined me for most everything, because now I can’t bear it if we can’t get to the humanity straight away. Even in regular day-to-day conversation. I can’t read a book if it doesn’t get to the marrow, if it doesn’t teach me something about the human condition, heartbreak, violence. Hannah and Nordan seem to have been interested in all of the things that make life really vivid and painful and beautiful, same as blues music.
I love Jesmyn Ward and all of the Gulf Coast artists that I get to also call friends, I love Sammy Britt and Gerald DeLoach and Carol Roark and Ellen Langford and C.T. Salazar and the land is covered in amazing, thoughtful, world-brightening people,
If you had one billion dollars to invest in Mississippi, how would you spend your money?
If I have learned anything, it’s that it’s not my business. I am not from here, I do not know better than the community itself. What I would offer is, something the whole country could use - money for public schools, for education, and especially for arts education.
What or who do you want to shamelessly promote? (It can absolutely be a project you’re working on, or something you are involved in.)
The community and neighborhood and farm I am talking about here is Jx Farms in Cleveland, Mississippi. We are an artist residency and you can find out more about us at www.jxfarms.com or on Instagram @jxfarms. I’m on Instagram @churchgoinmule.