2 minute read
In Good Spirits
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“I had just burned out on the music business and touring 200 days a year around the world, and I needed a change and a challenge. And boy did I get one.” Mohead also had no formal training as a chef, but he says he learned how to cook by rubbing elbows with some renowned chefs that he liked. “My training came from Creole chefs like George and Ms. Sarah Wright and soul food cooks Doris Carr, Daisy Edmonds, Mae Wolf, Neil Myers, and others,” he says. “These are the people who taught me food, who taught me that you have to put love in your food. Culinary schools teach you knife skills, not love.” Mohead, however, did eventually take a few cooking lessons, and Kathryn’s kitchen manager Gabbi Turner attended Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Atlanta. The lockdown caused by the pandemic affected both parts of Mohead’s career: Kathryn’s had to close and live music gigs became nonexistent. When the restaurant was able to open back up and offer takeout orders, the community was very supportive. To raise money, Mohead also arranged some online musical performances. “I did some live streams,” Mohead says. “The first one was the 2020 Virtual Juke Joint Festival. That was fun and also well-viewed and supported. I did a few
other live streams, but it just seemed weird playing to a cell phone. But being shut down in the restaurant for a period allowed me the mental and physical space to be able to create and record in the studio for the first time in years.” Mohead’s two worlds occasionally overlap, like when one of his blues brothers comes out to Kathryn’s for a meal. “My friend Billy Howell brought Charlie and Henrietta Musselwhite (now Clarksdale residents) out years ago and we just clicked,” he says. “Sometimes it’s like you’re in a foreign country and no one speaks the language, then you run into someone who does and suddenly you’re best friends. That’s how it was with Charlie and Henri. Charlie even played on a session for me in Memphis. They have unlimited credit at Kathryn’s now.” The decades of fun with some craziness mixed in have given Mohead a surefire philosophy for everything he does. “A perfectly cooked steak or anything else is perfect when it’s done with love,” he says. “It’s that simple.” Mohead’s latest album, “Mograss,” was released earlier this year.
Kevin Wierzbicki is a freelance music and travel journalist who delights in visiting music hotbeds like Clarksdale where great storytellers like Mohead abound. He has not been chased by the Moroccan CIA.
