Rocket 88 carries on the spirit of Oxford music

ARTS & CULTURE

BY DAVIS COEN PHOTOS SUBMITTED

TThese days not enough Oxford musicians are mindful of the City’s rich lineage of live performers, but certainly an exception is much-revered local band Rocket 88, which has been described to play “juke joint gospel.” Also, old time country, Americana, hill country blues, and straight ahead rock & roll. Started by couple Jamie and

Rosamond Posey, Rocket 88 spawned from musical outfit, Honey Blonde, which featured the vocal pairing of

Rosamond (Rosie) and fellow Vicksburg,

Mississippian Gin Gin Abraham (now

Carlton).

Jamie recalled the first time he was invited to accompany Honey Blonde for a big show, opening for New Orleans roots rock band Dash Rip Rock, when their regular guitarist backed out of a gig on short notice.

“They asked me to play, and I thought I was a big shot,” Jamie said, heartily laughing. “I was butchering their beautiful harmonies, playing all over it, with no gaps! But they kept me, and we added drums, bass, and percussion. We would sometimes play four nights a week.”

The group played so many shows locally, and toured the Southeast so ardently, during the late-90s/early2000s they were heralded as “The Hardest Working Band in Oxford.”

After about a year hiatus they regrouped, with local bassist Nathan Robbins, and a drummer that didn’t fit with the band and was eventually replaced by Bradley Gordon. “The first practice was rip roaring,” he said. “Everybody was so happy and were like - ‘there it is!’ It sounded good from the start.”

Other Rocket 88 band personnel include drummer Ryan Rogers, and

keyboardists Eric Carlton, and Robert Chaffe (also of the band, Kudzu Kings). Regarding the rotation in the group’s lineup, depending on the circumstances of their live bookings, Jamie said: “We’re kind of fluid in that way.”

Rocket 88 has maintained an everyother-Sunday afternoon residency at Rafter’s in Oxford since October 2020 where they’ve used the opportunity to showcase their adoration of spiritual and gospel music, and legendary Oxford live music performers of the past.

Up Above My Head and Let the Church Roll On are among gospel standards currently in the repertoire.

Often musical tributes are to Memphis-born, Mississippi Deltaraised Jerry Lee “Duff” Dorrough, member of the very locally popular group The Tangents - who performed frequently at The Gin in Oxford (an adored venue that closed in 1999) and have been called the ‘greatest Delta rock band ever.’ Dorrough was also a prominent member of The Yalobushwackers, the house band for Thacker Mountain Radio Hour.

“I take it as a responsibility, he is such a patriarch,” said Jamie, of Dorrough’s legacy. “I give it my all every time I play one of those songs that Duff covered or did, and I make it a point to play them in the town, so that the young listeners can be exposed to real Oxford sounds.”

ROOTS OF ROCKET 88

Jamie had been in a rock band called Wild Child during high school in Meridian, MS, and fondly remembers his first gig at a rec center in Collinsville, MS when he was 16. “We played it and packed it out,” he said of his band that played mostly classic hard rock. “That was my first experience, with lights and everything. Our buddies constructed a makeshift light show, with a board and everything, and it would shock the hell out of ‘em every time we would hook it all up! But they would endure it, and still run the light show with the band.”

He moved to Oxford in ‘94 and began playing acoustic sets around town. His first local band was Fungus Amongus and played the fraternity circuit and all of the big bars at the time.

Rosey was trained in classical piano, and came to Ole Miss on a music scholarship for piano. Then she went to business school, and this was around the time Honey Blonde was playing at The Gin.

“I got this guitar and used to teach myself,” said Rosey. “We liked the Indigo Girl songs because they were in G, C and D,” she said with a laugh, “and drank Tequila Sunrises every Tuesday night! That’s how we started.”

Like Jamie, Rosie points out the time Honey Blonde’s guitarist forgot to tell her that he couldn’t make the Dash Rip Rock show opener as the inception.

“And Gin said, ‘I know this guy who plays guitar, and it was Jamie! He played with us after that, and that’s when we started Rocket 88.”

The couple took a break from performing for a while when Rosey was

in law school, and Jamie was working on his PhD, mostly to figure their next move, but continued writing on the side.

She recalled a time before their son was born, when they spent two nights out at a “creepy” cabin in Sardis for artistic inspiration. “We wrote a ton of songs out there that we still do now,” said Rosey. Among Rocket 88 songs written at the Sardis cabin, were Tombstone, which appears on their 2008 Full Circle album, and Home Cookin’, a Smokey and the Bandit/Jerry Reed-channeling trucker song, included on a live release recorded at The Lyric Theater during the 2012 Oxford Music Festival.

“It didn’t have TV or anything, we rented it just to write songs.”

READY TO ROCK

Although the band lately has been mostly stripped down to a four-piece; including the Poseys, Robbins and Carlton (and at times Gin Gin), for many of the Rafter’s engagements, due to it being a Sunday Gospel Brunch (along with the past two years being a restricting time altogether for live music performing), Rocket 88’s personnel has blown up as large as a ten-piece with a horn section, which happened at a Mardi Gras celebration at local venue Proud Larry's.

The group is slated for a return performance to the North Mississippi Hill Country Picnic, taking place again this year in nearby Waterford, off MS-7, during the last weekend of June.

“We’ll be a full rock band there,” said Jamie. He also mentioned, there may be a possibility Rosie picks up an electric guitar for the special occasion, as she has been known to do in the past. “We’ll just have to see,” he said.

Visit rocket88music.com for more information.

READ THIS BOOK

BOOKS FOR SUMMER

Recommendations from LYN ROBERTS

General Manager, Square Books

SPARRING PARTNERS By John Grisham

#1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham is the acknowledged master of the legal thriller. In his first collection of novellas, law is a common thread, but America’s favorite storyteller has several surprises in store. By turns suspenseful, hilarious, powerful, and moving, these are three of the greatest stories John Grisham has ever told.

DAFFODIL HILL:UPROOTING MY LIFE, BUYING A FARM, AND LEARNING TO BLOOM By Jake Keiser

Jake Keiser was living the life in , Florida, running a high-powered PR firm and juggling drink dates, shopping sprees, and charity galas. But at age thirty-eight, following a failed marriage, a series of miscarriages, and a still-blistering breakup, she began to suffer from extreme anxiety. She decided to make the impulse purchase of a lifetime and bought a farm in the middle of nowhere, Mississippi.

SHIFTY'S BOYS By Chris Offutt

A dark, pacy crime novel about grief and revenge, and the surprises hidden below the surface, Shifty's Boys is a tour de force that confirms Chris Offutt's Mick Hardin as one of the most appealing new investigators in fiction.

THE WORLD OF MARTY STUART By Marty Stuart

In the late 1960s in Philadelphia, Mississippi, nine-year-old Marty Stuart started his first band and began playing country music and collecting treasures of the culture. More than a half century later, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History has partnered with the country musician and ambassador to share his story and collection with the public in an exhibition and tandem publication. CONFESSIONS OF A SOUTHERN BEAUTY QUEEN By Julie Hines Mabus

In the late 1960s, Patsy Channing, a stunningly beautiful young woman, was suspended from the venerable Mississippi State College for Women for breach of conduct. The resulting scandal reached all the way to the Columbus courthouse, and the press ate it up. Julie Mabus tells Patsy's story, marked with tragedy and triumph, mirrors that of a growing and evolving South, where change never comes easy.

THE MOVEMENT MADE US By David J. Dennis, Jr & David J. Dennis Sr.

A dynamic family exchange that pivots between the voices of a father and son, The Movement Made Us is a unique work of oral history and memoir. David Dennis Sr, a core architect of the Civil Rights movement, speaks out for the first time, swapping recollections both harrowing and joyful with David Jr, a journalist working on the front lines of change today. Taken together, their stories paint a critical portrait of America, casting one nation’s image through the lens of two individual Black men and their unique relationship.

LOVE DADDY: LETTERS FROM MY FATHER By David Rae Morris

Love, Daddy: Letters from My Father examines the complexities of father-andson relationships through letters and photographs. Willie Morris wrote scores of letters to his only son, David Rae Morris, from the mid-1970s until Willie's death in 1999. The letters cover topics ranging from writing, the weather, the Ole Miss football season, and local town gossip to the fleas on the dog to just life and how it's lived. Likewise, the photographs are portraits, documentary images of daily life, dinners, outings, and private moments. Together they narrate and illuminate the complexities of one family relationship.

FOOD & DRINK

BY MARY KELLEY PHOTOS SUBMITTED

WWine lovers in Oxford have a new reason to venture down Jackson Avenue. High Cotton Wine and Spirits Warehouse has created their own private label wine, The Bell. This past year, Aaron Herington, owner of High Cotton Wine and Spirits Warehouse, set out to California to create a wine that they could call their own. Similar to the barrel program that is currently offered of hand selected spirits, Herrington became interested in creating a private label wine to be able to offer a product that they helped not only hand select but also create. “As we continued to grow our store and grow our brand, we wanted more personalized options offered to our consumers,” Herrington said. “In us selecting the wine, it is us vouching for the quality of the it. We are trying to put something out there that we think our target consumers would enjoy.” The Bell Pinot Noir, a blend of 76% Pinot Noir and 24% Syrah, is an approachable wine for both new and experienced wine drinkers. The blend of the two grapes adds different aspects and qualities to the wine. It offers bright fruit notes upfront and transitions into a snappy and peppery finish on the end. Depending on your pallet, you might even pick up notes of rose hips or orange rind. While the wine does include a larger amount of Pinot Noir, the Syrah blended in adds the lingering finish making it more of a twodimensional wine versatile for pairing. “The Syrah really gives it a nice lingering finish on the pallet,” Herrington said. “That way it doesn’t stop short after all the bright fruit notes. It kind of rounds it out.” Herrington recommends enjoying the Pinot Noir with dishes that include roasted chicken, filet, lamb and venison.

Although it pairs nicely with meat, he adds that it is also great for casual drinking.

When Herrington set out to California to begin the process of creating his private label blend, he had the intention of returning with just one wine. After creating the Pinot Noir, he also fell in love with a Chardonnay and came back home with both varietals. The Chardonnay was so well received that it has since sold out. Because the Pinot Noir was the purpose of the trip to California, a much larger amount of it was blended and is still available to purchase. For the wine drinkers who still might prefer a chilled wine with the warmer temperatures approaching, Herrington will soon be launching a Rosé to their private label collection. Although Rosé is already enjoyed year-round, Herrington wanted to launch this additional wine so that consumers would be able to enjoy it with spring and summer approaching when Rosé popularity skyrockets.

Consumers can expect the flavors of The Bell Rosé to pair best with spicy dishes like Thai and Indian food as well as charcuterie, lamb, grilled chicken and soft cheeses. “This was kind of the next step for us to focus on a personalized product,” said Herrington. “We wanted to create something from us for our consumers.”

When deciding who he wanted to work with in creating The Bell, Herrington chose Presqu’ile Winery in Santa Maria, California. High Cotton Wine and Spirits Warehouse has carried a variety of their wine for years. After getting to know the owners and winemakers and developing a good relationship with Presqu’ile, Herrington decided to work with them to create his private label. “Because we love the quality of the wine at Presqu’ile and their wine that we sell has been so well received from our consumers in Oxford, we thought it would be a nice fit to work with them,” Herrington adds. The name The Bell was inspired by the history of Presqu’ile Winery. Before venturing off to California, the family who owns the winery originally farmed land in both Louisiana and Arkansas for generations. Once they moved to California, they took a large metal bell to the winery with them from one of their farms. This bell is depicted on the label of The Bell wine bottles. While visiting Presqu’ile, anytime the bell is rung, everyone at the winery is supposed to drink. “So, the story behind the bell inspired the label,” said Herrington. “The idea is to drink and enjoy.” High Cotton Wine and Spirits Warehouse is the only retail shop where The Bell is available for purchase and Herrington has also partnered with several local restaurants in Oxford. Customers can enjoy sipping on The Bell at Snackbar, McEwen’s and Grit, where the private label wine is poured.

FOOD & DRINK

BY DAVIS COEN PHOTOS SUBMITTED

GGRIT restaurant, located in the Plein Air neighborhood of Taylor, has become respected as a top purveyor and destination for traditional-meets-eclectic Southern food in North Mississippi.

Since husband-and-wife owners Nick Reppond and Angie Sicurezza opened in 2016, after years of working together for City Grocery Restaurant Group, and running their A&N Catering company, the menu has consistently evolved while maintaining tried and true items beloved by return customers.

These include Chicken & Waffles, Eggs Benedict, Shrimp & Grits and Huevos Rancheros for their popular Sunday brunch, and Grilled Ribeye, Gulf Shrimp & Peas, African Spiced Chicken, Pork Shoulder “Ribeye” for main dishes on the dinner menu.

There is also a full bar, which serves terrific classic and house cocktails, and offers a highquality wine selection.

Whether menus are created for holidays like Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day or Easter, or improvised for one of their occasional local art installations (or for a curbside/take out-only clientele, such as during the pandemic), the folks at GRIT have continued to push the envelope and show innovative ways to incorporate the freshest seasonal food items around, while always keeping it interesting and mouthwatering.

According to Nick, the summer menu particularly is centered around the local vegetables, and since it’s the heart of tomato season, it tends to feature a lot of heirloom varieties. “Local vegetables during the summertime give us a springboard for ideas,” he said. “That's kind of where we start when we write summer menus, just because they’re so abundant.”

Although heirloom tomato-based dishes are a feature, cucumbers, squash and what Nick calls “amazing fresh peas” are also mainstays during the warmer months.

A customer favorite is GRIT’s Fried Chicken Fridays, which has occurred throughout summer in past years. The seductive photos of this popular fried chicken alone might be enough to “make a preacher lay his bible down.”

Outdoor weather is also a big draw for diners to the Plein Air neighborhood for its laidback natural setting, and the two-acre green space directly outside GRIT and neighboring businesses, which is why its sister catering company A&N becomes consumed with weddings throughout spring, having an exclusive contract with the event venue next door. “It just allows us a little breathing room to also do the restaurant,” Angie said.

The sizable lawn, ideal for picnics and live entertainment, also acted as a strong force during times of the pandemic when most restaurants were struggling to survive, and patrons were unable to enjoy the restaurant’s interior and decor.

“When everyone was kind of getting sick of cooking at home and cleaning up their dirty dishes, and as weather started warming up, people wanted to get outside,” said Angie. “We were really busy during Covid with that, because they would come out as families, or come out on a date and sort of have a lovely picnic.”

Angie also said that during those days the restaurant captured an audience that they hadn’t seen prior. “We thought it was important that when we reopened, we didn't lose that audience, so we made some tweaks to the menu so that we were able to keep those folks coming.”

Although things remain tight for many

restaurants, and staffing issues continue to loom heavy, GRIT has managed to power through. According to Angie they were extremely busy when they reopened, but things have since leveled off.

Although times have been slim for almost everybody, good juju seems to have been on GRIT’s side. How they stumbled upon their unique, charming location alone would support that notion.

The culinary couple were only looking for a “brick and mortar” for A&N Catering when they were hired for a big event by the developer of Plein Air, Campbell McCool, and discussed with him the possibility of opening a business in the neighborhood. They kept in touch for a while before finally learning from McCool that the building they now inhabit, which previously housed an antique store they had frequented, was up for rent. “It was a no brainer for us,” said Angie.

Partnering with Heath Johnson, now Chef de Cuisine and always playing a big part in menu creation and what goes on in the restaurant, GRIT came about and took on a life of its own. Since the couple lived only several miles out, it all just made sense.

“Lately everyone has kind of had to crank it up a notch, but we're powering through,” said Angie.

Visit their website at grittaylor.com for updated food and drink menus, and hours of operation.

FOOD & DRINK

BY MAYA MARTIN PHOTOS BY JOEY BRENT

SSitting on the Courthouse Square in downtown Oxford is a two-story, exposed brick building that serves some of the finest Southern food in the region.

City Grocery celebrates 30 years of feeding Oxford and the greater community with memorable dishes and setting. It has garnered constant recognition features from esteemed publications such as The New York Times, Southern Living,

USA Today, Bon Appetit and more as a fine Mississippi establishment. The restaurant’s cooking team has also been repeatedly invited to cook at the James

Beard House over the years since its inception. Award-winning chef, restauranteur and

City Grocery founder John Currence never could have imagined City Grocery to have the legacy it has created. He never planned to settle down in Oxford with his creation. “I had helped open restaurants in the past, but I wanted to open one for myself to check that box,” he said. “I thought I’d be in Oxford for a few years, sell my interest and move on. Go back to New

Orleans or New York or somewhere.

Fortunately, things turned out the way that they did and I’m still in Oxford.”

Although it was a goal, Currence said he didn’t have “any business” opening a restaurant.

“I didn’t know about any one thing to create a restaurant that was in any way thematic or ethnic. I was just dangerous enough, armed with enough knowledge of a number of things to open a place where I could draw from my own experience.”

A Southern man through and through, Currence called on his experience with Creole-French and Cajun cuisine to inspire the familiar yet upscale menu at City Grocery. The menu features influences from Asian, Italian, French and Southwestern fare as well.

From the home-cooking he experienced growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana to his travels through Europe, the City Grocery menu takes Currence’s back catalog and condenses it into something that pleases the community.

“I just did things I knew would make people happy and created a menu with enough stuff on there that everybody that came in could at least find something they wanted to eat or something that sounded interesting,” he said.

What better place to show off your culinary experience than Oxford? Back in 1992, Oxford was not the gastronomic hub it would soon become, but that time created a situation ripe with opportunity and curious eaters.

“There was nothing going on in Oxford and there was enough of a young, professional clientele that was hungry for something,” Currence. “And once we got those doors open, there was no looking back.”

City Grocery changes the perception of what Southern food is. To Chef Currence, Southern food is infinitely more than its stereotype and does a disservice to the cultures that define it.

He lists Creole-Italian, Italian, French, German, Caribbean and West Africa as strong influences on what we know to be Southern food.

“Southern food has been completely misunderstood by people for years,” said Currence. “They want to cubbyhole it in the corner of ‘Southern food is fried, it’s unhealthy. They cook vegetables and meat by letting it stew all day long.’ Southern food is an incredible tapestry of different immigrant populations that moved to the OxfordMag.com 35

United States and tried to create the dishes of their homeland with the ingredients that were available.”

Now take that same concept but elevate it. Familiar and recognize dishes receive an upgrade at City Grocery, “elevating [their dishes] above qualification as regional and ethnic cuisine,” the restaurant’s site reads.

Some would credit Currence and City Grocery for making Oxford the foodie town it is today. The chef recognized that recognition with some hesitance.

“People level that barrel at us and it would be wrong of me to say that we weren’t a part of it,” said Currence. “We certainly were. The establishment of the Southern Foodways Alliance certainly helped elevate that and I think our dedication to opening quality establishments which we did sort of hand over fist for a long time.”

Although the food is a standout aspect of why City Grocery has stood the test of time, to Currence, the service plays just as big of a part.

“Our dedication has always been as much to service as it is to food,” the chef said. “Sadly, there is this connotation that dining is all about food. ‘What did you think about the food of this place? What did you think about the food of that place?’ As far as I’m concerned, the service plays a much more important role in the experience of dining out than the food does.”

According to him, a spectacular server or manager can overcome the experience of a bad meal. Customers are willing to give the restaurant another shot than to one with good food and terrible service. The experience is all about the customer.

“And I love that,” said the chef.

Currence taps into the need to establish a connection with the people they feed. Creating the ideal dining experience coupled with fantastic food and eager pool of customers is an assured way to keep the doors open for a long time.

When you walk into City Grocery, it should feel like visiting a friend’s home for a wellcooked dinner.

“We’ve always set up the restaurant so that people would feel welcome and included no matter their walk of life, their income, their race, religious preference or sexual preference,” said Currence. “We’re an enviroment about inclusion. We take care of people.”

And as much as City Grocery cares for the people, the people in Oxford are taking care of City Grocery. Square Books owners Lisa and Richard Howorth have been some of City Grocery’s biggest supporters, ones who fell in love with what City Grocery was doing and went all in, stated Currence.

“That became the place where they brought everybody when [Richard] came to town to do a reading or a signing,” he said. “Everybody was brought to the bar for a welcome drink and an intro to Oxford.

“It was sitting on the balcony of Square Books sipping coffee and working on menus and recipes before we opened City Grocery that, quickly, I realized how significant that place would be and how significant it would be to our success. It’s important to grow these relationships because [the Howorths are] the real trailblazers for Oxford.”

That kind of support and appreciation has helped City Grocery keep running, strong and with no end in sight. Now it’s all up the restaurant’s team to keep that fire burning and to give the community what they are craving.

“The future for City Grocery are very much the guys running that kitchen,” Currence said. “Nick Schlager and Eric Tate are the brains behind the kitchen right now and Jennifer Nelson who is running the front end of the house have brought a new life into the Grocery. I think it is, right now and without, the best the restaurant has ever been.”

To learn more about City Grocery, visit the website at www.citygroceryonline.com/citygrocery.