WHERE THE HICKORY WIND BLOWS

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WHERE THE Hickory Wind Hickory Wind Hickory Wind Blows

GRAM PARSONS INSPIRED A BLEND OF COUNTRY AND ROCK MUSIC THAT LIVES ON IN HIS CHILDHOOD HOMETOWN OF WAYCROSS

Canadian singer-songwriter Daniel Romano performs at the 2015 Gram Parsons Guitar Pull and Tribute Festival at the Okefenokee Fairgrounds.

PHOTO BY SHERRY DEAL PHOTOGRAPHY

Dave Gri n has a vivid memory of the day he discovered Gram Parsons. It was in July 1973 and he was 19, working as a delivery driver for a building supply company. He was on a lunch break in his truck, which he had parked at the St. Simons Island waterfront while he thumbed through an entertainment magazine.

Here’s how the Waycross native described the moment in “Tails of the Weak,” a collection of blog posts and newspaper columns he published in 2018: “I began reading a review of an album called, simply, GP. … The reviewer stated, ‘Much of the music on GP is reminiscent of the country music played on radio stations in Waycross, Georgia, where Gram grew up as a child.’ Have mercy!

Sean Clark and Connor Gri n form Waycross’s Pine Box Dwellers. Connor’s father, Dave (pictured below), is also a working musician, as well as a music promoter, author and podcast host.

PHOTO COURTESY OF FESTIVUS MEDIA INSET PHOTO BY ALLEN ALLNOCH / AHA! PHOTOGRAPHY

“I headed back to Waycross and Billy Ray’s trailer with the news. From that day forward, our lives were transformed. Sleepy little ol’ Waycross was home to a bona fi de musician.”

Billy Ray was Billy Ray Herrin, a lifelong friend of Dave’s and a fellow budding musician. Gram, the newly discovered celebrity in Dave’s eyes, was the country-rock music pioneer who had played with the Byrds, helped form the Flying Burrito Brothers, and just released the fi rst of two groundbreaking (albeit largely ignored at the time) solo albums.

Just two months after Gri n’s discovery in coastal Georgia, Parsons tragically died at age 26 in Joshua Tree, California. Herrin and Griffi n have worked tirelessly over the years to keep Parsons’ legacy alive in Southeast Georgia – Herrin as a music historian and music store owner, and Gri n as founder of the Gram Parsons Guitar Pull and Tribute Festival, held every fall at the Okefenokee Fairgrounds.

Parsons spent most of his fi nal years in Southern California, where he blended honky-tonk country, rockand-roll and other infl uences into a style that he called “Cosmic American Music.” That vision surely took its seed from the swampy environs of Ware County, and its spirit is alive in an eclectic community of musicians around Southeast Georgia today.

THE KING COMES CALLING

Gram Parsons grew up in Waycross as Ingram Cecil Connor III, son of Cecil “Coon Dog” Connor and Avis Snively Connor. Coon Dog managed a factory that supplied boxes for Snively Groves, the Florida citrus empire he had married into. The Connors lived on Suwanee Drive in Waycross’s Cherokee Heights neighborhood, where young Ingram and his sister, “Little Avis,” would perform “concerts” on the front stoop for their friends.

Gram’s love of the stage was born when he saw Elvis Presley play the Waycross City Auditorium on February 22, 1956. Herrin, whose Waycross store, Hickory Wind Music, is named after one of Parsons’ bestknown songs, described the event in the 2004 documentary fi lm “Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel.”

“Here was his fi rst really rock-nroll infl uence,” Herrin told fi lmmaker Gandulf Hennig. “They say that it changed his life to the point [that] the next day he was a di erent kid.”

After Parsons died, Herrin began diligently researching Gram and his Waycross upbringing. Long considered an authority on Parsons’ early life, Herrin was one of the sources Rolling Stone writer Ben Fong-Torres called on when writing his 1991 biography “Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons.”

Sadly, part of the story was the suicide of Coon Dog Connor, who took his life in December 1958. His widow moved back to Florida, where she married a man named Bob Parsons, and Bob adopted the children, which is how Ingram Cecil Connor III became

Gram Parsons.

Gram traveled the world, but he never forgot his roots. The song “Hickory Wind” opens with a reference to South Carolina – where “there are many tall pines” – but Herrin contends that the sweet-yet-mournful ballad was actually inspired by the tree-lined avenues of Gram’s childhood hometown.

It's a hard way to fi nd out / That trouble is real / In a faraway city / With a faraway feel

But it makes me feel better / Each time it begins / Callin’ me home / Hickory wind

“You can see it on Seminole Trail,” Herrin says. “I took Ben [Fong-Torres] down the road; he saw it. I’ve taken Bob Buchanan [Parsons’ co-writer on ‘Hickory Wind’]. Everybody I’ve ever taken down that road who’s familiar with Gram and ‘Hickory Wind,’ they know exactly what I’m saying.”

THERE’S SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Like Herrin, Gri n has spent his life around music. The pair were part of a local outfi t, Sweetbriar, in the 1970s, and they later co-wrote songs for legendary music publisher Bill Lowery. Gri n is still a gigging musician, and he and fellow Waycross singer-songwriter Sean Clark host a podcast, “Something in the Water,” on which they discuss music, songwriting and life in general with musicians and other creative types.

Clark and percussionist Connor Gri n (Dave’s son) record and perform as the Pine Box Dwellers, an acoustic act with a sound Clark describes as “swampadelic.” Gri n and Clark named their podcast after a song Clark wrote. It explores the idea that something in these parts fosters the making of good music.

“When that cold black water fi nds its way ’cross through your veins,” Clark sings, “It just might seal your fate.”

It’s a valid notion, Dave Gri n says. “When music comes from a place, there’s generally a river or a body of water close by. I mean, we’re sitting right here on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, and I think there’s something primitive that comes out of that. It’s worming around inside you, and somehow it comes out.”

Adds Connor Gri n, “Gram Parsons, Tom Petty, all these people we idolize came from in or around [the Southeast]. Elvis passed through here. Just all these di erent elements

Waycross native Billy Ray Herrin is a well-known authority on Parsons, and his Hickory Wind Music store contains an excellent collection of Americana music memorabilia.

Swampy Swampy Swampy Sounds Sounds Sounds

5 Rootsy Names to Know

The Pine Box Dwellers

This Waycross-based rootsrock band draws on a wide range of infl uences that form a sound they describe as “a mix of rust, whiskey, train smoke, ghosts and forsakenness.” pineboxdwellers.com

Uncle Dave Griffin

Waycross native plays locally and regionally as a solo artist, as well as with his Waycross Stagecoach, a “traveling musical roadshow” that pays tribute to various rock and country acts. safeathomeproductions.com/ uncle-dave-gri n-bio

The Page Brothers Band

Brothers Dakota and Travis Page of Adel front this outfi t that has cultivated a soulful, bluesy sound all of its own. facebook.com/ thepagebrothersband

Flintlock Annie

Vocalists DeAnna Verneau and Daniel Parrish and their Albany-based band feature a “grungy Americana sound mixed with soulful undertones.” fl intlockannie.com

Elizabeth Cook

This colorful Pierce County High graduate has fashioned a versatile persona in Nashville: Recording artist, radio host on Sirius-XM’s “Outlaw Country,” and TV fi shing show host on the Circle network. elizabeth-cook.com

Ian Dunlop, a contemporary of Gram Parsons, appeared at the 2019 and 2022 editions of the festival that pays tribute to his late friend. The annual fall gathering spawned a second, more eclectic event in the spring, the Swamptown Getdown. | PHOTO BY BILL DAVIS Heritage Center GP Exhibit: Gram Parsons is featured in a detailed exhibit at Waycross’s Okefenokee Heritage

WHERE THE HICKORY WIND BLOWS

Center. | PHOTO BY ALLEN ALLNOCH / AHA! PHOTOGRAPHY

coming together.”

In 1998, Dave decided to honor Parsons by hosting a small gathering of local musicians in his back yard. By 2001 the event was known as the Gram Parsons Guitar Pull; it drew some 250 attendees that year and Gri n realized it was time for a bigger venue. Since 2002, the annual Gram Parsons Guitar Pull and Tribute Festival has drawn GP fans and music afi cionados from around the world to the Okefenokee Fairgrounds.

Headliners have included Jon Corneal and Ian Dunlop (bandmates of Parsons in the 1960s-era International Submarine Band), Bernie Leadon (Flying Burrito Brothers, the Eagles), Larry Murray (a Waycross native who’s a Southern California folk music legend in his own right), Leon Russell, Dr. Ralph Stanley, and Marty Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives. In 2011 the event birthed a spin-o , the Swamptown Getdown and Arts Festival; it’s held every spring, also at the fairgrounds.

“It’s all from the heart,” Dave Gri n says. “The backbone of these music festivals, especially the Gram Parsons Guitar Pull, are the supporting acts – they’re big Gram fans, and they come to play on the stage in his hometown.”

Clark’s band is a regular performer at the festivals, as are numerous other local and regional acts that fi t the “Americana” or “Roots Music” category. (See sidebar for more acts with Southeast Georgia ties.)

“I tell people all the time, if you’re ever going to come to Waycross, [festival weekends] are the times I would suggest coming,” Clark says. “You go to some festivals and it just seems real put-on. It’s not that at all here. I’ve never been to another festival like it.”

An Alabama couple, Paul Campbell and Lorene Flanders, have been regular attenders of the GPGP Festival for the past decade. They may have captured its spirit best when they told Gri n, “It’s the least pretentious music festival you’ve ever been to.”

“Least pretentious” might describe Parsons’ music, too. From the country-tinged sound to the heartfelt lyrics to his aching, sometimes cracked, vocals, it’s an art form that cuts straight to the heart. It has inspired legions of musicians around the world, including right here where it all began, on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp. OL

Learn More Learn More Learn More

Gram Parsons Guitar Pull and Tribute Festival Swamptown Getdown Music and Arts Festival safeathomeproductions.com

Something in the Water Podcast facebook.com/ somethinginthewaterpodcast

Okefenokee Heritage Center Gram Parsons Exhibit okefenokeeheritagecenter.org/ gram-parsons

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