Mile Train: B's Blog

As many of you know Mile Train has been accepted into the Springing the Blues Festival in Jacksonville, Fl this year. Springing the Blues is an annual event that showcases up-and-coming blues and rock artists from around the Southeast. This is a huge step for the band! We are more than excited about the exposure and opportunities this event will place before us and we owe so much gratitude to all of our friends who have supported us. Without the love of our fans we could never have made it this far or have the strength to carry our music to the next level. Thanks to each of you and remember we'll always play for you!!

Train Tea: 6 oz. sweet tea, 3 oz. Moonshine, 2 oz. Triple Sec, 1 oz. Cointreau. Mix over ice and shake the hell out of it.
Created 11/7/09 sometime in the wee hours of the morning by David Pippin and Tim Mattlock.

In Strange Times:

Back to Basics


A lot has changed in recent months: new equipment, new members, and new stories. Reddish had lost himself in a world of shadowy self doubt and unawareness, caught up in the chaos in order to prove that this is not a joyous world we live in. In such depressing times one might find themselves in a place of deconstruction. I found myself in such a place one Monday night after the local open jam had concluded.

David was having a debate about faith and believing with one of the locals in the bar when he turned to me and asked, “Bryan, do you believe in music?” I thought for a moment and answered that I did not, not entirely sure what the question was actually asking. This sparked a long idealistic debate on what music really is. The debate went as follows:

My argument: Music is a product of our imagination; it does not exist in our natural physical reality. It is sound and vibration that is meaningless until it is perceived as music by a person or persons. I support this idea by suggesting that music is subjective and varies with the perception of individuals, which leads me to think that music only exists in our imagination. If one thinks of music as a language with which we communicate ideas, it is only understood by those who understand the language, just like any other language that we learn. To summarize: Nothing is music, but anything could be music depending on the perception by the listener.


David’s argument: Music does exist in our natural reality. Even babies who are not yet born are affected by music. Music becomes so engrained in a culture that it becomes genetic, and understood by everyone to some capacity. We naturally recognize sounds, pulses and vibrations as music. If one thinks of music as a language with which to communicate ideas, perhaps it is a language that we understand before any other. Everything has the capacity to become music, even vibrations that are not sounds. Light vibrations can even be perceived as music. But as perception by individuals change, so does their definition, which is why different tastes arise and different people create different music. To summarize: Everything is essentially music, with various perceptions based on subjectivity of individual listeners.

It looks nice and neat on paper, but this isn’t really how it went. This is the information that was flying around the room over our heads in the ethos. I’ve never been good at argument, so what I actually said probably didn’t make any sense at all. Communicating with spoken words has never been my strongest attribute. I think we can agree that when dealing with something like music, or any art for that matter, it is impossible for us to really get a finite idea of what is actually going on. It’s something in between mine and David’s ideals. Perhaps it’s something else altogether and we’re not even close. It’ll probably cross my mind every once in a while for the rest of my life.

This is all great, but the problem here is that this wasn’t what David was asking me at all. Whether music exists or not is ludicrous to argue about because it’s right there in front of us all the time, whether it be a product of our imagination or not. I saw this in hindsight after I realized what David was actually asking me if I believed in music enough to stake my life on it; if I am willing to put everything I have and all of my time and energy into this mysterious creature of creation. It seems like a dangerous question at first seeing as how I’m not even sure what music really is, but truthfully it’s a no-brainer.

I have my ideals, most of which I do not hold steadfast to including the one I supported in the argument. I like to keep ideals around as tools to use when I need to. Ideals quickly become the fabric of our reality, so I feel that it’s best to rely on as few as possible if they start to fall apart. Your entire reality could come crashing down on you in a fatally cold depression if the fabric came apart on your vital ideals. However I am confident in my emotions and I certainly believe that music is worth staking my life on. I guess you could say that David helped me to believe in music again.

-B Hall

The Last Great Watering Hole

By Bryan Hall

Reddish got bloody while roaming through the woods of rural Florida. He found himself in the back of a pickup truck, with a strange sensation that he was moving backwards, when in reality he was moving forward. He came to a door, went inside and found a couch. With much struggle trying to find a comfortable position on the couch he began to bleed profusely from the nose. Suddenly he was assaulted by the cries and whimpers from the black hounds of Hell. As he approached young Crock-pot sausages he began to yell uncontrollably. After a long pause and deep reflection, he tasted the freshly stomped grapes, and it was good. The memories must seem crooked and out of sync with reality somehow. They all run together like smeared ink. The words are all there, but smudged by the brutal hand of a nasty hangover. What had we done? What was our purpose in this place? Had we driven all this way to north Florida for the money, or as some bewildered freshmen in the music business like to call, the “experience?” Or did our adventure have far more existential gains -- so subtle that they might as well not exist at all? Was it a small transformation of the subconscious psyche? Shit, I’m not entirely sure myself. I definitely came home with some dough in my wallet, and some stories to tell and lessons learned. But perhaps something truly wonderful came about, on an infinitesimal scale.

Where to start? The beginning I guess. We set out to find our long term goal, that is not as cliché as Fortune; a spiritual treasure, I suppose, of Rock & Roll. This was to be an ambitious night for sure. This wasn’t just another night at our usual Jacksonville get-away gig. This was going to something far grander. You could feel it in the air. A sort of tension, a fiery intensity would be brought to life by our music. This was to be our first night at The Last Great Watering Hole.

What we got was a busted PA. The damned bastard machine was like a stubborn mule that refuses to help itself out of a deep muddy road. It told us quite frankly to fuck off, in its own way. It was a way that consisted of conking out whenever someone sang with any kind of volume in their voice into the microphone. After a lengthy period of trying to settle on a diagnosis, we came to the conclusion that it was indeed fucked-up. We begrudgingly played through some of our instrumental tunes, and improvised a couple as well. Usually our instrumentals go over pretty well in bars, even the jazz tunes. But it hadn’t occurred to me that they might only go over well because they fit nicely in the framework of a set of vocal tunes. In other words, the crowd wasn’t buying it. Even the homeless guy, who drinks all the half-beers out of the trash can, came in to tell us that we weren’t doing so hot. Maybe we were just bummed that our shit was broken, and the crowd was picking up on that vibe. I think it would be more accurate to say that the importance of David’s vocals had been grossly taken for granted.


Eventually David got the PA working again by running the sound through his guitar amp. With the vocals returned, our vibe immediately took a turn for the better. All of a sudden the walls and the windows and the knick-knacks on the wall all seemed to say “Ah, much better.” The room seemed lighter. People came back inside and our evening of music started to come together. So the sound was partially being run through a guitar amp – big deal. What’s important is that the sound was there. All the pieces were back together for it to happen.

In the end the Gods were pleased. Only one E-string was sacrificed. The Gods smiled on us with experience, great meals, money, and beautiful women. Although I think our sacrifice at The Last Great Watering Hole, in reality, was much greater. Our years become our sacrifice. Our work, practice, debt, and burned bridges are all sacrifices that culminate at the very moment to help shape our experiences. Our tools are becoming exhausted, but the crowd doesn’t seem to mind. They are here for Communion. Everyone is merry and drunk with the brewing of our good sounds, rhythms, and vibes.

The second night was another search for discovery; a search for an answer to an ethical and moral dilemma – how much excess is too much? Where does one draw the line for moderation? We were welcomed with love and cold beer, and some killer home cooking when we arrived in MacClenny. This was the first show we’d ever played that sold tickets. The tickets even had our logo printed on them. We set up our wounded equipment and commenced our set to a crowd ready and waiting with intently tuned ears and open minds. All of the pieces were there for a truly wonderful show, and we played our asses off. It’s kind of strange how a little beer can remove enough of your ego and let your soul shine through. Sometimes I wonder if our inhibitions are attached to the ego somehow – like a fear of failure trying to protect the ego inhibits the care and oneness with the high Quality needed to play unfettered interweaving lines. A removal of these inhibitions is necessary to be one with this high Quality. A sort of “Fuck-it” attitude must exist in the mind simultaneously with a realization of the importance of what we’re doing. Beer definitely helps. The trick is knowing how much, if any, is enough to help remove some of these inhibitions without going overboard. We must learn to be loose and tight all at the same time.

Afterwards we locked up and got drunk. There were the usual rituals of a southern get-together, Hoot-nanny, a wild party for sure. These rituals include the passing around of various stringed instruments and other things. A 12-string guitar was passed around for a minute. A horrible little mandolin that couldn’t be tuned in any conventional sense made its way into the circle somehow. There was some kind of homemade smoothie drink that some folks were drinking, that had real smashed up grapes in it. Homemade in the most radical sense, it’s the only way to do things around these parts. A cloud of hazy blue smoke billowed out the front door of our hosts’ establishment as we studied the habits of a giant millipede as it made its way across the front lawn.


The third day was a day of rest and relaxation. Listening, jamming, and hanging out with fellow followers of the Rock Spirituality back at The Watering Hole. There was a band playing this day, so all we had to do was sit back and enjoy. The three of us were allowed to sit in with the band at one point, so we took hacksaws, hammers, and chainsaws to their instruments. We were really trying to get off on the good foot. They were cool about it though. We’re all music lovers here, real Wookies. Real people of culture have a music all their own, and they meet in Communion. We were there; we experienced that Communion. You might never get along with a person, but the music of this culture is what matters in this place: The Last Great Watering Hole.

Then we made the long drive home – Two Nails, Three Donkeys, and a Hidden Passage. What does it mean? We enjoyed a $4, 1950’s trivia quiz book while the squeals of Satan blared through the radio. We were most thankful for our fixed AC (we were Ice…Cold.) It hadn’t worked for a while, making our trips harsh, tense and filled with a subtle foul odor. The AC again worketh, with the sweet harmony of relaxation.

The big open fields of South Georgia
One lonely Tree stands old and reaching
It has infinite reaching in its lonely space
But you have to look inward to see it
You have to look with infinite reach
Whales rise up from the ground

-BH-