Ground Zero seems half-real, a massive open room carved from an old warehouse, measled with signatures of every soul who’d passed a night away there on the walls. The singer on stage put two tip buckets on the stage, explaining the second was the “Mustang Sally” bucket; you had to pay extra to get them to play that one. This struck me as a curious bit of snobbery. Then he launched in the “Sweet Home Chicago,” as tired a blues standard as any of Sally’s rides. An old black man in a shocking red suit kept approaching the stage a number of times until the band relented. Josh “Razorblade” Stewart made the most of the one song he was granted, a smoldering love jam he pushed to the ten minute mark before the band cycled back into the same blues night warhorses played at happy hours the world over.

I wondered what people come here for—why a posh French restaurant and bar with a manufactured blues patina that would rather indirectly reference the blues than let it up on stage—when I spotted my dining companions across the room. The judge told me he retired to travel and eat and were it not for Madidi and the boutique hotels and this little blues club, he might not make the trip down from Little Rock. It’s not enough that a history or heritage exists; it’s that it needs to open itself up to reinterpretation. The real thing is sometimes just not enough; it needs to be wrapped up in a destination to get people to actually come. It’s doubtful that any of these places would make any money alone, but their synergy offers  potential for an idea of Clarksdale very different from that empty cold street on the night I arrived..

Details. Details. Details.

Madidi
164 Delta Avenue
(662) 627-7770 • madidires.com

Big Pink Guest House
312 Yazoo Avenue
(601) 431-4961 • bigpinkguesthouse.com

Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art
252 Delta Avenue
(662) 624-5992 • cathead.biz

Ground Zero Blues Club
0 Blues Alley
(662) 621-9009
groundzerobluesclub.com

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