I was uniquely primed for Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, aka Will Oldham, who performed at Minglewood Hall on Tuesday night.
Back in the early 1990s, when he was performing under the Palace Bros. moniker, I booked Oldham’s first and second Memphis appearances at Barristers. At one of those shows, he angrily kicked his monitor off the stage. At another, he refused to speak to me directly and instead insisted on whispering to his Mardi-Gras-mask-clad merch girl, who would then relay his questions to me, and my answers to him, all while we were standing about 2 feet apart. Not much later, I ran into Oldham again during a session at Easley-McCain Recording Studio, when he asked me (directly, this time) for directions to Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint, then in full swing. The next night, of course, I ran into him at Junior’s Place, and he snubbed me once again.
Okay, he was an asshole. But I still enjoyed his music. I didn’t go out of my way to see Oldham play locally, but I did enjoy the epic-length profile of him that recently appeared in the New Yorker. And so, when I offered to host friends-of-friends-of-friends Bachelorette, the New Zealand-based pop band that opened the MInglewood Hall show, and got free tickets, I decided to go.
