Joe Pug (photo by Ryan Nolan)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Joe Pug is No Depression’s Spotlight artist for March 2024. Learn more about him and his new album, Sketch of a Promised Departure, in our interview, and check out a video of him performing “No Place a Good Man Can Hide” for ND readers here.
A former landlord of mine once claimed that the stretch of Interstate 35 running through Austin was built upon an ancient Indian hunting trail. It was thousands of years old, he said. The same narrow path that was once trod by Paleolithic hunters is now traveled by Freightliners.
One must consider the source of such an astonishing claim. Indeed, this landlord was notorious for taking narrative liberties. But in this case he took none. The first Spanish explorer entered Texas in 1689 upon the Camino Real de Los Tejas. It is the oldest known trail in America, making The Oregon Trail look comparatively young. And sure enough, Interstate 35 generally follows it. Austin exists because of a buffalo trail.
My final show of last year took me to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. The area was once home to a vast bounty of white pine, much of it clustered along the banks of the Chippewa River. Before railroads, the only practical method for extracting timber from a forest was floating the logs down a river. In 1837, they built a sawmill at the foot of Chippewa Falls, and the town exists because of it.
Cities don’t just appear at random like marbles strewn on a paper map. They exist for particular reasons: a natural harbor, a temperate climate, a navigable river, a Fertile Crescent, a defensible border. Railroads used to have watering and sanding stations every 20 miles or so. No railroad, no town. Form follows function. A town’s establishment follows predictable patterns. It is increasingly obvious to me that the well-ordered human life is no different.
Traveling the country to play concerts, I see people over the course of their lives. I see them first with beers in hand, as drunk college students. A few years later, I see them as pensive yet earnest young adults. The next time I return, they are young parents, sneaking out to the gig with the help of a babysitter. Lately, though, I’ve seen a new person. It’s not one particular person, mind you, but rather a collection of people. A collection with the same story. Let’s call this archetype the Man of Possibility. Allow me to paint his portrait:
He’s built a life in Asheville but he’s thinking about moving. Maybe Kansas City. Maybe Denver. He’s heard Bozeman is on the come-up. He’s seeing a girl right now but also keeping his options open. She’s lovely, you see, but maybe a better prize waits, just around the corner. He has a decade of experience in his profession but he’s beginning to dabble in other trades. Things at work are just starting to feel stale.
This is the Man of Possibility. Well into his late 30s and early 40s, he is still 100% potential energy. His life is a handful of marbles strewn over a paper map. Where he rolls onto next is anyone’s guess — maybe not even his. He is the embodiment of a particular, restless kind of freedom.
My life, on the other hand, is tightly circumscribed. I married the girl that I took to senior prom. We live a heartbeat from the high school where we met. We have three kids, a mortgage, and a weekly grocery bill that we obsess over. Simply put, I will never live in Kansas City, Denver, or Bozeman.
I am unusually fixated on the Man of Possibility because I am surprised that I’m not one myself. I’m a college dropout who plays nightclubs for a living. Not so long ago, Possibility was the currency I prized above all else. It was easily a path I could have taken. It was, in fact, the path I was most predisposed to taking. Somewhere along the way, I diverged. Why and to what end?
Chippewa Falls is a small, good town. Population 15,000, soaking wet. It makes Eau Claire look like a genuine metropolis. Scores of frame taverns hug the winding roads, ready-made refuges from countless snowy Wisconsin evenings. They all sport vintage names — The Brass Lantern, Rookies Pub, Tomahawk Room. The bartenders are quick to pour a brandy old fashioned, the unofficial state cocktail of Wisconsin (sugar cube, lemon peel, brandy, splash of soda).
Drawn to town to play a benefit concert for a friend, I arrived in a sour mood. My trip had already been five dismal days of nursing a sore throat, eating meals in gas stations, and perennial worry about money. Arriving in the late morning, I was deep in a private reverie dedicated to exploring my own status as a martyr.
Those spiraling feelings of exhaustion and doom melted away, though, as I entered the sacred space that the event organizers had arranged. Before the gig, you see, they had arranged a banquet. It was to be held in the style of a Georgian feast (the country, not the state). It is called a keipi (sometimes also known as a supra) and its hallmark is a never-ending series of toasts.
Instantly, I was transported. The room was candlelit. A narrow table draped in a decorative cloth was overflowing with heaping bowls: sausage, bean salad, seasoned potatoes, roasted chicken legs, buttered bread, relishes. Tall carafes of red table wine at every diner’s elbow.
Before I knew it, the feast began. We toasted our mothers. We toasted our nation, all those who had ever defended it. We toasted the departed. We toasted the spirit of romance. A woman toasted the soul of her young son who had lately taken his own life. Laughter and tears flowed in equal measure. A brother and sister who had traveled from Minnesota rose to sing a Georgian folk song, a cappella. As they sang, underlit by the table’s candles, the soft light flickering on their faces, they resembled angels.
In some very real sense, the banquet was a preview of heaven. It gave me the profound sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. Suddenly, I felt like a city built on an ancient buffalo trail; a frontier town built to support a sawmill; a city built for a reason. In this otherwise ordinary room, in this far-flung little village, I was living out my Destiny.
Why hadn’t I remained a Man of Possibility? Because somewhere along the line I had unconsciously intuited that everyone must choose between Possibility and Destiny. You can’t have both. If you want to live out what you should become, you must first die to what you could become. And that means dying to most things. Most of our destinies will not be on the International Space Station or in Carnegie Hall or in the cloak room of the U.S. Senate. Most of our destinies will be in the Tomahawk Room on Fish Fry Friday.
And that’s just fine. Because all the Possibility that ever was, set next to Destiny, would scarcely fill a cup.
