Chris Stapleton – Loopcircus

Alright, alright, alright! Ronnie and Rocinante started this tour from the great state of Kansas, and in the stompin’ rock-n-roll salad days, Kansas was famous for springtime tornadoes. Well, times change, people change, and apparently weather patterns change as well. For instance, here in the Southeastern states, the approach of March and April 2025 subjected Ronnie and Rocinante to three, count ’em, three white knuckle evenings where one eye was on the online tornado trackers and the other on streaming movies. Two of those evenings featured sirens screaming, “take cover people, a funnel has been spotted!!”

Now, being a lifelong Kansas native, Ronnie’s habit is to hightail it outdoors to look for the funnel. But all three of these incidents happened at night, and those are no fun at all. So, there they were, watching for danger funnels on the radar trackers while Ronnie formulated a plan for what to do if the damn thing rolled over them. Once, they had a nearby ditch to duck into, but the other two times, just Cracker Barrel which is closed after 10:00pm. So Ronnie’s idea was to wrap himself in a substantially padded sleeping bag, strap into the passenger seat and ride it out with Rocinante. The good news? They didn’t have to resort to drastic measures on any of these evenings, but the most recent incident did scare Ronnie a bit, and the psychic reverberations are chronicled in the below dream dispatch (embellishments taken by artistic license)..

Buckle up, Buttercup, because we’re driving headfirst into the swirling, screaming maw of a river-riding tornado, a meteorological monstrosity tracing the muddy spine of the Mississippi and Ohio, a psychedelic serpent of wind and chaos, as the Mississippi, usually a languid giant, began to froth. From the trembling neon of Beale Street, a tornado, not of wind, but of memory and distorted reality, spun to life. It didn’t roar, it whispered, a chorus of forgotten river songs, bourbon-soaked laments, and the echoes of civil war battles all the way from the blues-soaked delta of Memphis to the bourbon-soaked hills of Louisville.

It started, as these things often do, with a whisper, a low growl in the humid air above Beale Street, a pregnant pause in the rhythm of the blues. Then, BOOM, a swirling vortex of fury ripped through the neon haze, sucking up stray guitar licks and the lingering scent of barbecue like a cosmic vacuum cleaner. We’re talking a twister with a goddamn attitude, folks, a hell-bent hurricane on a pilgrimage to the heart of bluegrass country.

Upriver it raged, a furious finger pointing towards Kentucky, leaving behind a trail of bewildered catfish and flattened riverboats. The swirling vortex first caught the echoes of Elvis’s ghostly hip swivels, then twisted north, past the slumbering cotton fields. The air shimmered, and we saw a young Jennifer Lawrence, not on a red carpet, but atop a wild-eyed pony, her laughter echoing across the rolling hills of her childhood farm. “Those horses,” she whispered, her voice a phantom breeze, “they knew the secrets of the land, secrets the river whispered too.” The tornado, momentarily calmed, seemed to nod, then resumed its watery ascent.

Next, the phantom funnel roared past Churchill Downs, where the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson, fueled by a lifetime of Wild Turkey and mescaline, materialized in a puff of ganja smoke. He was ranting about the “equine gentry,” their manicured hooves and bloodline arrogance, as the tornado ripped the fancy hats off the heads of bewildered spectators. “Fear and Loathing in Tornado Alley,” he’d scream, his banshee voice lost in the wind, “a goddamn vortex of pure, unadulterated madness!”

The tempest continued its journey, a whirling dervish of destruction, passing over Louisville, where the spirit of Muhammad Ali, light as a butterfly and stinging like a bee, rose to meet it. He was projected into a snowy black & white television screen reliving a defiant response to the military draft, his voice echoing through the storm, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home to drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” The audio glitched, he continued through the white noise, “I got no quarrel with them Viet Cong!” he said. The tornado, momentarily stunned by his sheer force of personality, seemed to hesitate, then roared on, a begrudging respect in its howl.

Further up the Ohio, the ghost of Abe Lincoln, his lanky frame emerging from the mist, pointed a spectral finger towards his “sinking spring” childhood home. “Even the land weeps,” he intoned, his voice deep and resonant, “when the balance is disturbed.” The tornado, perhaps sensing a kindred spirit in the rail-splitter’s melancholic wisdom, seemed to soften its destructive touch, leaving the old homestead relatively unscathed.

Then, the storm reached the heart of bluegrass country, where Chris Stapleton, his voice a whiskey-soaked lament, stood defiant against the swirling chaos, his trademark cowboy hat firmly planted on his head. “They told me my style was too raw, too real,” he growled, a plume of smoke curling from a phantom stem, “but the wind knows the truth.” The tornado, impressed by his gritty authenticity, seemed to bow in deference, whipping his long hair into a frenzy.

Dwight Yoakam, his voice echoing the Bakersfield sound, tipped his hat to the storm, a knowing grin on his face. “Even the Bluegrass wind respects the Bakersfield Sound,” he drawled, his voice cutting through the roar. The tornado, perhaps drawn to the twang of his soul, seemed to sway in time with the rhythm.

Finally, as the storm reached its crescendo, a spectral banjo echoed through the chaos. Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass, materialized, a red clan robed image straight from the Coen Brothers’ movie, his eyes glowing with an otherworldly light. He plucked a haunting melody, a lament for the ravaged land, and the tornado, as if listening to a divine command, began to dissipate, its fury spent, leaving behind a trail of eerie calm and the lingering echo of the high, lonesome sound.

And so, the river-riding tornado, a psychedelic fever dream of wind and chaos, faded into the Kentucky hills, leaving behind a trail of twisted jangled nerves, tall tales, and the lingering scent of bourbon and bluegrass. Nothing like a good existential scare to bring out the vivid dreams.