Where: Clarksdale, Mississippi
When: year-round
If you like: music
Why you should go: Yes, the devil went down to Georgia, but he spent a little time making deals in Mississippi, too. Ground Zero Blues Club in Clarksdale can tell you all about that tale. The crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, where Robert Johnson allegedly sold his soul for musical mastery, is marked as a monument, and not too far away sits Ground Zero. The largest juke joint in the area has hosted plenty of icons, but it’s local musicians like James “Super Chikan” Johnson, who makes his own guitars (dubbed “chikantars”) out of recycled goods, who best highlight the original intent of the place.
The late Clarksdale mayor Bill Luckett and his friend the actor Morgan Freeman opened Ground Zero in 2001 to bring Delta blues to a wider audience. “One of Bill’s quotes that I always tell people is ‘You can meet the world on our front porch,’” says Casey Ladd, one of the club’s managers. Any night is worth a visit, but Ground Zero’s twenty-fifth birthday bash in May will be a weekend blowout, with pork roasted right on the porch, special drinks, and endless blues reverberating through the doors of the club and into the crossroads of Clarksdale.
G&G tip: On Thursdays, anyone can take the stage during Jam Night. As long as you can strum or sing a tune, you’re invited to play the blues. “We don’t cut nobody off,” Ladd says. “Last Thursday night we had a Japanese man who didn’t speak English. With a translator app on his phone, he said his whole life, he had dreamed of coming here and playing on our stage. He was so excited and just glowing. He couldn’t even talk when he got off—he was just shaking. That’s the coolest thing in the world to me.”
Helen Bradshaw, a 2024 intern at Garden & Gun, is a native of Havana, Florida, and graduated from Northwestern University.
