#95 – Wheel Inside The Wheel

by Stacy Loves Buffett · April 29, 2024

#95 – Wheel Inside The Wheel

-by Stacy Garwood-

Wheel Inside The Wheel is one of those songs that catches your attention immediately on first listening, regardless of whom is performing the song. It’s colorful, mystical, and a little bizarre. My introduction to it was on Jimmy Buffett’s 2006 album Take The Weather With You, and it is a soulful stunner of a song.

“Souls ain’t born, souls don’t die, Soul ain’t made of earth, ain’t made of water, ain’t made of sky, So, ride the flaming circle, wind the golden reel, And roll on, brother, in the wheel inside the wheel…”

Take The Weather With You was recorded on JB’s 2006 Take The Weather With You, and that album is full of songs that touch on New Orleans and Gulf Coast culture, two things that were near and dear to Jimmy’s heart. It was also recorded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall near New Orleans in August of 2005, a Category 5 storm that devastated the gulf coast in 2005 and, to this day, almost twenty years later, still has long reaching effects.

I was last in New Orleans in May of 2022, and will again be there in in less than a week, and the scars of Hurricane Katrina are well documented and still apparent, in high water markers, in an intensified levee system in the greater New Orleans area, buildings and neighborhoods that have never recovered right along with the places and people that lived through it, overcame it, and even grew because of it.

But in 2006, when this album was recorded and was released, New Orleans was among many places still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Jimmy Buffett might not have been a native born and bred in the Big Easy, but he called it home for a time, and it was where he lived and worked when he cut his teeth as a performer after graduating from high school. I think a part of Jimmy always considered New Orleans to be “home”, and he put together an album that focused both on the city that he loved as well as the gulf coast region that was his home.

“The parade of souls is marching across the sky, Their heat and their light bathed in blue as they march by, The All Stars play “When the Saints Go Marching In”, A second line forms and they wave white hankies in the wind…”

One of the songs that he recorded and placed on his album was a cover called Wheel Inside The Wheel written by singer and songwriter Mary Gauthier. I have to say, if not for Jimmy covering this dynamic song, I maybe would never have heard of Mary Gauthier. I am only now really learning about her life and her career, but I know that from the moment I bought Take The Weather With You and started listening to it, her song Wheel Inside The Wheel connected in some way to my soul.

My first trip to New Orleans was in the winter of 2000, and while before going there, I was always interested in the city that sat along the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the Mississippi River, because of its diverse history and culture and architecture, my first visit there captivated me, and I knew that I would be back. In 2005, I watched the devastation left in the wake of Katrina and the levee failures, I felt it so acutely, perhaps because I had not yet made it back for a longer visit. Since that time, I have returned and each time, I fell a little more in love with the city and the culture that surrounds it.

“Satchmo takes a solo, and he flashes his million dollar smile, Marie Laveau promenades with Oscar Wilde, Big Funky Stella twirls her little red umbrella to the beat, And the soul parade winds its way down Eternity Street…”

The song Wheel Inside The Wheel feels like you are in the heart of some of the best things that New Orleans has to offer, whether you live there, are experiencing it for the first time, or have returned again and again. I would bet that even if you had never visited the city they call Nola (New Orleans, LA, you get it), that this song might make you feel a bit captivated and curious.

The song was written by Mary Gauthier, a folk rock/folk country singer with an interesting past. She was born in 1962 in New Orleans to a mother who gave her up to the St Vincent’s Women and Infant Asylum, where she spent the first year of her life. At age one, she was adopted by parents in Thibodaux, Louisiana. It wasn’t an easy childhood for Mary or her younger brother, who was also adopted. Their father was an alcoholic and by age twelve, she herself was putting herself to sleep by drinking slow gin. It was also at age twelve that she got her hands on her aunts’ guitar and was learning to play.

“Mardi Gras Indians chant in the streets at sundown, Spyboy meets Spyboy, and Big Chief meets Big Chief uptown, They circle and sway in their rainbow colored feathers and beads, They prance like peacocks, children of slavery freed…”

By age fifteen, she had run away from home, and by the age of eighteen, she had found a path that included not just alcohol but drugs as well, and she spent her eighteenth birthday in jail. But no story is complete by age eighteen, no matter your path, and with the encouragement of friends, she enrolled in collage at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she studied philosophy. She dropped out of college in her senior year, and her path lead her north, to Massachusetts. In Cambridge, she attended the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and received backing for a Cajun restaurant in Boston she called Dixie Kitchen.

Still, no easy path for Mary, when she was arrested for drunken driving on the opening night of her restaurant. She does report that this was the last time she ever drank alcohol and at age twenty-seven, she became sober from not only alcohol but also cocaine and heroin. It was also the start of her following the path of music, perhaps something that started at age twelve when she first picked up a guitar.

“The Krewe of the Crossbones parades into the midnight sun, They march through the fire and come out beating homemade drums, While the French Quarter Queens in their high-heeled drag disguise, Sing “Over the Rainbow” ‘til Judy Garland quivers and sighs…”

An open mic night gave her needed confidence, and she began writing and performing more, eventually recording an album while running her restaurant. She eventually sold her share of her restaurant to fund her second album, and in 2001 she made the move to Nashville, Tennessee. I have read several interviews and Mary Gauthier doesn’t shy away from honesty. She reports that her history of adoption, addiction and growing up gay in a time when that was not more generally accepted in the world were both trials and gifts to her and her music. She has used all of those influences to channel into her music, and she doesn’t seem to hide away from any of it

Mary Gauthier might not be a household name, but her songwriting is well known in the music industry. Her songs have been covered by Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Boy George, Bobby Bare, and Kathy Mattea as well as Jimmy Buffett. The great Bob Dylan has been known to perform her songs in his live shows, and when one of the greatest songwriters of our time is covering your music, you have something pretty special going on with your music. She has also written a book, numerous short stories, and articles, which seems very similar to Jimmy’s career as a writer of more than songs. Vanderbilt University in Nashville even has a course focused on her music.

She wrote Wheel Inside The Wheel after the shocking death from heart attack of one her friends and folk singer and songwriter idols, Dave Carter. Dave Carter himself was on the edge of breaking though musically, having released three albums with his partner Tracy Grammer at the time of his unexpected death. Gauthier said she dipped into her New Orleans birth, her gulf coast upbringing and her spiritual beliefs and years of studying philosophy when she penned this song. It was born on a flight to a folk festival in Calgary, Alberta but the song is all New Orleans in its bones and flavor, like a good roux.

“Flambeau dancers light the walkway to Jean Pierre’s, There’s a party tonight and all the girls are gonna be there, Sipping wormwood concoctions, drinking absinthe and talking trash, It’s a red carpet, black tie, all night, celestial bash…”

She said that the idea of how people celebrate both life and death in New Orleans, with the iconic second line funerals, with jazz band and family and friends marching along behind, singing and dancing and celebrating a life, more than mourning a death, were her inspiration. The song plays homage to many iconic New Orleans people, places and cultural references, including mentions of Marie Laveau, a famous New Orleans voodoo queen, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and his jazz trumpet sound, second line funerals and When The Saints Go Marching In, along with Mardi Gras krewes and parades full of beads and feathers. It also ties to the philosophy that life is not linear, with a defined start and stop, but a more circular and cyclical pattern, of a soul just going round and round, catching rides on different lives and experiences. It touches on how we can’t really understand it all from our current human experience but that it all makes sense when we move on, before repeating again and again, like a wheel inside a wheel.

After Jimmy’s death last fall, when I was still shocked and reeling and crying in my living room, this was one of several songs of his that gave me great comfort. It never mattered that Jimmy didn’t write it, what mattered is that he felt strongly enough about this song to record it. It felt like a message to me, that even though the tears, there was a lot to be thankful for and appreciate, and that all things happen for a reason and at a certain time, even if we can’t begin to understand why.

Jimmy said that Mac McAnally introduced him to Mary Gauthier’s music and this song felt like the “ultimate kinda Mardi Gras” song, and part of his heart and soul “was there” and that this song reminded him of “cutting his teeth in the French Quarter”. He also says it’s “way to long” and “way to weird” to get much radio play, but it was the right song for his album. He also stated he really appreciated Mary Gautier’s direct and honest songwriting.

There are many, many iconic things about the city and culture of New Orleans and its surrounding area, but one that seems to stand out and seems to be really associated with New Orleans itself is the funerals. Known as a “second line”, the idea of a casket pulled in a horse drawn hearse followed by a jazz band screams New Orleans Louisiana. Not every funeral in New Orleans is like this, of course, but many of them are.

My first memory of even knowing such a thing existed was when watching the 1973 James Bond movie Live And Let Die. This was the year I was born, so I obviously don’t recall seeing it at that time, but my parents liked James Bond movies and this was one that was often watched at my house. As a child, I was captivated by the images of New Orleans, that jazz band funeral, the idea of voodoo that was referenced, even though as an adult, I know much of that was more Hollywood than accurate, it connected to something in me. It made me curious, it made me aware, it made me want to know more about this place and those things. Heck, I love jazz music, even if I didn’t grow up in a jazz culture; enough that that I named my beloved dog Jazz, because she was sassy and lively and sparkling, but with a beautiful smooth and mellow streak, just like jazz music itself.

There is something beautiful and uplifting about celebrating a life with music and dancing and laughter and energy, such as with a “second line” funeral. The second line actually gets its name because of the parade that forms after the casket and jazz band and family, which is considered the first line. I have never been a part of such a funeral, but I love the idea of them, and recall watching a second line for New Orleans author Anne Rice that was live steamed to broaden the audience that was celebrating her life and stories. The “second line” concept was most likely started with traditions from African slaves, and then adopted and adapted into something that we see today. One of the things I love about New Orleans is the blend and adaptation of so many cultures, everyone embracing a little of this and a little of that, making something new and beautiful.

Mary Gauthier says the song is “a bit of a jazz funeral in itself”.

And I wonder if Jimmy Buffett would agree. He, like Mary Gauthier, was a songwriter, singer, poet, author of books and short stories, who embraced philosophy and culture bigger that the place he was born and raised. Who had a few struggles along the way, but who gained knowledge and friends and experiences with each step on the path.

What a wonderful philosophy to have!

I said roll on, brother, in the wheel inside the wheel…

Yeah, roll on brother, in the wheel inside the wheel…

Stacy

Please enjoy Wheel Inside The Wheel. I have included the link below. Enjoy!