Justin Showah at The Voyager's Rest in Water Valley, Mississippi. Photograph by Faith Neenan.
The Voyager’s Rest in Water Valley has offered live music since February of 2023. After a summer break, The Voyager’s Rest reopens on September 18 with the Georgia-based blues group Cash’s Juke Joint, who draw upon the Sacred Steel slide guitar tradition.
The relatively small and funky venue is in the south end of the building housing the popular Crawdad Hole restaurant, and there are still hints of its former use as a gas station repair bay. The owner is local musician, label owner and sound technician Justin Showah, who opened the Crawdad Hole in early 2011.
Also scheduled for the fall are Birmingham-based singer-songwriter Taylor Hollingsworth, who has a new record out on Water Valley’s Dial Back Sound, Folk and Roll (September 25); Water Valley’s Bark together with Dial Back Sound recording artists Dirty Knees (October 3); Memphis-based blues/soul/rockabilly duo Heartbreak Hill with Howlin’ Hurd, the erstwhile frontman of the garage-punk/blues band Daddy Long Legs (October 26); and experimental guitarists Mike Baggetta and Eli Winter along with Jackson musician/writer Sherry Cothren (November 7).
The diversity and quality of the lineup reflect Showah’s active role in the region’s music scene for three decades; he’s also aided in booking by fellow Water Valley resident and musician Tim Lee of Cool Dog Sound. Showah began playing music casually as a high school student in Jackson, and after moving in 1996 to Oxford to attend the University he began playing with the band Coldwater Independence.
He later joined the Circuit Riders, featuring Warren Black and David Gilmore, which became the house band for Thacker Mountain Radio. After graduation—he majored in Southern Studies and English—Showah was asked by Blue Mountain’s Cary Hudson to be the band’s tour manager. It was an odd turn for Showah, who had learned how to play bass largely studying their album Dog Days. Showah also began playing with Hudson after he went solo.
“It was then I realized I could make money playing music,” says Showah.
In the early 2000s Showah, Hudson, and musicians including Tommy Ledford and Ed Dye began playing regularly on Sunday nights at Taylor Grocery, initially on a flatbed truck next to the porch. They eventually became the Taylor Grocery Band, and with drummer Kinney Kimbrough toured around the southeast before disbanding around 2006.
Around this time Showah began playing with Afrissippi, featuring vocalist/guitarist Guelel Kumba from Senegal, Kimbrough (who is the son of Junior Kimbrough), and guitarist Eric Deaton. The group was resurrected recently, and plays relatively regularly at Voyager’s Rest, often accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Baxter Arender and percussionist Chad Henson. Kumba moved to Oxford in the early 2000s after a visit during which he was introduced to the music of Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside, which he found to have affinities with the music of Senegal. An early version of the group featured drummers Cedric Burnside and Wallace Lester and bassist Garry Burnside, who Showah eventually replaced.
In the early 2000s Showah created a home studio at his home 1520 Madison, which he dubbed “Voyager’s Rest.” The studio grew after Jimbo Mathus closed his studio in Clarksdale and moved equipment there, and artists who recorded albums or sessions there included Mathus (Old School Hot Wings), El Obo, David Kimbrough, John Sinclair, Burnside Exploration, Eric Deaton, and St. Louis bluesman George Brock, featuring Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist Hubert Sumlin.
Showah also joined Mathus’ country-style group the Starlite Wranglers, and in 2009 began engineering at Mathus’ studio in Como. He appeared on Mathus’ Knock Down South, Jimmy the Kid, Confederate Buddha, and White Buffalo albums and recorded and performed with the South Memphis String Band, featuring Mathus, Luther Dickinson and Alvin Youngblood Hart.
In 2008 Showah started Hill Country Records to release an album by Afrissippi, and over the next four years the label released albums by artists including Mathus, Eric Deaton, Kinney Kimbrough, Ted Gainey, Robert Reed, and south Mississippi bluesman L.C. Ulmer. He traveled with both Afrissippi and Ulmer to perform in Europe.
The Crawdad Hole opened in 2011 and was initially only open during crawfish season, and it became open throughout the year in 2012, which largely ended Showah’s work with touring and recording. He came to business as a veteran of cooking crawfish, as his father opened the first Crawdad Hole in 1995 in Jackson, in an abandoned beer barn on Lakeland Drive, and he was the first employee. For ten years Showah ran a music festival at the Jackson location and hopes to do something similar in Water Valley.
The Water Valley Crawdad Hole occasionally featured live music in its screened-in seating area, and in February of 2023 the Voyager’s Rest debuted as a music venue—there’s no regular food service and the bar sells beer from regional breweries—with a show by Tyler Keith and the Apostles. The venue has a lived-in ambience, with old, non-matching couches, tables and chairs, surrounded by an array of posters, art, piles of books, vintage instruments and odd objects.
“Ron ‘Ronzo’ Shapiro and his Hoka Theater in Oxford were the inspiration for the decor and vibe of Voyager’s Rest. Ronzo spoke to me in a dream and told me to open the space,” says Showah. “From the bar to the piano to the speakers, curtains and tables, most of the items in the room were donated by members of the community. I wanted to give back to Water Valley and give back to the musicians who’ve inspired me to live a life full of purpose and passion. It’s a space that celebrates the unsung heroes of American music and provides a gathering spot for community and free thinking. I think that’s what makes it special.”
Shapiro, who died in 2019, ran the Hoka, a combination café, movie theater and late-night hang, from 1976 to 1996, and later ran a juice bar with a similar feel.
Over the last three years the Voyager’s Rest has presented shows by artists including Alvin Youngblood Hart, Alicja Trout, Bark (Tim and Susan Lee), Cary Hudson, David Dondero, Tate Moore, Fake, Great Dying, Johnny Dowd, Amy LaVere & Will Sexton, Marcella Simien, Alex McMurray, Drunken Prayer, Ferd, Thomas Dollbaum, and Austinites Mike Buck, Eve Monsees and Speedy Sparks. Showah creates the richly designed show posters himself.
In May it hosted a very well attended and successful fundraiser for Kinney Kimbrough, whose house burned down, with multiple artists from the region, including Kenny Brown, Eric Deaton, Garry Burnside, Kody Shade Harrell, Tate Moore, Guelel Kumba and Davis Coen. Various items, including photos from Bill Steber and Adam Smith, were auctioned off for the cause, and friends of the venue provided food to be sold.
Last year Showah introduced the Monday Night Social Club, an early evening gathering featuring short sets by multiple artists, guest cooks, and DJ Swarthy Menace spinning 45s. Particularly in the spring during crawdad season Showah is exhausted from cooking, and Mondays are ideal for him to relax with friends. Seating is relatively limited in the cozy venue, and many guests hang outside in a fenced in area. The next Monday Night Social Club is the Heartbreak Hill and Howlin’ Hurd show on October 26.
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