Little Maggie and the Cosmic Zoo

Easter in 31825

April 10th, 2023

Murrah’s Mule Barn, Richland GA

Easter has always been a really special holiday in my family. This year was no different! Besides the fact that today is our anniversary of being given the gift of eternal life, it’s also the one where we get to do the egg hunts! We always get together and eat, and I’m the one that’s expected to “bring the tea.” I did ok this year. Last year, I had to get old school and brew some up on site. This time, nobody beat me to the last batch at the local Dollar Gen’tral. It was my lucky day!

Because we’ve always gotten together, I have a lot of Easter memories. The first of course…is waking up to my Easter basket from that spooky rabbit every year! We always had to have a few rounds of homemade egg hunts at the crack of dawn… but were soon off to the church for Sunrise Service. My Uncle Jerry Croxton had this deep sounding tenor voice, and I can still remember him singing “Up From the Grave He Arose!” from the choir box and sounding like the Oak Ridge Boys. I thought he was a Rockstar. I’m pretty sure he thought so too. I miss you Uncle Jerry!

Speaking of church! I also remember going to several egg hunts at the church as a kid. I may or may not have bullied my way to that prize egg in the Legg’s pantyhose container. You gotta do what you gotta do! $5 is a lot of money when you’re 7 and on a steady diet of penny candy and Slush Puppies from the S-Mart. This is one of those things I hope I was forgiven of when all my sins were washed away that very first Easter. I probably still have a few earthly folks mad over that $5 Legg’s egg….but I digress…..

This year, we spent our Easter out at Murrah’s Mule Barn in Richland like we’ve been doing a few years now. This is the very same location that my great grandparents housed thier mules back in the day. My great grandaddy G.G.’s initials are still carved in the wood of a barn door. Pretty cool!

The best Easters we’ve had have all been filled with bluegrass music. I grew up with it that way; and it’s that way today… though we have a new generation pickin’ the tunes and hunting the eggs.

Speaking of eggs! I think my family might hold the record for the number one FRESHEST egg in Easter egg history. One year, my brothers were in the midst of a beautiful, God given rendition of “Amazing Grace”….and the entire family was gathered together in praise and comraderie. The day, though, was a rainy one. Because of the rain, we were all packed inside the little house my brother made from an old general store. I suppose given the fact that we indeed had live chickens, and that one or two occasionally trip-trapped its way over the threshold and into the house…that something was eventually bound to happen. Well, right about the time Mark struck that super sweet blues harp note in the second verse…a dang red ol’ hen came in and let out a big “$quawwwk!” and laid a dern egg right smack dab in the center of the living room floor. I say that with a $, because it was definitely a money shot. This dern hen literally laid a fresh egg right in the floor in the middle of Easter Sunday. It about got squished by the stand-up bass fiddle, it was so close. You can’t even make this stuff up. It’s a 100% true story. Something about that harmonica just made it….lay.

We’ve all gotten a little older and a little lazier, but it’s always a fun time. We missed the ones who were no longer with us, and we loved on the new ones that have joined our family through the last few years. I hope every one of you had a happy Easter, and I hope those woven Easter baskets don’t get in too much of the way in the closet. Don’t forget…bluegrass music never has hurt anybody, but blue grass out of the Easter basket will bust up the vacuum!

Love to you all! HE IS RISEN!

-Meg Johnson

Little Maggie and the Cosmic Zoo

He IS RISEN!
Sounds From Scratch

March 29th, 2023

Brody Cobb and Cobb Guitars, Richland Ga

Waaay down. And I DO mean waaaaay down, in a South Georgia town….there lives a man who manufactures sound. His name is Brody Cobb, and I am long blessed to call him friend.

Brody and I grew up together, but I have since relocated to Alabama. Seeing some posts of his lately, I thought it might be time to shine a little light on this hidden gem.

I can remember being a small child and visiting the Cobb family at cookouts and such, as my daddy was a close friend of his daddy, the late Earl Cobb of Richland, GA. Talk about pickin’! In South Georgia, “pickin’” can mean one of two things; either you are pickin’ meat from a whole cooked hog, or you are pickin’ bluegrass. (This is not the same thing as picking. They do that more up North.) The Cobb family usually combined thiers and had what we like to call a “throwdown”. Those were great times. Good fellowship, food, and local musicians who were usually pretty good. Even though he was just a kid, Brody would usually get up and sing and play us a few. Even at that age he was a star.

Well, my friend Brody grew up; and so did I… but that music in him never did quiet down. Over the years, he became sort of our own private rock star. We’d go pick him up and bring him home to pick music at my brother’s house all the time, before he was even old enough to drive. He played every time, often several different instruments; and he always did it happily and for the sake of just getting to pick. He spent some time playing with a local band called H2O, and I remember really digging them and having to be hauled out of their practice hall a time or two.

Brody is one of the single most talented pickers on the face of this Earth, and I can say that with some knowledge. My own path took me on many musical travels. He can play just about anything from heavy metal to blues to downhome country, but he is best known in my circles for his awesome and original bluegrass sound.

All of that though, is a story for another day. You see, Brody has a new gig going. He’s started his own business, not playing, but BUILDING guitars. He’s still in the area, but his sound is now resonating all throughout the world, and it’s growing.

Cobb guitars started in the middle of the 2010’s, and I am proud to say that my own bluegrass pickin’ brother, Mr. Mark Murrah of Richland, was lucky enough to be one of the first Cobb guitar owners. He loves it, because Brody puts his all into the instruments he makes. They are an extension of his art; per se, and are of exceptional quality. He puts careful thought into the wood he uses, and builds them up from scratch. The guitars he builds ring as true as nature…like they were simply meant to be heard. The pickers that play these instruments carry a little of Brody’s soul every time they play.

Over the past couple of years, his little luthier shop has seen some important faces. A true musician can hear the quality in a build just like a racecar driver can hear the quality in an engine. Brody’s little shop has put Richland, GA back on the map.

If you ever find yourself down (wayyyy down) around this little town of Richland, you should look him up. In bluegrass, we love our Martins and our Gibsons. Cobb guitars have everything those big names have to offer but more; the heart of a man is poured into them. A man that knows music so well he can build it from scratch.

Richland, GA and the bluegrass music community want to thank you, Mr. Cobb, for manufacturing these instruments. In this way, your sound will live on, and ring out, forever. It’s people like you that keep bluegrass alive, and your contributions to the history of our sound are greatly appreciated.

Keep on building our boogie! We love you!

-Meg Johnson
LITTLE MAGGIE AND THE COSMIC ZOO

Brody with his cousin and his cousin’s new build. This is a man you all may have heard of; Grammy Award nominated artist,
Mr. Brent Cobb

Brody with artist Evan Barber of Albany, GA and his new Cobb Guitar

Brody with another friend and Cobb Guitar family member,
Mr. Ty Sumner

Keep it going Brody! – Love, Maggie
Strings Attached!

March 28th, 2023

On Friday, April 14, 2023 we have a special event that we CAN’T WAIT to cover! The Zoo is going to Billy Strings in Mobile!

It’s gonna be cosmic! Stay tuned!
How One Girl Ended up Down at the Crossroads (and got back a little of her soul)

March 28th, 2023

The 2023 Bluegrass Revival; Historic Dupree School Bluegrass Festival

On the morning of Saturday, March 25 I had a rude awakening. My weather obsessed daughter made a 6 am appearance at my bedroom door. I knew as soon as I saw her face that we would be having tornados for breakfast that morning. These particular breakfasts are an Alabama special. If you have no electricity, you have no breakfast. We all had several bouts of ducking into my bedroom closet, which at the moment is home to a litter of maine coon kittens. It was a messy situation all around.
As the soggy morning made its way into afternoon, things didn’t clear up much. That’s another Alabama thing…we know you can’t trust the weatherman. We thought for a while we were just going to laze around all day and watch the rain.
The thing is, we DID have hopes for an outing that morning. I am an old-school bluegrass junkie and on the morning of March 25 I was many years from my musical fix. I wasn’t about to let a few storms stop me from getting out and going to have a little fun. After all, we are a small town and we don’t get a whole lot of excitement. Except the tornados. We said heck with it! My husband and I donned our festival Birkenstocks and grabbed a few things and headed out to a very important function in our small town of Ashford, Alabama! A BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL! This wasn’t just ANY bluegrass festival though. This was music with a mission.
Way in the middle of nowhere at an Ashford Alabama crossroads sits the old one room Dupree School House. It’s old and it’s musty, but it’s special. You see, we still have many locals here that actually ATTENDED school at this building! Our town and their committee really care about it and want to give it a restoration. So, they threw a shindig. And the shindig turned OUT.
We had food trucks, we had vendors, we had face paint, we had wet butts; And we had BLUEGRASS! I had a little trouble because I had my hands doubled down with cokes and burgers, so I sat on a literal haybale and ate my food. It was awesome.
There were lots of LOCAL vendors, so I made my way around and made my wallet a bit lighter. I found some pretty cool folk art and a “cat mom” hat. I checked in on a few silent auctions. Then we made our way to the front. There were several bands there, but the rain and lightning had unfortunately put a damper on their equipment abilities. So it is true that the music was PAUSED a while, but not before we heard a few good ones from The Byrd Family Band. A little “Blue Train” had us on out feet. For future references, in any funny pictures that I personally am in, I was drying my Birkenstocks!
Mid-afternoon the rain let up again. Although things had gotten a little muddy by then; is any festival fun without mud and a few good mustard stains? EXACTLY.
Things started to heat up a bit then, and we heard a band from Georgia called Blue Holler. The cool thing about Blue Holler is that they aren’t just a small town gig. Blue Holler is in the Georgia Country Music Hall of Fame. They brought the place down ya’ll! We belted and sang along and buck-danced into the night! It was a special thing, and it connected me back to my roots. You see, I’m in Alabama, but I’m a Georgia girl as well. I come from a long line of pickers and I’ve experienced a bit of ‘grass here and there. It really felt like going back to my roots. As I’m sure it did for those that came out in support of our old schoolhouse. The crossroads were kickin’, but no souls were sold that day. However, I think a great many were touched!
Now that I am knowledgeable about the old Dupree Schoolhouse, these awesome bands, and this awesome fraternity of old friends that fight for funding and renovation, I felt I should do my part to spread the news. I hope that you all will consider checking out the Dupree School webpage, and the band’s pages as well. I have added a few photos and I tell you, there’s just nothing like the sky after an Alabama storm. Add music and magic happens! Also, I’m a sucker for stage lights.
Thank you to everyone who helped make this night so special. The entire thing was just an absolute blast. We hope that this little jam spot continues the good music and vibe long after the building is renovated! There is such a spirit of love and community there.
-Meg Johnson, Ashford Al
Welcome to Little Maggie’s Zoo!

March 28th, 2023

I’m Meg, and these are my ramblings, explorations, and adventures. ARE YOU READY TO JOIN THE ZOO???