We were all in the living room.I was in the Down Home one night, listening to songwriter Scott Miller. He started to play his second set when he stopped and looked up with a giggle and said, “Well, we were all in the livingroom.”
That’s a pretty good way to sum up the Down Home – the livingroom.
The stage is about a foot high and the tables crowd up to the very brink of it. Rough splintering lumber connected with angled joints form a repetitious growing triangle on the walls. The oogles from the eyes must look like a cartoonish nighttime forest to the ones on stage.
The smiles all there, Johnson City usually reserves this sort of anticipation for the line at McDonald’s every time they bring the McRib back.
In the crowding together that goes on at the tables, a guild of live music watchers is formed. Those who have seats, yet lack tables, are usually offered a place to sit their beer holders.
If you do get a pitcher, make sure and hold onto it, they’re a bit limited in that arsenal. Waitresses bring round baskets of popcorn like eager little sisters during a home movie.
Neighborhood kids crowd around the stage and quiet down for the show no matter if it’s the Wednesday Open Hoot, or if it is a weekend show of a plethora of talented and well-known bands.
For instance, this Thursday night a bluegrass band that does nothing but AC/DC covers is playing.
Scott Miller, Acoustic Syndicate along with legends like Doc Watson and Webb Wilder have played at The Down Home.
Hell, the owner, Ed Snodderly played the village idiot in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou?
They don’t sell liquor, but have good quality beer. Food is served from 6 p.m. to show time and the chicken quesadillas rock.
Getting laid?
Well, this ain’t a meat market but there is quality here.
We all know that music makes us a bit more romantic, so it’s all in how you work it later on. It is a good, intimate place to clock in, put on your steel-toed boots and hard hat and get to work.
Girls, bat some eyelashes and hold an empty mug. Guys, if you got a guitar get your butt up on stage on Open Hoot night. If you don’t have any musical talent, at least pretend to be somewhat worldly and genuinely interested in what’s going on up on that stage.
When the show is over and the encore begins, people always look around thankful for a few more songs, even though Bob Marley pointed out that “one good thing about music.when it ends, you feel no pain.”
You’d think we’d all know by now that the end of that song brings no pain, yet still we crave the encore – there are desperate one-mores to all desires, whether it flows through vein or ear.
The Down Home is a quaint unique sort of place that we’re lucky to have.
In the massive collage of chain restaurants and places that sponsor karaoke on purpose, it’s refreshing to know that originality exists.
Great music is always playing and if you haven’t entered that door under that orange neon sign at 303 West Main St., then you suck, and you should do something to try to change that.
Go to www.downhome.com for more information and the monthly calendar of shows. Atmosphere A-
Cleanliness A
Music A
Food B-
Chances of seeing a fight F
Beer quality B-
Chances of getting laid B

Hangover tip #2: Feeling fuzzy on the morning after?
Free radicals from a hard night in the frothy trenches are clogging pathways to feeling good.
A trick ol’ Kerouac taught me was to first thing in the morning, stand on your head with your back up against the wall.
This is getting some blood back in there, when you stand up the dizziness provides a cool little buzz also.
Free radicals are a result from stress and lactic acid build up. An abundance of them can lead to oxidative stress and make you feel bad.
Get some antioxidants in you. A few old Taoist tricks to clearing out free radicals and fixing your disrupted chi-
1. Close your mouth and pinch your nose shut. Blow slowly but forcibly attempting to make to exhalation go out of your ears. They should pop, like on an airplane.
2. Cup your hands over both ears and make a plunger like suction over them. Push in and release five times making the suction go in and then pull off, breaking the suction. Afterwards flick the scalp and back of the head repeatedly to stimulate and open stale neurotransmission pathways.
If someone walks in on you doing these exercises and asks, “Who’s `dat doing some tai-chi?” you can answer, “It’s me, it’s me.

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