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Yarn Ball: George Dawes Green (center, at microphone) and his tales-on-wheels The Unchained Tour roll into Jacksonville on Feb. 5.

Road Scholars
THE UNCHAINED TOUR

The man behind The Moth brings his roving gang of storytellers to Northeast Florida
Sunday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. Thief in the Knight Gallery, 115 W. Adams St., Jacksonville Tickets are $15; go to theunchainedtour.org/events-calendar

eorge Dawes Green has spent most of his life spinning some kind of yarn. And judging by his track record, the novelist and storyteller knows how to please an audience. Two of Greens books have been adapted into major motion pictures ( e Cavemens Valentine and e Juror), and another was a critically acclaimed bestseller (Ravens), but his biggest success to date has been seeding the nations fertile storytelling soil. In 1997, Green founded The Moth, a storytelling night staged at venues throughout Manhattan that invited ordinary folks to take the microphone. The events quickly became sellout successes, with fans and fellow storytellers like Salman Rushdie, Garrison Keillor, Malcolm Gladwell and Sam Shepherd showing up to participate. The hip, urban cachet of The Moth was actually rooted in the sleepy South. Green was hoping to recreate some of the magic he and his friends had conjured years earlier in his native Georgia, as they sat and told stories on the front porch of the home of Greens best friend, Wanda Bullard. There was a hole in the screen where moths would fly in, attracted to the light in the same way that Green and his pals were drawn to spoken tales. Green no longer coordinates gatherings of e Moth, but the events have continued, and spread, with similar storytelling nights springing up in Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Boston. (An NPR radio show, Moth on the Radio, airs on 200 stations, and is available locally via podcast.) People love stories and they love raconteur-style stories, Green says. ey want stories that are personal, true and unscripted. Growing up in St. Simons Island, Green enjoyed spending summer nights listening to family members regale one another with Southern sagas about their own childhoods and the Civil War. You know, I never really

went to school, he laughingly admits. I never graduated the eighth grade. I kind of got out kind of quickly and hitchhiked around. Green eventually got his GED and wound up in Manhattan, where hes spent most of his adult life. But, he adds, Ive always been coming back down here over the years and Ive always had a lot of special connections here. Green has called on some of those same connections for e Unchained Tour, a sort-of mobile storytelling troupe. ough not formally connected with e Moth, the people involved share Greens zeal for tales, including Peter Aguero of the NYC improvisational storytelling rock band the BTK Band, is American Life contributor Elna Baker, novelist-actress and former editor at French Vogue, Joan Juliet Buck, awardwinning journalist Tina A. Brown, the sloppy tonk band Shovels & Rope and playwright Edgar Oliver. Green jokingly describes the assortment as an elite and carefully handpicked group, each of whom entertains audiences for roughly 10 minutes apiece. eyre not readings because theyre not allowed to read anything, clari es Green. You have to cook it up in your head as you go along. Traveling in a wildly painted 72 Blue Bird school bus, e Unchained Tour hits nine cities in three days, including eight in Georgia and a single Florida appearance here in Jacksonville. is idea of taking a literary happening on the road harkens to those trippy troubadours of the 60s, Ken Kesey and e Merry Pranksters, but Green denies e Unchained Tour will be wired on primo LSD as Kesey and Co. were. Well, you know, we should be, but unfortunately, were in a new era, he laughs. But we do kind of insist on a little bourbon drinking. e group uses the term unchained to celebrate independent bookstores and to urge independence from the Internet, which Green calls that horrible possum that people crawl into every night. e tour is dedicated to Wanda Bullard, a founding member of the group who recently passed away. She was my best friend, says Green, and one of the greatest storytellers I will ever know.
Dan Brown dbrown@folioweekly.com January 31-February 6, 2012 | folio weekly | 33