Back in the 90's I was involved in affordable Housing here in Poughkeepsie. I was trying to renovate an old 1911 apartment house in the poorest neighborhood in the city. The City Administration was so corrupt that I was being blocked at every turn. Kandu and his boys worked the opposite corner selling drugs. Kandu was an old crippled Viet Namm vet, couldn't get around without a cane. He sold crack, his boys each sold something different as to not be in competition with each other. Most of the people who drove by to score were white. The word on the street was that they were living in an abandoned building a block or so away. The police knew everybody out there. They tagged them like pigeons and let them go, hoping to nail someone higher up. To make it look good they'd make periodic sweeps of the neighborhood. Some people disappeared, some came back. One day Kandu came by with an old piece of a electric guitar an asked me to stash it in the building for him. It was in such bad shape that I didn't think it was hot, so I did it. A few weeks later, a sweep came through gobbled him up, and I never saw Kandu again. Later, I heard that one of his boys got shot, and the other was doing time. South Cherry and Main was written in their memory. It's an improvised guitar solo over a my kind of blues composition.

instrumental