Busker of the Day: Mule Dixon

As it turns out, the shortest distance between the ears and the heart, is the sound of Mule Dixon’s voice, which he readily proves, with jaw-dropping flawless vocals, on his current 10 track record, Pillow American Made. The Americana, Folksy Balladeer has given us something that sounds like the bastard child of Old Crow Medicine Show and vintage George Jones. “Stay true to personality, is what I have to tell myself,” he writes. His is a personality to be reckoned with.

Backing up for just a moment, sometimes we come across really great music. Occasionally we chance upon meaningful messages within the music and on a really good day we find fascinating people and stories behind the music. It’s rare that you find someone who embodies all three; but then we don’t often meet people like Nicholas Ippoliti, singer, songwriter, traveler, teacher, adventurer, PhD and visionary. When we do, we must stop, be still, breathe in, listen and above all else, hear the “passion of the song: the story.” Pillow-American Made, his current 10 track disc recorded under the moniker Mule Dixon, is music that gives independent Americana a pulse. And whether the man or the music is the most interesting aspect, is something to be determined. Emotional processing should always be so liberating.

So what makes Mule Dixon, the man, so interesting? The abbreviated answer could be that he is a modern gypsy. Take for example, the way he chooses to live—as a ‘gypsy’, a nomad, traveling across the country in his RV, playing, and performing wherever the road invites him. Like most buskers, he is no slouch. He can’t afford to be. He possesses a B.A. in Philosophy, a Master of Science in Education and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities. He teaches English Composition, Rhetoric and American Literature for Corning Community College in New York and Richland College located in Dallas, and he does this exclusively from the road, online. It is this life, these experiences that inform his music—from lyrics to melodies, and it can’t help but be irresistible. He gives himself permission to take over the songs and fully immerse in the experience of the music, and it shows. “Maybe walls confine expression,” he writes.

The album opens with a tasty politicized/country infused tune, American Blowback, Baby. It is also a track that sets the stage for the sequence of enigmatic stories—(in song form) for the duration of the record. Follow through with Another Country Roadside, June Blossom Valley and Evening Song, what you have is a collection of music that is a direct reflection of the roots and heritage of living on the road less traveled.

If you dig country, Americana and/or folk, you’ll find what Mule Dixon does on Pillow-American Made, deceptively simple and endearingly delightful. He captures the magic of America’s vast landscape in a musical masterpiece; winning audiences one ear at a time, through his love of the craft, boundless energy and indomitable spirit.

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