I enjoy these Saturday matinees for a few reasons.

Not only do I get to introduce you to other great podcasts and often learn something myself along the way,

but I also get to break the fourth wall a bit.

Talk to you more directly, more familiarly.

I might mention personal details, maybe an anecdote or two. And this Saturday is a good example

because I get to talk about guitar. I've been playing since I've been about 14, and as can be

expected for many 14-year-olds in 1988, my gateway to guitar playing and guitar hero worship was Led Zeppelin.

That's a band with some lore, and they leaned into it, too, deliberately playing up the romance and mysticism with Tolkien-inspired lyrics,

references to 19th century occultism, and liberal borrowing from the licks and lyrics of legendary

Mississippi Delta bluesmen like Robert Johnson, who himself has some lores well.

A member of the infamous 27 Club, dying young like Jimmy Hendrix, Janice Joplin, Jim Morrison,

and Kurt Cobain. Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil

to be able to play guitar like he did, and boy could he play. Zeppelin's Robert Plant told NPR in 2004

that Johnson was the musician to whom we all owed our existence in some way, and Zeppelin covered

or reinterpreted several Johnson tunes. But did he really sell his soul?

Johnson sure seemed acquainted with Satan,

with songs like Me and the Devil Blues, Hellhounds on My Trail,

and Crossroad Blues, which referenced folklore of the American South

that says a crossroads is a place to make a pact with the devil.

This is a story we bring you on today's Saturday matinee from a good friend of mine,

Brandon Schenegner, and his, I mean, fantastic podcast, Southern Gothic,

which uncovers the true history behind the American South's ghost stories, haunted places,

...