Balder Saunders, a Georgia Tech engineering student, played trumpet in Back Azimuth. Back azimuth involves navigating by your wake. Backtracking. Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky character navigates that manner, while Plains Indians do things backwards. Charlie Parker taught himself to transpose angles after woodshedding in the Ozarks.

Saunders' father had a Jamaica-traveling coworker. The man told Saunders' father, who had a bluegrass-playing son (Balder's brother Owen), that Jamaicans adored bluegrass. Balder thought of Dread Clampitt when his father said that. After the Beverly Hillbillies character and Jimmy Cliff, Little Richard, and Taj Mahal's dreadlocks. He imagined the bandleader barefoot, in bib overalls, sitting in a plastic chaise longue next to a moonshine jug with a corncob stopper, cooking fish or deer meat on a charcoal grill with a busted wheel, with dreadlocks, a knee blown out of his overalls, evil tontons macoutes shades, and a hand-made mandolin. He never imagined he'd write and play music professionally.

Balder's uncle, singer-songwriter and guitarist Potter Brown, died. Balder inherited Owen's Chevrolet Caprice Classic. Balder dropped out of school, moved in with Potter's widow, Suzette DeJarnette, helped her fix up her house, and started playing music with Potter's old bandmates Duke Bardwell and Franko Washboard Jackson, plus his old parking-lot-picker friends Mike Jones and Mike Kish. Balder moved into a trailer in Grayton Beach, Kyle Ogle moved in with him, they started playing, rehearsing a mandolin-guitar duo act, a progressive Homer and Jethro, writing songs, they dragged a few dead cars up in the yard, salvaged a couple more rusted-out charcoal grills from rubbish heaps, and the rest is history. Dread Clampitt had regular gigs, a set address, fans, groupies, critical respect, and broad appeal to young and old, native and seasonal visitor, relatives and strangers..

How to hire Dread Clampitt for an event