Big Truck Theater owner also varied artist

On a mild September night in Taylor, the show at Big Truck Theater is over.

The house band, known as the Hot Dangs, has just ended a 3-hour concert with an eclectic set of covers, including War’s “Low Rider” and Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee.” Band members, including saxophonist and harmonica player Christine Schultz, visit with friends in the audience. Someone compliments Schultz on the unique silver necklace she’s wearing, and she smiles. She says she finally let herself wear one of her own designs.

There’s more to the musician and jewelry maker: Schultz, 45, also owns and operates Big Truck Theater and the neighboring Taylor Arts gallery with her husband, furniture maker Mark Deloach. She also paints, writes fiction and non-fiction and takes black-and-white photos.

Since she and Deloach married 12 years ago, Schultz has been living a life of constant creativity in Taylor, and she doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

“That’s the cool thing about any creative thing you could pursue, whether it’s writing or music or painting or photography,” Schultz said. “It’s an endless pursuit.”

Schultz, who grew up in the Boston area and spent 10 years working for Yankee Magazine in New Hampshire, came to Mississippi in 1996 to research a novel she was writing.

In Taylor, she found her novel, her husband (she kept her maiden name for the writing) and her new life as an artist.

Schultz and Deloach began organizing art shows to provide a venue for Taylor’s numerous artists, and Schultz was inspired to start creating some art of her own.

Then, in 2001, a small white house on the corner of Old Taylor Road and Highway 328 came up for sale. The couple bought it and turned it into the Taylor Arts gallery.
Meanwhile, music was in the air.

“(Mark and I) started playing, you know, on the porch, playing around at parties and stuff,” Schultz said. “I had actually played music since I was in fourth grade – clarinet and saxophone – and then had put my instruments aside for 13 years. And when I met him, I started playing again.”

Finally, in 2005, Schultz and Deloach opened Big Truck Theater, where local artists perform in monthly concerts.

The couple, who have no children, refer to their double business as “our little art farm.”
The crops are many and varied, and Schultz said the variety helps keep her content.

“This sounds hokey because it’s not really the point, but I’m a Libra. I’m not really into astrological signs, but Libra is a balance on the scales,” she said.

“I’ve spent years writing at a national level, so I’ve learned to be a good writer – but if you are trying to write for publication, it’s hard. And it doesn’t get any easier.

“Painting, for me, it’s pure pleasure. I mean, there are some (parts of it) that are a little bit hard, but it’s just so much fun. And it’s that left brain, right brain thing.

“So, if I was just a writer, if I didn’t play music and didn’t paint and didn’t run (three miles every day) – if I didn’t have those other outlets, I don’t think I’d be as happy or fulfilled of a person.”

Bill Beckwith, an artist who lives in Taylor and has known Schultz since she moved to there, said Schultz’s creativity and energy allow her to do so many things.

Deloach, 48, said his wife’s energy level is part of what makes the two of them so compatible.

“She’s more energetic, but I’m more confident once I’m out of the box,” Deloach said.
Since she has so much going on, Schultz said she doesn’t get to pursue music as much as she’d like.

“Once in a while, I’ll see a genius,” she said. “I mean, you meet someone who’s just a masterful musician, right? And then I think, ‘I wish I had more time to be a really good musician’ because I basically just mess around with it. I need to take lessons, and I need to go deeper into it.”

Silas Reed, a sophomore at Ole Miss who plays bass guitar for the Hot Dangs, said Schultz’s modesty is deceptive.

“She’ll be the first to tell you that she is not a formally trained musician, but when you hear her play you would swear she was a professional. She plays from the heart, and that is something that can’t be faked.”

Schultz said she is developing each of her different skills, slowly but surely.

“It’s sort of like what Mark calls ‘herding cattle.’ If you’re herding cattle, you bump this one and it goes a little bit along the way, and then this one goes a little along the way, and eventually the whole herd moves forward.

“So I’m better at each of the things that I do than I was 10 years ago. If I had just done one, I might be, you know, in Carnegie Hall by now. But I have this really cool lifestyle that I enjoy.”

That lifestyle includes reading in bed with a cup of coffee in the mornings, running daily with her dog Irene, working on paintings, tending to gallery visitors while Deloach makes furniture in his workshop and rehearsing with the Hot Dangs on Tuesday nights.

She and Deloach also hunt, harvest and cook food.

Schultz and Deloach raise a vegetable garden, and they hunt deer together in the winter.

“Depending on the time of year, 75 percent of what we’re eating we’ve either raised or killed,” Schultz said. “I’ve learned to be a pretty good cook for both of us. We make our own breads and granola.

“It’s a full day of all these different aspects, but it’s all stuff we want to be doing.”

Christine Schultz takes a quick look at the jewelry she has on. She’s still not wearing any of her own designs, but that’s OK for her.

 She might just break out another necklace at the next Big Truck show.