Tony Joe White: On standby to see the traveller's singer who makes all the miles worthwhile

Some of the best experiences come about when you're prepared to loiter

The king of swamp rock, the incomparable Tony Joe White in action (Robin Pirez/Flickr)

On Monday I had a similar feeling of helpless wishfulness, or wishful helplessness. The location was the wonderful Union Chapel in Islington, north London: part Gothic Revival church, part drop-in centre, part entertainment venue. The event: the only Tony Joe White gig of the year in southern England.

In case you are unfamiliar with the king of swamp rock, Tony Joe White’s songs have been recorded by Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and Tina Turner (though not all in the same studio at the same time). He is the traveller’s singer-songwriter, taking you lyrically from Highway 61 outside Memphis in "Tunica Motel” to Padre Island, which stretches out like a raccoon's tail south along the Texan coast to the Mexican border (“Selena”).

The concert was sold out. But so are plenty of planes, on paper at least, and there is sometimes a spare seat. Shortly before he was due to take to the stage, I asked politely at the box office (which, in the Union Chapel, is just a table inside the front door) if any returned tickets were available, and was told politely “No”.

Loitering isn’t pretty, but it can sometimes be effective. So I hung around, feeling as uncomfortable as a Hillary Clinton supporter at a redneck rally. Just after the great man took to the stage, the manager surveyed the arena, found a space and ushered me inside, to the benefit of church funds and my evening. Tony’s voice was as deep as the South, his guitar playing at turns as coarse as an alligator’s hide then as delicate as a Cherokee rose.

Returning for the inevitable encore, Tony used a gracious turn of phrase to thank the crowd: “You make all the miles worthwhile.” Then he sang “Rainy Night in Georgia”. The anthem to long-distance love and loneliness that he wrote in 1967 still resonates with raw emotion in the 21st century.

Tony Joe White may not always dwell in the realm of travel philosophy; the refrain of his hit, “Polk Salad Annie”, goes: “Gator’s got your granny, chomp, chomp”. But “You make all the miles worthwhile” is a seductive sentiment, even though I bet he says it to all the audiences. It also represents a travel truth that can be expressed mathematically, if less lyrically, in the form J + M > 0, where J is the joy you experience at a destination and M is the a negative quantity signifying the misery of getting there.

Long may Tony Joe White’s J + M remain in positive territory; next time I’ll be more organised about a ticket.

You may have seen last week another widely reported travel-related mathematical expression. This one is way more complicated, and claims “to scientifically prove which countries can lay claim to having the world’s greatest shorelines”. It goes: (SC+CH) x (IF+SQ) x (100/21.33)/(AQ+C+W), where the variables are Sea Colour (SC), Clarity of the Horizon (CH), Interesting Features (IF), Sand Quality (SQ), Air Quality (AQ), Cleanliness (C) and Weather (W).

Agreed, my representation of “You make all the miles worthwhile” is, mathematically, as wobbly as a Louisiana stag on the first day of the state's deer-shooting season (next Saturday, if you’re out that way). But the beach formula purports to be a serious piece of academic research. It was conducted for a major cruise line, Royal Caribbean, by a leading psychologist.

Having surveyed all the beaches in all the world, the top rating goes to “the Middle Eastern paradise of Dubai”. In second place: Blackpool, losing out only because the Gulf enjoys slightly more sun.

I was intrigued by the survey, and so I asked Royal Caribbean for two things: the raw data, and a chat with the psychologist. Despite repeated requests over the course of a week, neither was available.

Equally strangely, almost all the beaches in the top 10 are also on Royal Caribbean cruise itineraries. A sceptical sunseeker might speculate that the cruise line’s “scientific formula” and the “World’s top 10 shorelines” that it sought to define were actually dreamed up in the pub. We mathematicians probably need to get out more, but we can spot a huge pile of statistical nonsense on the beach from a mile off.

Meanwhile, I won’t be in the pub, but in church – worshipping at the altar of Tony Joe White, the singer who makes all the miles worthwhile.

Click here to view our latest travel offers with Independent Holidays