Clik here to view.
No Ordinary Blue--Thoughts on John Prine Revisited
April 9, 2020 These are just some late night thoughts as I get my first moment to think in the past 30.Stephen King once described finding stories like digging up gems, excavating, finding the solid...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sensitive Boys, Turn Your Amps Up Loud
Yesterday, I had a dream my friend Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen and I were walking the halls of my high school (in truth, our high schools were 700 miles apart). Eric was singing the Lou Reed song "Stupid...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Remembering Prince: "I Want to Be in the New Breed--Stand Up, Organize!"
My Mary J. Blige book had just come out, and Prince died. I suppose that's why I never turned this into anything beyond a Facebook post. The third in a series of such "found eulogies," I feel it needs...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Twelve Years Ago and Today, Knox Family's "In These Streets"
Knox Family's 2009 EPTwelve years ago, I wrote this about a single as vital today as it was then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74D_TC1tthkSingle-Minded, “In These Streets” Maybe...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Erica, Steve and The Saints of Lost Causes
11 years. The days fell the same this weekend.You reached out that Friday afternoon to tell me you were sorry about abandoning our friendship, and you wished my new family well. I saw Steve Earle this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Letting Go, Arms Open: Horror Stories and the Reason for the Season
"This is not an artistically rounded-off ghost story, and nothing is explained in it, and there seems to be no reason why any of it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not be...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two Of Us: You and I Have Memories
Some kind of light by your side.Well, Kent, this would be about the time we'd stop doing whatever we weren't supposed to be doing and settle down to sleep. That meant music. We listened to everything...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"A Town without Soul" Sets a Caravan on Its Way
The Fred Wickham Caravan’s debut album is about many things, but at its core is a loneliness so complete it’s delusional. In that sense, it’s a perfect record for the times we live in, particularly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
If You Wanna Move, It Has to Get Uncomfortable: Ana Egge's Between Us
In a world where we have all the tools for communication at a level we never could have dreamed of before, Ana Egge’s “Between Us” asks why we understand each other less and less. In some ways, this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Knowing Where She's Going As Sure As Where She's Been: The Much Needed Vision...
When my friend David Cantwell played Miko Marks’s “Race Records” for me over the holidays, something in the sound of Marks’s voice (and her fine band, the Resurrectors) showed me what I’d all but left...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Kids Are Alright: grandson with Royal & the Serpent
grandson At last night's tour ending show at the Granada Theater in Lawrence, Kansas, grandson and opener Royal & the Serpent stood united selling the idea that rock and roll still exists to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Return of Folk Alliance, Day 1: Magic and Contradiction
A refrain at this first Kansas City Folk Alliance in four years connected Allison Russell to Jason Mraz and countless others, some way of saying, “music is magical.” For the four years before the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Folk Alliance, Day 2: Marching On
Los Angeles singer-songwriter Chris Pierce began his set by congratulating the Oklahoma City couple that fronted the trio Wood Willow before him. Someone had shouted “It’s their honeymoon,” and Pierce...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Folk Alliance, Day 3: Praise the Women
“In Appalachia, it’s not traditional for a dancer to fiddle or a fiddler to dance. We typically do one or the other. But here at Folk Alliance, I’ve met three other dancing fiddlers, who I’m thinking...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Folk Alliance Day 4, To Serve the Music
The room explodes to Le Diable a Cinq On the last day of Folk Alliance, I was driving two other volunteers (David Torrejon and Concepcion Neuling of the Chilean duo Coda) to the various load out points...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bruce Springsteen's "Any Other Way" and Other Conversations
People argue over which version of William Bell’s “Any Other Way” Springsteen is covering on his new record (as Greil Marcus put it “a fan’s record”). I have half a dozen reasons for suspecting it...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Much Depends Upon Bushwick Bill, Merle Haggard, More Poems about Money,...
I used to write book reviews in my blog, and I may still occasionally do so. However, lately, it seems if I really want to help a book out, it needs to go on the Amazon page.Don't get it twisted, when...
View ArticleClik here to view.
"All Genres Are Part of the Vision," DJ NONAME at Tulsa's Mercury Lounge
dj noname debut, "Who Else But Me?"At the end of December, we went to the Mercury Lounge in Tulsa to check out a hip hop set by DJ NONAME (from here out dj noname) featuring several special guests. So...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Folk Alliance Day 1,, "Imagination Is a Discipline," the 2023 Folk Music...
Sara Curruchich“They say women hold up half the sky,” NPR's Ann Powers began at last night’s Folk Alliance International awards. She added, “They’re holding up more than half the sky tonight,” the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Folk Alliance Day 2, One Step Makes Many: Valerie June, Cary Morin Duo,...
Joy Clark and Tiffany MorrisEchoing Janis Ian’ sentiment from the day before, New Orleans singer-songwriter Joy Clark said, “I don’t know about you, but I always feel that I’m behind.” She used the...
View Article