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Kevin Lynch

“My Thanks, My Tears” – In Honor and Memory of Bill Schaefgen

“My Thanks, My Tears” – In Honor and Memory of Bill Schaefgen

The duende “pierced her with a dart … for having stolen his deepest secret, the subtle bridge that unites the five senses with the raw wound, that living cloud, a stormy ocean of Love freed from Time.” -- Federico Garcia Lorca from “Play and the Theory of Duende.” (for Lee Brady)

Tedeschi Trucks Articulates Their Full Voice and Vision on "Let Me Get By"

The Tedeschi Trucks Band's vision of collective aspiration and individual empowerment permeates their stirring new album, Let Me Get By. Susan Tedeschi’s soul-stirring voice soars and dips more majestically than ever, on an eagle’s wing. Listen to “Anyhow.” It’s a broken heart with tenacious muscles.

Jazz Singer Mark Murphy (1932-2015), "The Next Sinatra," Did It His Way

Jazz Singer Mark Murphy (1932-2015), "The Next Sinatra," Did It His Way

Call me crazy, but I see a little of Crazy Horse in Mark Murphy, the magnificent and fearless jazz singer who died October 22 at 83, of complications of pneumonia. More specifically, I see Murphy in the somewhat quixotic Crazy Horse Memorial sculpture, which I was reminded of while searching

The day Elvin Jones Fired Up Milwaukee's Lakefront Festival of Art in 1972

The day Elvin Jones Fired Up Milwaukee's Lakefront Festival of Art in 1972

This blog is a birthday remembrance, honoring -- one month late to the day -- the monumental jazz drummer and innovator Elvin Jones, who was born on September 9, 1927 in Pontiac, MI, and died May 18, 2004. His passing prompted the original version of this appreciation, published in 2004

Los Lobos: A Social Comment on the "Gates of Gold"

Los Lobos: A Social Comment on the "Gates of Gold"

A cartoon strip by Brian McFadden that ran in The New York Times on Sept. 6 depicted a forlorn Statue of Liberty greeting a boatload of immigrants with a sign reading “Huddled Masses No Longer Welcome.” It’s timely, considering a new groundswell of build-a-border-wall, anti-immigrant politicians, and it all

Going Back to Townes Van Zandt's "Proud Mountains," to Anyone's Mountains

Going Back to Townes Van Zandt's "Proud Mountains," to Anyone's Mountains

And lay me down easy where the cool rivers run/ With only my mountains ‘tween me and the sun — Townes Van Zandt, “My Proud Mountains” A Westerly Cultural Travel Journal I recently drove back out to Colorado, which is not my home. But something draws me back, which feels as

Coltrane Comes Home, to Find His Deepest or His Most Far-Flung Self?

How far out did John Coltrane go at the end? Or how far inward, to the depths of the universal, Emersonian self most of us rarely touch? Was his quest fueled by mere artistic restlessness or by a sense of how to face, or embrace, his own impending mortality? Such