After 23 years and 4,953 episodes — more than either The Oprah Winfrey Show or The Late Show With David Letterman — my favorite sports show went off the air last Friday. I’ve long said that music and sports share a lot of commonalities, and watching the last episode of Around The Horn last week was like hearing your favorite band is breaking up.
Around The Horn was, in many ways, the sports anti-talk show. Long predating the televised debate shows that highlight loud, obnoxious, and antagonistic personalities (many of whom are former athletes with no journalistic training), Around The Horn captured the spontaneity of discussion, but with a gameshow mentality that had quirky scoring rules.
Host Tony Reali recruited sports writers — actual journalists from newspapers, magazines, and digital media organizations around the country — and conducted their banter with the finesse of a music director leading an orchestra. He doled out points for statistics, pop cultural references, and in-person reporting, but depending on the day, deducted points for these very same tactics. Worst of all, clichés of “banned phrases” received a smash of the “mute” button, rendering the panelist quiet for five seconds (an eternity in live television).
I was in middle school when Around The Horn premiered in 2002. Like reporter and college football expert Harry Lyles Jr. said in his who’s-chopping-onions tribute to legendary sportswriter Woody Paige, I also “grew up coming home from school and watching this particular program.” In the more-than-two-decades the show was on-air, many of these writer-panelists evolved from essentially babysitters to individuals I could look up to and model my career after.
Especially as a journalist who also covers a beat that’s often taken less seriously, Around The Horn proved that good reporting always matters. The show incorporated reporters in regional markets, thereby highlighting underrepresented voices, which brought a range of perspectives — not only about the games, but also the issues impacting the games. As David Dennis Jr., author and senior writer at Andscape, wrote in his tribute to the show:
One of the revolutionarily beautiful aspects of ATH is how it empowered journalists to speak their minds about topics they’re passionate about. The show allowed reporters to be themselves, expressing their passions on TV, but also allowing them to speak up about issues far more important than box scores and record books. The show didn’t really care about your background, demographic or barrier to entry. It only cared about whether you were good. I saw the show as a playground, but also a space to talk about topics that I felt could make a larger impact.
Still, it was powerful to see women like Jemele Hill (who has gone on to be one of my favorite writers at The Atlantic), Mina Kimes, and Sarah Spain absolutely shred in what too-many-people-have-called “a male-dominated field.” (Sound familiar in the music industry?)
As Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame award-winning sportswriter Jackie MacMullan — the first woman to be invited on the show regularly — said to Reali in her final Face Time, “You managed our egos and idiosyncrasies and opinions as deftly as you orchestrated our chaotic show. You made us family.”
That sense of family is what made Around The Horn unlike anything else on network television. The show ran on community and care, and was as real as possible, despite Disney and ESPN’s corporate overlord orders. Reali lost a child in 2018 and used a Face Time slot to open up about grief management and depression on international television; he also committed to wearing all-black for every subsequent episode as tribute. More recently, when senior sports and culture reporter at The Undefeated Justin Tinsley (who has written a book about music!) lost his grandmother, the show dedicated an episode to Mama Clem.
Around The Horn exemplified honesty and compassion in reporting, as well as the importance of representation in journalism. It showed how sports can be central to our lives, but also how so much life and heart goes into making sports happen. As Reali told New York magazine before the final episode, “I was trying to work in feelings, and sports is feelings.”
To me, music is also feelings. And music is also family. Here at No Depression, we still have the chance to foster community, encourage a range of voices, report dutifully, and remember just how much life goes into music, especially roots music.
Even though this week’s news does actually include a story about another band, Mipso, breaking up, the truth is that the amount of time our own lives intersect with a specific game, record or gig, or pop cultural moment is fleeting. What a miracle to exist at a time where a talk show like Around The Horn or a band like Mipso can remind of us our humanity and purpose.
In more specifically roots music news this week, roots-rocker Will Johnson (Centro-matic, The 400 Unit) is teaming up with the surviving members of Jason Molina’s Magnolia Electric Co. Mike Brenner, Jason Evans Groth, Michael Kapinus, Mark Rice, and Pete Schreiner join Johnson for a 7” single /three-song digital EP titled Magnolia & Johnson Electric Co. due out September 19 via Keeled Scales. They’ve also announced a short Texas tour in September. This mini-reunion follows other “Memorial Electric Co.” events in which Magnolia Electric Co. collaborated with Strand of Oaks frontman/songwriter Timothy Showalter in 2018. Listen to a new version of “The Big Beast” they recorded together below.
Gearing up for their reunion at Rhiannon Giddens’ Biscuits & Banjos festival last month, Dom Flemons and his wife Vania Kinard launched a new website and Instagram page for Carolina Chocolate Drops. Now, the stringband is the subject of a new documentary by John Whitehead, Don’t Get Trouble in Your Mind: The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ Story, which is available for sale and streaming via Amazon today.
Guitarist and composer Eli Winter (whose recent studio album A Trick of The Light was released via Three Lobed Recordings earlier this month and who was featured in a story on instrumental folk artists in the Winter 2022 issue) contributed a track to Imaginational Anthem vol. XIII : Songs of Bruce Cockburn, which is out now. Folk label Tompkins Square brought on eight other musicians to help honor Cockburn on the legendary Canadian artist’s 80th birthday.
RIP to Dan Storper, cofounder of Putumayo World Music, and sacred steel guitarist Calvin Cooke. Read more about these influential individuals at Billboard and Arhoolie. Watch a live performance tribute to Cooke via Jalopy Theatre & School of Music in Brooklyn and the Steel Guitar UnConvention below.
WHAT WE’RE LISTENING TO:
Marc Ribot - Map of a Blue City
Lucero – Should’ve Learned by Now (although frontman Ben Nichols also announced a new solo LP, In the Heart of the Mountain, due out on the band’s label July 25)
The Menzingers – Some of It Was True
Queen of Jeans – All Again
Jillian Jacqueline - Bright Eyed Baby EP
Low Cut Connie – “Living in the USA”
Jack Van Cleaf - “Rattlesnake”
Katie Pruitt - “ Blood Related”
Silvana Estrada – “Como Un Pájaro”
Josiah Flores – “La Lucha” (off his new LP Doin’ Fine out today via Speakeasy Studios SF)
Daymé Arocena – “Mean” (off her new EP Daymé y Yo out today via BMG)
NEW RELEASES – 5/30/25
Clover – Atlas
Anderson East – Worthy (ND review)
Mt. Joy - Hope We Have Fun
Moonrisers - Harsh & Exciting
Josiah Flores - Doin' Fine
Foxwarren – 2
David Lowery - Fathers, Sons and Brothers
Ava McCoy – Dragonfly
Shelby Means - Shelby Means
Louis Michot – SEAUXLEAUX
The Minus 5 - Oar On, Penelope!
The Shootouts – Switchback (ND review)
Alan Sparhawk - With Trampled by Turtles
Reed Turchi - World on Fire (ND review)
Watchouse - Rituals
COMING SOON – 6/6/25
American Mile - American Dream
Caamp - Copper Changes Color
Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History
J.D. Crowe & The New South - The New South (reissue)
Jesse Daniel - Son of the San Lorenzo
Ben de la Cour - New Roses
flipturn- Burnout Days
Kentucky Gentlemen - Rhinestone Revolution
North Mississippi Allstars - Still Shakin
Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius - Paper Flowers
Hayden Pedigo - I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away
David Starr - Must be Blue
Suzie Ungerleider - Among the Evergreens
Ken Yates – Total Cinema
Various Artists - That'll Flat Git It
Comments ()