Tin Pan Transformation
Sunday night. I experienced the little epiphanies that music can give to a weary heart. After logging a 65-hour work week. I was moving in a fog of physical fatigue and emotional exhaustion. I needed a song to call out to my heart and pull it back from the
The Old-Time Camaraderie of Sandy’s Fancy
I’ve been hearing about Sandy Bradley since I first moved to Seattle about 13 years ago. She’s considered one of the prime architects of Seattle’s folk scene, a legendary dance caller, a beloved radio host (of Sandy Bradley’s Potluck on Seattle’s KUOW for 13 years)
Joe Ely Gets Personal
Texas singer/songwriting troubadour Joe Ely has been a significant force in the alternative country scene for decades. Ely was born in Amarillo and followed his family to Lubbock, both in the northern-most region of Texas referred to as The Panhandle. This region is known for its flat, dry
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 in The
Bob Dylan, "Sitting on a Barbed-Wire Fence"
Bob Dylan has always liked the spaces in between, dividing lines, and borderlines in his songs. Particularly in the mid-1960s, he liked, lyrically, hanging out in no-man's-lands: the haunted wild-western, Tex-Mexican border town of "Desolation Row"; wherever it is he has
Nashville Obsolete by Dave Rawlings Machine: Regional Music and Beer
If an artist carves a beautiful sculpture out of a tree in the forest and no one sees the artist do it, is he or she still an artist? The obvious answer is, or, hold on, the maybe obvious answer is, “well, sure.” Artists, of course, do not create for