Shel Silverstein: 1930 to 1999
Every kid wants to grow up and be like his daddy -- my daddy just happened to write songs, record them, and shake his butt on stages all over the world. And in the eyes of my parents, there is no occupation more noble than that of a songwriter --
Gram Parsons - A long-lost soul for a long, long time
If Gram Parsons knew when he scribbled those words in a 1972 letter that 21 years later country music's biggest stars would record a best-selling tribute album to the Eagles, he probably would have been aghast. Though his oft-stated desire was to introduce pure, unadulterated country to rock
Darrell Scott - Household man
Three-year-old Gabriel Scott is lying on his back in a guitar case, floating on a placid, moss-colored pond and gazing at the sky. That image adorns the cover of his father's new CD, Family Tree. The idea, says the senior Scott, came from photographer Senor McGuire, who had
Cynthia Gayneau - Sister in the sun
Nobody with any degree of hipness aspired to sing on Broadway in 1966, so when 16-year-old Cynthia Gano ruined her voice smoking cigarettes, she didn't much feel the loss of withdrawing from those classes. Thirty years later, she finally found time to sing what she really loved, and
Buzz Zeemer - Nothing comes easy
The story of Buzz Zeemer is really two stories, each straight out of the standard rock 'n' roll manual. First, there was Flight of Mavis, a three-piece band from the Replacements school of melodic, attitudinal rock. Distinguished by Frank Brown's cut-above songwriting and warm, personable singing
A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & The Soul Of America
Nowadays, a music critic is what we call anyone who writes about music, though actual music criticism has all but disappeared. As Greil Marcus wrote in his rock crit classic Mystery Train, "a critic's job is not only to define the context of an artist's