“One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.” -A.A. Milne There is a great joy in discovery. New books, new music, new places speak to your soul. Some folks find their joy in the familiar, in the tried and true. Other’s seek the journey for the journey’s sake. […]
Turtles All The Way Down: Americana Music for 2014
“I saw the light from heaven shining all around.” –Dry Bones, traditional, as performed by Graham Lindsey This weekend we endure the shortest day of the year—all about the darkness and all about the light. The glass is half-empty. The glass is half-full. All the way to the bottom, it’s always the same… Like Hank Williams, […]
Diary of Orrin Brown—Nov 27, 1864
Diary of Orrin Brown, East of Sandersville, Georgia Sunday–Nov. 27th We were on the road again this morning at 7 Oclock, we haven’t seen any Rebs today. It has been very warm today, our Company went on Picket tonight the first time for me. Jed Marum brought the past alive, combining a deep and abiding […]
Sweetback Sisters at the Aztec Theater, 24 Oct 2014
My uncle used to love me but she died.Chicken ain’t chicken until its lickin’ good and friedKeep it on the sunny side. -Sweetback Sisters It is fun to be a critic. In pop culture, politics, academics, whatever, the world is a veritable shooting gallery full of pomp and circumstances that deserve the slings and arrows of […]
Diary of Orrin Brown—Oct 22, 1864
Diary of Orrin Brown, Chattanooga, Tennessee Saturday–Oct. 22nd We got up this morning shivering and no wood to make a fire of, we managed to pick up enough to cook breakfast and dinner by going about a mile after it. I went down to the river and looked around and then down town came back […]
The L&N Don’t Stop Here Any More
A point of context for the subtitle in my commentary yesterday on the Diary of Pvt. Orrin Brown. Jean Ritchie was born into a family of folk balladeers in the Cumberland Mountains of eastern Kentucky. Song catchers like Alan Lomax sought out her family in the early 20th century to document the long journey of common […]
Jalan Crossland Packs Cheyenne Downtown
Cheyenne’s Fridays at the Hynds is a bootstrap affair to bring more folks Downtown after work and to provide a friendly venue somewhere between the solo stage and the larger clubs. I say bring folks downtown, rather than keep them downtown, because outside of state & local government, Cheyenne tends to be a suburban affair, […]
Free On This Mountain: Top Tracks I Played in 2013
A song is poetry in motion. A good album choreographs that poetry, it tells a story, it tells a tale. It’s not just the “concept” albums, those are the easy stories to tell when we can come straight out and beat it into people’s skulls. A good album is carefully crafted from an artist’s material […]
Albums I Should Have Bought in 2013 – The Year of the Honky Tonk
This was the year I came home to the Front Range music scene. I went out—as much as my new job and my middle age preference for napping permitted—to see live music. I went out to see Halden Wofford & the Hi-Beams in LaPorte and Bearfoot and Jalan Crossland and others in Fort Collins. I […]
The Cantrells Come to the Library: An Americana Myth of Home
I wandered again through my home in the mountain Where in youth’s early dawn I was happy and free. I look for my friends, but I never could find ’em. I found they were all rank strangers to me. -“Rank Stranger” (traditional) There’s an element of home woven into traditional folk and country music. Celebrations […]