As is sometimes the case when going in the studio, Jim Lauderdale is prone to call friend and co-writer Odie Blackmon with a question. “Hey Odie, do we have anything?” For Lauderdale’s new album From Another World, Blackmon responded with a yes, reminding his friend that they had written “When You Can’t Have What You […]
“Now that the singer is gone…..where shall I go for the song?” The question was posed by lyricist Robert Hunter in the aftermath of the death of his writing partner and Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia. If history is any guide, the question was answered long ago. Just go on the road. For the past […]
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What is history? The French poet Victor Hugo described it as “an echo of the past in the future and a reflex from the future on the past.” And artist Marcus Garvey put it this way: “People without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” For author […]
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I’m in a new Joan Baez video. But you won’t get to see it and I’m certain I won’t. It was filmed on her Fare Thee Well Tour when she stopped at the Ferguson Center on the campus of Christopher Newport University in Newport News. I’m pretty sure only Joan will look at it. […]
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“It’s great to be here at the Astrodome,” Adam Carroll said in a sly Texan drawl. “I’ve always wanted to play here.” Standing onstage in the cavernous basement of Hill Country Barbecue in Washington DC, Adam Carroll and his wife Chris Carroll must have felt like they were a long way from home. But here […]
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As anniversaries and May dates go, this one is special. It was fifty years ago this month that a then seventeen year old named Nils Lofgren walked into the Cellar Door in Washington, DC upon a band called Neil Young and Crazy Horse. The Maryland native approached the singer who handed him his guitar and […]
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It was shortly after 8:00 on Saturday night when a Facebook feed appeared on my page from Mitch Slater who was at the Tribeca Grill attending the 27th annual Kristen Ann Carr Fund benefit A Night to Remember. The event is named in honor of the daughter of Barbara Carr, Bruce Springsteen’s co-manager and her […]
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Long before he became a songwriting partner of Guy Clark, Shawn Camp was once a waiter who served Clark a bowl of chili. Camp is also someone who has also been to the famed Texas Chili Parlor referenced in the opening lines of Clark’s “Dublin Blues.” It was there that he had a Mad Dog […]
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On the third Tuesday of March, Don Vernon Thompson passed away and went to his final resting place. The lifelong farmer and rancher was 87. “If love could have saved him,” his family wrote about the lifelong farmer and rancher, “he would have lived forever. Everybody loved him.” I can’t say I knew the man […]
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One of the best memories Larry Campbell has of his days playing with Bob Dylan was meeting Paul Barrere and Billy Payne of Little Feat. When Dylan was paired with Phil Lesh and Friends, the two mainstays of Little Feat were playing in the Grateful Dead bassist’s evolving side project. Every night Campbell would venture […]
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