It was the Talk of the Town in this week’s New Yorker that first allerted me to the new Janet Reno executed-produced compilation Song of America, though a few internet searches have since directed me to many other articles addressing the collection. The release of the 50-track recording this Tuesday is a development that can [...]
Archive for September, 2007
Attorney General; Executive Producer
Posted in Uncategorized on September 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Killer Country: A Jerry Lee Lewis Biography in Verse (Fragment)
Posted in Uncategorized on September 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Always he was still a sinner,
That much, he knew, it was inner.
But after hellfire struck him down,
Mid-stride, rocking music town,
He forsook shaking, balls of fire
To countryside he did retire.
Another time another place,
Led Killer to the penance face.
Filled with guilt and with regret,
Were his yodels, and they met
The twang, the moans, the pedal steel–
Roots redemption held [...]
Dear Readers
Posted in Uncategorized on September 16, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Apologies for the lack of words this week. The man at the Apple store who informed me that my laptop would have to be shipped off for extensive repairs didn’t mean to take the music away, but alas this was the outcome. The ideas are percolating. Rap music as roots music; the new reality TV [...]
Back Door Man
Posted in Uncategorized on September 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
I am the blues. So said Willie Dixon, with the title of his 1970 album and later, his 1990 autobiography, and he was right each time. Songwriter, producer, bassist, and occasional singer, Willie Dixon was to electric Chicago blues what Harlan Howard [...]
Wedding Vows
Posted in Music, Weddings on September 6, 2007 | 2 Comments »
When my sister was married this past weekend, I fulfilled her request to perform an original composition at the ceremony. Partly because the song I wrote had some of the colloquial simplicity of a country song I got to thinking a lot about my favorite country wedding songs. There is, of course, Gram Parsons’s “$1000 [...]
