‘America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy….’[1] So said Warren Harding in his successful campaign for president in 1920. But how different was Harding’s ‘normalcy’…
I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan. No, not his music though cuts come up on my playlists. But his Theme Time Radio Hour which I catch on…
‘Don’t ever worry ’bout nothin’, ’cause there ain’t nothing gonna be alright no how. You can count on that.’ So an expert on nothing going right, Hank Williams,…
‘What a pretentious title’, I thought as I started the BBC 4 documentary, ‘Johnny Cash: The Last Great American’ (2004). By the end of this thoughtful, fast-paced hour,…
Nine months and four days after we turned our Vermont home over to our contractor, Gary Daden, we returned to our gutted-and-rehabbed house. During the renovation process, we worked closely…
Singer-songwriter John Prine turned 66 today, Oct. 10. ‘Happy Birthday!’ to one of the best there is. I was surprised when WUMB’s Perry Persoff saluted Prine this…
My mother raised four sons (and their friends and dogs and rabbits…) in a rambling, wreck of a house in a small town with plenty of woods and fields surrounding…
I admire singers who take other people’s songs and make them their own. Most lack the empathy to express the emotion in the words they may sing very well. In…