Category: others music
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I recently was telling a friend about a music festival I went to in March over in Knoxville, Big Ears. She asked me where the name of the festival came from, and I said I didn’t know. She said maybe it came from that John Prine song, “Sam Stone.” In 2010 Rolling Stone magazine exalted…
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When you go back thirty seven years, the stories may suffer from memory distortion. You wonder, did that really happen? I reminded Terri, when we had played in Chillicothe, Ohio, how she asked me if I would accompany her on an elephant ride that the fair offered.
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Just before 11, we get a text from David. “Where would you like to meet? Maybe we can go to Waffle House near The Opry and break bread, have a hang and chat a bit.” This sounded perfect because it was on our way home, and we hadn’t been to the Opry Waffle House. Would…
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We set up a session with Roquè and Joe. I believe the first session happened sometime in May, 2021. We were still masking because of the pandemic and thinking about our distance from each other. Joe was downstairs with his drums while Roquè and I were in the great room upstairs. Roquè was on my…
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Back in February I had the one of the world’s greatest harmonica players over to my studio, Artland, here in Nashville to do some recording. Mickey Raphael, born and raised in Dallas, Texas, has been performing and recording with Willie Nelson for over four decades.
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Earlier this year in June I was in the UK touring with Jeni & Billy. On June 16 I read the news about the passing of Don Young. Don was the co-founder of the National Resophonic Guitar Company which started making guitars in 1989. Jeni and I got to meet Don in 2010 in San…
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The year was nineteen seventy-one. A former mailman from Illinois released an album on Atlantic records, self-titled, John Prine. The songs were narrative — filled with empathy for his characters. Sam Stone, the drug addicted veteran; Hello In There, a song about aging; and Paradise, the town that was taken away by the coal company.…
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I read on my Baltimore Sun app this morning that Al “Madman” Baitch died on March 24th at the age of 89. He was one of the great Baltimore club and concert musicians who played for nearly seventy years. His instrument was the saxophone. I had to call my Dad to let him know because…
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Last week brought the Americana Music Festival and Conference to Nashville and Jeni and I got to go to a couple of spectacular events at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum. On Thursday in the Ford Theater, Robert Gordon interviewed the legendary Booker T Jones – musician, composer, producer from Memphis, Tennessee. Mr.…
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Harold Bradley, who played guitar and/or tick-tack bass on all but four of Patsy’s recordings, spoke about Patsy’s intensity every time she stepped up to the microphone. He also said that two of the things he’d learned from being a session musician was that 1. the singer is always right and 2. the singer is…
Billy Kemp 