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Ray Padgett on his Flagging Down the Double E’s blog posted an interview with Larry Campbell discussing his years in Bob Dylan’s band. There were some truly great performances mentioned by Larry that were featured on part 2 of this interview– Two videos are posted here in the hopes you enjoy them as I did: […]
Greg Thomas of the Jazz Leadership Project posted a list of his 25 favorite jazz albums. I enjoy jazz, but I know I have huge gaps in my familiarity with jazz music. So I’ve been listening to all the songs on these albums as a project in 2023, and I created a Spotify playlist of […]
After many long conversations about songwriting over the years, Gordy Quist and I emptied our pockets of all the songwriting tricks we used and put together a book. Mainly, we wrote down all the ways we got unstuck and dealt with the dreaded blank page. We also noted all the strategies we used – and […]
The new book by Bob Dylan is The Philosophy of Modern Song – essays on 65 songs he admires. I’m gonna listen/revisit one a day, and today I am listening to Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up”. Here’s the list from the Table of Contents and a playlist on Spotify if you’d like to play along- […]
New book by Bob Dyland is The Philosophy of Modern Song – essays on 65 songs he admires. The next 65 days I’m gonna listen/revisit one a day starting today with ‘Detroit City’ by Bobby Bare. Listening to ‘Detroit City’ reminds me that probably a quarter of all the country/Americana/folk songs ever written are about […]
I am inspired by stories about people who lived remarkable lives and overcame immense challenges to survive, thrive, and make the world a better place for the people around them. On previous albums, my co-writers and I have written songs about Cabeza de Vaca, Sam Houston, Lyndon Johnson, and now we have written a song […]
My friend Kelley Mickwee has released a brilliant recording of a song we wrote together called “Gold Standard.” We wrote it thinking about how if two people spend enough time together, they might wake up one day to find that they’re “an item” – a couple. And if the match looks good enough to the […]
Happy Easter y’all. Though we’re practicing physical distancing, we are closer together today, thanks to an online recording collaboration that brought this song I wrote with Walt Wilkins to life. Hear the song at https://www.waltwilkins.com/ and below- Thanks and peace to Tina Wilkins, Corby Craig Schaub, Bill Small, Bart deWin, Ray Rodriguez, Ron Flynt, Jimmy Davis and Walt […]
I love this new video the Band of Heathens did for a song that Gordy and I wrote together called “Trouble Came Early.” Recorded at several live performances, it shows off the band’s blistering version of this song that was released on their new album (details below). Thanks to Rolling Stone for the coverage of […]