Arroyo Seco Weekend: Day 1

Show Review
Arroyo Seco Weekend: Day 1
Gold Course next to the Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA.


  Yesterday I went to Day 1 of the new Arroyo Seco Weekend, a new festival- pitched somewhere in the Venn Diagram between Desert Trip, Coachella, Stage Coach and a food and drink fair.  Arroyo Seco Weekend raises the question, "Have we reached the point of a post-music music festival?"  The answer I think, for now, is no, but Arroyo Seco Weekend has raised the issue for resolution at a later date.

    The first argument AGAINST Arroyo Seco Weekend being the first example of a post-music music festival was the obvious monster draw of the night one headliner: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.  Like, I suppose, every human being living in the United States between the late 1970's and today, I like me some Tom Petty radio hits.  Not so much into the deep cuts, but man oh man his hits, and I've never been to one of his infrequent tour dates (Petty's Tour Archives on his website look like the IMDB page of Daniel Day Lewis:  2008. 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014...)  So while I wouldn't say I exactly jumped at the opportunity to attend, I wasn't hard to convince.   Mostly, my reluctance had to do with the location.  The only Rose Bowl area event I've been to was an exhibition match between Manchester United and the LA Galaxy. That event drew something like 80,000 people, whereas I was told that the capacity for Arroyo Seco Weekend was 25,000.

   As it turns out, logistical concerns were unwarranted.  I arrived late in the day, parked with ease, and walked 10 minutes down, essentially, the length of a golf course.  No line at the front entrance.  The interior layout was scaled down festival- closer to a Renaissance Fair size then Coachella.  Three stage- two major stages and one smaller tent. A huge difference maker between this and other Goldenvoice festivals was the amount and variety of food options.  It was entirely possible to just eat and drink something different every forty five minutes for the entire time you were there, albeit one had to be able to wait in lines between stops.

  The crowd was old to very old- the only demographic keeping the crowd from simply being "very old" was the number of young children- down to babies in strollers, there with parents. Long before Tom Petty took the stage, it was clear, to me, that Goldenvoice is on to something hugely lucrative, and it perhaps a formula that Live Nation, their major rival, simply will not be able to match.  It's hard to imagine the corporate, oxen-like Live Nation being nimble enough to pull off an analogous festival.

  Certianly, it would be fair to say that Arroyo Seco Weekend is pitched towards an older, "bougey" crowd, but it's not fair to say that it is anymore expensive than Coachella.  There was a clear absence of the elements that make Coachella today an exasperating experience for anyone above the age of 25: No EDM, no hip hop and no artist edgier than Broken Social Scene.   There was a heavy jazz/soul/funk vibe, with a noted New Orleans flavor (Preservation Hall Jazz Band and The Meters were two featured artists.

  If anything, I was surprised at just how democratic Arroyo Seco Weekend turned out to be- I was expecting tiers and tiers of access, exclusive seated dining experiences,etc.  Instead, VIP was just a roped off area at the side of the two main stages, a la Coachella in it's earliest days.  The Artist Access area was located on the Third Floor of the Donahue Pavilion in the Rose Bowl.   That was a needed oasis- as it moved toward Tom Petty's set time, the crowd around the main stage was close to unbearable.  A notable visual from this time period was people trying to fill up their inflatable sofa's by whipping them in crowded areas.

  Can I be the first to recommend Margo Price for Arroyo Seco Weekend next year?  I think she'd be a great fit!

Show Review: Stagecoach 2017 w/ Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Margo Price & Nikki Lane

Margo Price and band prepares to take the stage at Stagecoach 2017, photo credit me.

Show Review:
Stagecoach 2017 w/ Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Margo Price & Nikki Lane

  One of the major ironies of being a moderately successful pop artist is that your work day is everyone else's party.  Even for the biggest, most successful artists, touring is a grind.  The process of touring is a function of minimizing unnecessary costs over time, so if you are doing reasonably well as a touring musician, there are not a lot of days off- by design.  Every city you play is different, every lodging, every venue, you are playing in front of a live audience five out of every seven days, and then, to top it all off, every human you know in each city comes out and wants to hang.  Touring musicians, unless they are psychopathic-ally unable to be alone or chronic substance abusers or both, do not want to hang out with random people during their work day, they want to play their gig, maybe have a couple hours to relax, and then they want to go to the next city.  It's nothing personal, its basic humanity.

  No where is this dynamic more apparent than at a mid to large size festival, where you've got dozens of artists and camp followers, squeezed into unusual time slots, with a double or triple portion of friends and family from the surrounding area.  If you happen to be one of those camp followers, as I am, it should be more about the festival audience than whatever artist you may taking along behind.   I've long espoused the audience first perspective, and no where does that pay higher dividends than at the Stagecoach Festival, or "Cowboy Coachella" as members of Margo Price's band of trained killers were calling it over the weekend.

  Despite my love for the festival, I felt like it was over all a down year for the bill, particularly the headliners, with only the Saturday night Shania Twain post-Vegas headline slot feeling really festival worthy.  Dierks Bentley, and Kenny Chesney, headlining Friday and Sunday night respectively, were of no interest.  Friday had some "aww sorry I missed them moments":  Elle King, an ancient Jerry Lee Lewis, Maddie & Tae and John Moreland.   Sunday had Terry Allen, who I really did want to see.  But basically, Stagecoach 2017 was all about Saturday afternoon, with Margo Price, Tommy James, Nikki Lane, Jamey Johnson and Willie Nelson celebrating his 84th birthday, playing in that order between 4 PM and 8 PM.  

  In many ways, the 4 PM Margo Price set felt like the fulfillment of a promise made two years ago, when I came to Stagecoach for the first time.  It was in September of that year that Third Man announced the Margo Price record, that same week, my gf brought her into Monotone (who manage Jack White, who owns Third Man records) and then flash forward two years and here we are.  So it was satisfying to see it all go down, even if there was the normal frisson of anxiety that accompanies any live show by a band you care about.

  Obviously, the crowd at 4 PM was just filling in.  The Palomino tent for Stagecoach is the Sahara tent for Coachella, so it is a big space, and it can be half empty with a few thousand people watching.  The performance was workmanlike, not inspired.  I mean, how inspiring can you be at 430 PM on a Saturday afternoon?  I suppose it has happened, I can think of some memorable afternoon performance at Coachella- MIA's first performance was in the mid afternoon, but it's a tough sell.  The band was truly spectacular, a fact that everyone who watches picks up on, country fan or no.  I could just watch the band play for an hour without Margo at this point.

  The crowd was that amazing Stagecoach mix of races and classes, though mostly white with a sprinkling of darker skin tones and ethnic identifies subsumed by a unifying, American flag inspired visual aesthetic.   I'm hardly a member of that coterie of festival goers, but at least they aren't the annoying, drug-addled children who dominate the general population area of Coachella in 2017.  I would have liked to have seen more artists, period.  After Willie Nelson wrapped his set at 9 PM Saturday night, there was no one left to see except Shania Twain. It would be great if the second stage went a little deeper into the night.

East Nashville artist Nikki Lane also played Stagecoach 2017

  After Margo Price wrapped up, we ended up trouping over to the Mustang stage- to see Nikki Lane, who is something like an East Nashville rival- I'm using "rival" in a very casual sense not meant to fan the flames of gossip, but it would be ridiculous to not compare to East Nashville based artists who peddle similar varieties of vintage country.  For Lane, the emphasis is on the vintage. She sings with a twang that wouldn't be out of place on a Western Swing record from the 1940's.  She literally owns a vintage shop in  East Nashville.

  It's probably a leetle embarrassing that I've been following Margo Price and East Nashville so closely for the last year and a half and had yet to actually hear Nikki Lane sing.   And I was impressed by the voice, and the general look/style/aesthetic that she brings to the table.  But her band is not as good as the other East Nashville based bands I've heard.  Also, I think her twangy singing style is something that I personally enjoy but one that limits her upside.  The only place that twang has in contemporary Top 40 country is the accent of country artists who are belting out choruses or "rapping" in between verses.  I'm sure, though, that after Stagecoach I'll be paying closer attention, but my take is, based on the fact that she has three LPs out and the first one was in 2011, that it isn't going to happen for her in this iteration.   She needs a hit, and she didn't get one from the new record.  I'm saying this having heard the new Margo record and knowing that there is at least one, maybe two or three radio level hits on her next record.

  The Willie Nelson set was a total shit show, in the best possible sense of that term.  His set started out with 10 minutes of Bradley Cooper shooting for his Lady Gaga featuring Star is Born.  No sound, just Cooper "playing" on stage with a band.  The big story backstage was Neil Young literally driving up in his beater car.  He ended up hopping on stage for 45 seconds, alongside Margo, John Doe,  Jamey Johnson and others as Willie was serenaded with happy birthday.

  Afterwards, there wasn't much celebrating- we had gone early for the managers and bookers Stagecoach Brunch, so Shania's set would have required a full 12 hours at the festival.  The band did watch Shania Twain, then it was off to Tempe for the Sunday edition of the Stagecoach Spotlight tour with Jamey Johnson and Brent Cobb.  I would also like to again say that Brent Cobb is a very nice guy with an excellent attitude.

  A major difference between Stagecoach and Coachella is the artist village- for Coachella it's the beating heart of the industry scene, but for Stagecoach it is essentially deserted.  I sat in the artist area for hours, in the middle of dedicated trailers for Willie Nelson (he never even used it and eventually they turned it over to Steve Moakler), Maren Morris (she was there for about 15 seconds, sporting legit side boob), Margo, Nikki Lane and Brent Cobb and really it was only after the end of Nelson's set that anyone started hanging out.  Most of the main stage acts have their own tricked out tour buses and never leave, and the lesser artists were just stopping through Stagecoach on their own tours.

  Sunday I was disappointed that I didn't see Terry Allen.

Show Review: The Stagecoach Discovery Tour w/ Jamey Johnson, Margo Price & Brent Cobb @ North Park Observatory

Show Review: The Stagecoach Discovery Tour
 w/ Jamey Johnson, Margo Price & Brent Cobb
@ North Park Observatory
San Diego, CA.

  Getting ready all this week for Stagecoach, particularly Saturday Night with a sequence of Margo Price, Willie Nelson and Shania Motherfucking Twain basically in a row.   The prep for that begins this week, with a couple of local dates on the Stagecoach Discovery Tour with Jamey "Kicked Out of Country" Johnson, Margo and Brent Cobb (He's Dave Cobb's cousin, not his brother, FYI).  Last night it was the first date on the tour, playing the North Park Observatory (f/k/a the North Park Theater).  I am a decided fan of the venue, if not the staff at the venue.

  Pre-gaming across the street at the Waypoint Tavern, I got a taste of the vibe for the night:  manly men wearing Johnson's trademark "Kicked Out of Country" t-shirt and some combination of work wear and/or cowboy books, with a much smaller number of cowgirls.   When the tour was announced, the question on my mind was who was Jamey Johnson- turns out he's a Chris Stapelton type with several great records and a spotty relationship with labels and publishers.  He's currently in the middle of a multi year dispute that has rendered him unwilling or unable to release a new record, but his passionate fan base provided a justification for his headliner status.  That and his enormous tour truck/bus combination.

  The shows at the North Park Observatory start impressively early, Brent Cobb's set started before 8, Margo played at 8:15 AM.  Amazingly, last night was her first date in San Diego since her last record came out, another testament to her competitiveness in so many mid size and small markets that she can afford to ignore San Diego completely. The crowd was assuredly there for the headliner, but they were very interested in both opening acts, far beyond what you'd expect from a similarly sized rock crowd.

  I would have liked to do more wandering through the crowd, but I'm planning to get my crowd work in tomorrow night at the Ace Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where the same tour takes the stage.  Good tickets still available!  Jamey Johnson has a two hour set!



  

Show Review: Sleaford Mods @ The Echoplex

Show Review:
Sleaford Mods
@ The Echoplex
April 9th, 2017

   England's reigning working class talk-rap duo delivered the goods last night to a crowd of predominantly older, male and English non working class fans, their first show in Los Angeles.  The easiest catch phrase to describe Sleaford Mods is "post-Brexit the Streets/Mike Skinner."  That capsule summary doesn't do justice to the magnetism and delivery of rapper/talker/singer Jason Williamson.  Sleaford Mods are a genuinely compelling live act perhaps because of their bare bones aesthetic.

 You can count me as convinced by their performance last night

Clearing Warrants in Southern California

   I just put up this new web page for clearing warrants in Southern California: CLEAR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WARRANTS.

  I've noticed there is a need for this service all over Southern California, because our Court system generates many different warrants, and they pop up on back ground checks, they interfere with obtaining a driver's license, and of course, they can cause you to get arrested in an otherwise non-arrest-able situation like a traffic stop.  The situation is especially perilous for those who are not in the country legally, they risk falling into the hands of Federal officials.

   The first question that people ask is, "Do I have a warrant?"  The answer to this question is often available from the facts that people possess when they call me for the first time.  There are three major categories of warrants.  The first is the "bench" warrant, typically issued in traffic and misdemeanor cases, most often because the individual charged with the traffic infraction or misdemeanor does not appear for a scheduled court appearance.    The second is the arrest warrant.  Most people think all warrants are arrest warrants, but this is not true.  Bench warrants are a lower priority for law enforcement and do not result in an arrest if you come into contact with a police officer.

   Arrest warrants are issued in felony cases or if someone misses a court appearance or for a misdemeanor after the case has started.  Thus, if you know of a scheduled court appearance, and know that the person involved didn't make that court appearance, it is highly likely that a warrant has been issued, either bench or arrest. The exceptions are when the case itself is filed.  For example, if you are arrested for driving under the influence, and it turns out that your blood alcohol level was under .08, you likely won't be charged, and so if you don't show up, and the case isn't issued, no warrant is issued.

  95% of the time, any confusion can be resolved by figuring out whether the underlying case that resulted in the missed court appearance was actually filed.  In traffic cases, tickets always result in the case being filed (an infraction, usually), in misdemeanors the likelihood varies by type of crime and jurisdiction.  Felonies are filed some of the time after arrest, but not always.  If a court date has been missed, the easiest way to verify the existence of a case is to find the appropriate county court website and search their party case index.  This typically works for felony and misdemeanor cases, but may or may not work for traffic cases.

 If you have determined that a warrant exists, you can clear it by either appearing at the appropriate court house yourself, or you can hire a lawyer to do it for you.  For traffic infractions and misdemeanors, a lawyer can appear for you, but for felonies you need to go- preferably in the company of a lawyer.

 When people call me about traffic warrants, I typically recommend they handle it themselves (unless they are out of the area.)   Misdemeanors can also be handled by the person with the warrant, but a lawyer is a better value for these cases, since they can require several court appearances.  Trying to appear on a Felony warrant by yourself will clear the warrant, but often results in the arrest of the person appearing.  A lawyer may be able to help you avoid being arrested for a felony warrant, but typically the person will need to post bail, on top of what they pay their lawyer.

  Unfortunately, warrants do not go away, so the only option is to deal with it, or to have the warrant remain outstanding forever.

New Book Review: Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made by Steve Miller

Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made by Steve Miller. The cover art may be the  best part.

New Book Review:
Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made
 by Steve Miller
Publication date is July 12th, 2016
Da Capo Press
(PURCHASE ON AMAZON)

   The Insane Clown Posse and their fans, called Juggalos, make occasional entrances into the general popular culture.  They are know for their yearly festival, The Gathering, for being designated as a gang by the FBI (and fighting back) and for their horror-clown aesthetic.   They also make music, and run their own record label, :Psychopathic Records, which has spawned it's own universe of Inane Clown Posse fellow-travelers.  Even a neutral observer would have to say that the Juggalo sub-culture spawned by the Insane Clown Posse rates low on any scale of cultural sophistication, and high on the actual constituent elements of what makes a cohesive subculture:  shared values, physical proximity to one another and, most importantly, alienation from the dominant popular culture.

  It's impossible to over-state the importance of that last strand: alienation from the dominant popular culture.  Being a Juggalo, as revealed by the many interviews with the Artists themselves, employees and journalists who have covered the Juggalos in the national print/online media world, is very much an us vs. them mentality.   In this way, Juggalo: Insane Clown Posse and the World They Made made me think of the rise of Donald Trump and his appeal to supporters.  One astonishing difference, or perhaps, not at all astonishing difference, is the utter lack of any political element to the Juggalos and Insane Clown Posse.  You would think from the level of intense scrutiny paid by law enforcement and the demeaning stereotypes foisted upon Juggalos by the mainstream media that they were terrorists, or at least fascists, or at least racists, but the Juggalos seem to be none of these things.

   Miller takes care portraying the many Juggalos who are just plain folks, often with skilled tech service/industry type jobs, and families. Unfortunately, more time is spent detailing the various travails and conflicts between Insane Clown Posse and the world at large, most memorably their tussle, ongoing, with the FBI over their designation as a criminal street game.  A decision that, on it's face, seem incomprehensible to anyone with even a loose knowledge of Juggalo culture and music, seems even  more bizarre after reading the source material for the underlying decision.  Surely, law enforcement in versed in street gang culture would recognize the difference between Juggalos and a criminal street gang?  Sadly, no.

   There are many aspects of the Insane Clown Posse and Juggalo culture that are easy to deem as admirable, regardless of how you feel about the music.  The worth ethic, for one.  The ability to build a DIY label operation, for a second.  And, at some level, the ingenuity that it took for a couple of nowhere nobodies to create an entire eschatology and what is essentially an ideology, or at least a "way of life" for adherents.

 In a tantalizing chapter, Miller, talks to a Juggalo who has actually started a church.  One would think, considering the tax implications, that this is something Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope would at least be contemplating at this point.  I think probably the hang up is that they are both actually practicing Christians, something I gleaned not from this book, which skirts the awkward reality that both Violent J and Shaggy Too Dope are Middle Aged dads, with sons serving in the United States military.

  The downside to this book is the writing style, which is sub-New Yorker prose.  Perhaps the style is calculated to appeal to Juggalos themselves, though, and I say this with all due respect, it's hard to imagine many of the people profiled in this book picking up one themselves to read.

Book Review: The Trees (2016) by Ali Shaw

The Trees by Ali Shaw,  published in paperback on August 2nd, 2016

Book Review:
The Trees (2016)
by Ali Shaw
Paperback edition published on August 2nd, 2016
Published by Bloomsbury USA
(Buy Hardcover version on Amazon)


   Ali Shaw is a young English novelist.  He lives and works in Oxford.  The Trees is his third novel, coming after The Girl With Glass Feet (2011), which was lauded as the top debut novel by the Desmond Elliot Prize.  He followed The Girl With Glass Feet with The Man Who Rained (2013). All three books combine elements of magical realism and fairy tale's with standard Anglo-American characters dealing with difficult emotional issues made worse by circumstance.

  In The Trees, that circumstance is a Day-of-the-Triffids-meets-The-Road style plant uprising.  In a single night, global civilization is utterly annihilated, and the survivors are left to make their way in a world that is fairly benign when compared to say, the nightmarish dystopias of The Road and The Walking Dead, but worse than a world where one can pop down to the Tesco for a rotisserie chicken.  Adrien Young, the married, childless protagonist is very much a pop down to the Tesco for a rotisserie chicken type of guy.  On the night of the tree uprising-apocalypse, he is winding up a year of "searching for himself" at the behest of his to-good-for-him wife, currently on a work trip to Ireland.
 
 He quickly hooks up with a troupe of survivors, a hippie single mom and her tech savvy mom and a young Japanese tourist who happens to be aces with a slingshot. They have episodic adventures of the sort one might expect in a book of this type, and there is also a larger plot concerning Adrien and his destiny.  The most unusual and distinctive aspect of The Trees is the creation of Adrien as not an anti-hero but a non-hero, a literary equivalent of Seinfeld's George Costanza, thrust into the post-apocalypse world.

  At 500 pages in length, The Trees isn't exactly a challenging read, but it's not something you can take down in a weekend.  It is extremely, extremely easy to see this work being adapted either for English or American TV or Film.   It's long enough to warrant a series on television, but compact enough to be turned into a stand alone feature film.  Given the popularity for apocalyptic themes in popular culture, such a move would be expected.

  Shaw successfully skirts the line between adult subject matter and writing something that sophisticated adolescents can enjoy.  There are moments of graphic violence, but nothing more upsetting than anything on television today (and significantly less violent than comparable cross-media properties like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead.
  

Time: A Vocabulary of the Present edited by Amy Elias and Joel Burges

Book Review
Time: A Vocabulary of the Present
edited by Amy Elias and Joel Burges
Published in August, 2016
by New York University Press

   It's true, I like to dabble in what you might call "critical theory."   I'm not a huge fan of French post-modernist philosophers, but there is no denying that they have swayed the majority of people who talk about cutting edge philosophical/social science type theories in the American University system.  So I went into Time: A Vocabulary of the Present expecting to see many, many, many references to German and French philosophers who wrote in the mid to late 20th century.  I was not disappointed.  Time: A Vocabulary of the Present is an up-to-date anthology of recent academic theorizing about the role of time inside and outside the academy, but heavy on theory that is only of interest to people with academic level interest in the subject ("Time Studies.")

  The introduction, Time Studies Today, by the editors, lays out the contours of the time studies field.  It's part French post-modern philosophy, partly a continuation of the post-post-modern "linguistic" and "spatial" turns in cultural studies and partly a product of cultural studies itself.   Time: A Vocabulary of the Present is divided into three parts.  Part I, Time as History: Periodizing Time has five paired chapter.  Each chapter is a different opposition illustrating an aspect of time.  So,  Past/Future, Extinction/Adaptation, Modern/Altermodern, Obsolescence/Innovation, and Anticipation/Unexpected.   Editor Amy Elias' essay on Past/Future, with an informative discussion of "retro futurism" was a stand out in this portion of the book.

    Elias accurately describes the paradoxical impact of the internet, "in the analogue era, everyday life moved slowly...but the culture as a whole felt like it was surging forward.  In the digital present, everyday life consists of hyper-acceleration and near instantaneity...but on the macro-cultural level things feel static and stalled.  We have this paradoxical combination and standstill.  This combination is what I call "techno duration" and in it, the present spreads like a tsunami wave over the past."

    From there, Elias builds up the concept of "retro-futurism" where we imagine an alternative future from an imaginary past.  Retro futurism is at the heart of many cultural trends of the recent past and present, so possessing a theoretical background on the development of retro futurism, provided by Elias in the course of her essay, is well taken.

   Part II of Time: A Vocabulary of the Past is Time as Calculation: Measuring Time.  Here, Time Studies is on the more familiar ground of horology (the study of time measurement with watches and clocks.)   Here, the pairings consciously acknowledge this theoretical pre-history, Clock/Lived, Synchronic/Anachronic, Human/Planetary, Serial/Simultaneous, Emergency/Everyday, Labor/Leisure,  Real/Quality.   The third and final part of Time is Time as Culture: Mediating Time.   This third part if firmly derived from the field of cultural studies.  References to comic books and modern art abound.

  The footnotes and bibliographical essays are both excellent and this book is worth acquiring simply for the up to date reference notes, if you are interested in the field of time studies in any serious way.

The Man with the Compound Eyes (2014) by Wu Ming-Yi

Book review
The Man with the Compound Eyes (2014)
by Wu Ming-Yi

      What about contemporary literature?  I'm getting there.  A notable absence from the 1001 Books list is anything originally written in Chinese.  The Man with the Compound Eyes was Yi's first work of fiction translated into English, but he's been writing fiction and non-fiction in Chinese for fifteen years.   Yi is from Taiwan, and The Man with the Compound Eyes is memorably set on the East coast of Taiwan, a region little known in the West.  Eastern coastal Taiwan is populated by a mix of Taiwanaiese born Han Chinese and different Taiwanese aboriginal peoples.  Specifically, the Amis and Bunun both figure prominently.

   Located someplace between Latin American style magical realism and futuristic speculative fiction, the plot combines intercultural romance, the disastrous consequences of climate change on coastal communities and the great "trash vortex" in the Pacific ocean.  The translation by Darryl Sterk does an excellent job of maintaining the idiomatic characteristics of Yi's text.

   The heart of The Man with the Compound Eyes, like great many novels, tells the story human emotions in some interesting place.  The eastern coast of Taiwan is interesting as a setting, as are the various speculative/science fiction/magical realism touches.  It all combines in memorable fashion.

Posts Discussing Country Music

Show Review: Jason Isbell at the Wiltern, Los Angeles, CA. (8/13/15)

Show Review: Stagecoach 2015 (4/28/15)

Show Review: Way Over Yonder Fest Day 1 (9/27/14)

Museum Review: Country Music Hall of Fame (5/21/14)

Stagecoach 2014:  Of beer, trucks & cut-offs and the sublime (4/28/14)

Book Review Meeting Jimmie Rodgers by Barry Mazor (4/15/14)

Book Review: The Roots of Texas Music edited by Lawrence Clayton and Joe Specht (9/13/11)

Show Review: Willie Nelson's Country Showdown (6/24/11)

12 Hrs in Bakersfield California (5/31/11)

Buck Owens and the Bakersfield Sound (5/23/11)

Movie Review: Earl Scruggs- Bluegrass Legend (7/27/10)

Book Review: That Selling Sound by Diane Pecknold (6/5/10)