John Oates’ new album Arkansas displays raw power, pure beauty, as well as musical grooves that get under the skin and head straight for the heart. There’s an emotional honesty to Oates’ vocals that imbues these tunes, and performances, with […]
Happy Groundhog Day! Whatever that rodent tells us today, spring is drawing ever nearer, and that’s something to celebrate! This week you can pick from a colorful bloom of new releases, including the Wood Brothers, John Oates, and Sunny War, […]
When the internet provided the mechanics to invent crowdfunding, the early adopters were almost all independent artists. The label system was still working in the late ’90s, although the terminal illness had already set in, and most established artists still […]
In the best of all worlds, music brings us together, gives us a vision for a better world, challenges us to bring about change actively. It takes only a moment to recall a refrain from only a single song—Chicago’s “Dialogue, […]
Embracing the unknown is never easy, especially when you’re being led into it by a guide you trust. David Starr’s new song “The Edge of the World” starkly and beautifully describes these glorious feelings of uncertainty, ambiguous emotions bathed […]
In his often entertaining, sometimes flat-as-pavement new memoir, Change of Seasons, John Oates energetically delivers a portrait of an artist as a man in search, superficially at least, of himself. Oates displays his typical manic energy in these pages as […]
As winter rolls into spring—and winter has often felt more like spring this year here in Chicago—publishers cultivate a new crop of books, sending the fruits of the authors’ long labors into the arms of readers waiting for the lush, […]
As another chapter opens in this book of life, I’m looking for new surprises, new plot twists, meeting new characters, and also some level of comfort, love, and joy. As someone who writes about books for a living, I’m expecting […]
Another fall publishing season has come and gone, and the last two columns have listed a few memorable books. For the past few weeks, publishers have been announcing their spring books. There are a few interesting memoirs — Jessi Colter weighs […]
It’s almost Halloween and Christmas songs have already been filling the frosty air with the age-old wishes for a merry holiday filled with good cheer and peace on earth. Lovers of Christmas songs can already choose to fill their pumpkins […]
