Your head nods … suddenly you find yourself drifting into a sea of musicians, thousands … performers and bands marching forward and back in hotel guestroom hallways. Setting up in hotel room after hotel room from the dark of night […]
Ron Wray lives in Norfolk, VA. A writer most of his life, he is recipient of the Illinois Poet Laureate Award presented by Gwendolyn Brooks, the Washington, D.C. Arts and Humanities Commission Literature Fellowship, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, and Special Project Grants from the Washington, D.C. Commission and the Illinois Arts Council. He is the author of three books and over 300 publications in journals and anthologies. He has performed his work widely across the country with dancers, actors, and musicians collaborating with him. He currently teaches 6th grade English, but spent much of his working life as an arts administrator, including being executive director/director of the Ragdale Foundation artists retreat, the National Institute of Arts and Disabilities, and the International Writers Center of Old Dominion University/Associated Writing Programs/George Mason University. He loves to play guitar, sing, and write songs, and is an avid listener/follower of music and his favorite musicians.
Your head nods … suddenly you find yourself drifting into a sea of musicians, thousands … performers and bands marching forward and back in hotel guestroom hallways. Setting up in hotel room after hotel room from the dark of night […]
They’ve been doing it a long time. All the time. Together all the time. They are reliant on each other. It all rubs raw as the artists smooth the path again. Countless times, repetition, perfecting, synchronizing, countdowns reaching out again […]
An Appreciation The Cast The Band: Sons of Bill, consisting of the Wilson brothers, James (guitar), Sam (guitar), and Abe (keyboards), Joe Dickey (bass), and Todd Wellons (drums) The Guests: Seth Green (founding Sons of Bill bass player), Caroline Spence, […]
Not too often you find a sailor and a cowboy together in one singer-songwriter, a Virginian one at that. But, Mike Aiken is that singular performer, one shit kicker boot in full cowboy Nashville, one Top Sider on his sailboat […]
Whenever the The Steel Wheels comes to town, the rubber hits the road with a rolling, fricative sound – a pushing forth of melody and movement with the vocal fix of lyrics layered in magic. Recently, the band, led by […]
The last time I tried to see the Felice Brothers, along with my wife and some friends, it was a number of years ago, and the band was steered away due to hurricane warnings in nearby Virginia Beach. So, I […]
I never thought big could be beautiful when it came to Americana festival crowds. I’ve changed my mind after seeing the bright lights of Bristol, TN/VA and its 50,000-plus. Or maybe I’m just infatuated with festivals themselves. Perhaps, if I […]
There has been a proliferation of music festivals, largely with an emphasis on rootsy music over the past decade or so, especially here in Virginia, from my wife’s and my favorite, the somewhat recent addition to the scene, the Red […]
Chris Stapleton is a killer! He’s the one instance whereby I can think murder is gorgeous. He gets into the guts of an electric guitar like few I’ve ever seen. He grabs at the resonant heart of the powered box […]
My wife and I have probably followed the Avetts as much as anyone over the past decade or so of watching/hearing a lot of “Americana” music (et al). And, I probably have some 8 or 10 albums of theirs (incl. […]
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