Nerissa Nields has spent her life devoted to books, reading, writing, songwriting, and playing music. When she was in college, she took courses in English and music, and wound up majoring in English. “My first two loves were music and […]
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Driving into the state from any direction, travelers are greeted with signs welcoming them to “Wild and Wonderful” West Virginia. Folks don’t have to travel too far, though, before they might spy a sign letting them know that the state […]
Back in 1994, Laurie Garrett, the health and science reporter for Newsday, wrote a book titled The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance (FSG). While she didn’t predict the novel coronavirus that is now spreading […]
Loretta Lynn says she feels like Patsy Cline is watching over her sometimes, especially when life gets hard or when she feels like she’s ready to give up and lose sight of the many blessings she’s been given in life. […]
Maya de Vitry certainly has a way with language. You can hear the ways she ponders every lyric, searching for just the right image or metaphor and shaping stories that help us understand our world in deeper ways. Her songs […]
In a 1979 essay, “Of the Sorrow Songs: The Cross of Redemption,” James Baldwin challenges a pernicious view that separates music — he’s writing about jazz in this essay — from its cultural context and its social roots. It’s all […]
When George Jones sang “Who’s Gonna Fill Their Shoes?” (Troy Seals/Max D. Barnes), he might not have foreseen that the answer lay in a young guitarist, songwriter, and singer from Philadelphia, Mississippi, named Marty Stuart. By the time Jones’s single […]
In a very familiar scene from Cameron Crowe’s film Almost Famous, the rock critic Lester Bangs, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, warns the aspiring young critic William Miller (Crowe’s alter ego): “I’m tellin’ you, you’re coming along at a very […]
Some listeners these days like their concerts to be politics-free zones. They want the shows they attend to be entertaining, and they’re there for the music; they leave their political debates at the door to the venue, and they won’t […]
Martin Luther King, Jr. once called Mahalia Jackson his favorite singer. She was with him before and after he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Washington Memorial on August 28, 1963. King asked her to sing the […]
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