"A Complete Unknown" made me teary in places. It's a powerful portrayal of a young singer-songwriter trying to self-discover his truest, most soul-centered sound and what he has to say in song. It's also an homage to the power of epic songs and songcraft, ever more needed in this very moment in time.
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Are we headed 'Hellward' or do watermelon-loving turtles show a better way. Plus, my new band plays one of the saddest songs ever written.
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‘Lights’ by Rebecca Skeen-Webb encodes her spiritual DNA and deeply observant self. It is an honor to sing it every time I am up for it, seeking to channel its worthiness, heartfulness, and truthfulness. Here is a music video homage to the song of a much-missed human being.
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He digs into his wallet. Hands over a $20 bill. God bless you, she says. But where's the god for lost girls in a squalling storm? She turns to go back into the Taco Bell. He shuts off his car. Gets out. Do you have a phone? No. She says. Anyone at all to call?
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For folks who know the upper echelons of songwriting, 'No Depression' magazine once awarded Susan Werner some high praise indeed: “When it comes to crafting a song, Ms. Werner’s only peers are Jimmy Webb and Paul Simon.” Study up on her songcraft in our '5 Questions' with her in advance of an April 6, 2024 show in Charleston. W.Va.
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There are many days it seems to me music is helpless against the daily worldwide onslaught of human beings acting like cruel demons. Yet the promise of coming together to experience the communion of shared and transporting musicality is certainly not nothing.
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A couple of eightysomething artists refuse to stop being wonderful, while the capital city of West Virginia pays colorful homage to the passing of another master artist.
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About the night I never slept with Allen Ginsberg and the interview, song and music video this yielded after our encounter deep in the West Virginia hills in 1983.
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"Let the boys have the damn song." How "Over the Rainbow" almost didn't make the cut for "The Wizard of Oz." A look back at a "sacred" song in the American canon, on the occasion of a down-and-dirty music video version by the boys.
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The hand-transcribed song lyric considered as a work of art. Bouncing around Paris and the volcanic heartland of Gaul before easy access to printers and scanners, you had to make do when you wanted to travel with lyrics to the songs you hoped to sing.
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I've spent years collecting footage of trains rumbling through West Virginia's hills, dales & valleys. I also scribble poems that play on Buddhist allusions. And there's this electronic music maestro I know named Lucas the Flow, who composes ethereal tunes. Mix them together and this is what you get ...
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What to keep an eye upon come what may on the political scene and in our lives: beauty. A one-minute harmonically converged reminder ...
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To finesse and regulate some troubled energy, I fire up a jacked-up classical guitar, get the Garageband Foundry roaring, and hunker down. The result is "Dragon Ramble" by Douglas Eye and The Scribblers.
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Hoeft Marsh in Greenbottom WV is where I get off to when I want to get off the timeline of the world's news. Here's a short musical visit there. It's a little fishy, too.
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As a writer, purveyor, and publisher of creative works, I am constantly wrestling with my ego’s desire to see such work as of lasting significance, a hedge against my own mortality. Yet such works, too, will soon pass on by and melt away, swallowed by the river of time. Here’s a video-poem about that.
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