Dreamers Rise

Maritime disasters have long served as inspiration for popular songs and ballads, especially when the drama of the incident is multiplied by...

For the last week or so I've been revisiting Lillebjørn Nilsen and Andy Irvine's Live in Telemark CD, which I bought soon after it ...

Ideally I should have posted this on St. Stephen's Day (December 26th according to the Western Christian calendar), but the elements did...

The great Malian kora master Toumani Diabaté died last week at age 58; the Times obituary says the cause of death was kidney failure. I th...

This song appears on Peter Case's 1993 Vanguard album Peter Case Sings Like Hell, where it's the only track that isn't a cover....

For a commonplace book, notes on hotel rooms and the solitary travelers who visit them, sometimes only in the mind. Image: Joseph Cornell, U...

It's hard enough for me to wrap my head around the idea that a record I first listened to when I was in my twenties is now fifty years o...

The traditional ballad heard here is at least three hundred years old but doesn't seem to have run out of steam. This lovely, fairly rec...

Cortázar's short story "Carta a una señorita en París" (Letter to a Young Lady in Paris) is narrated by a man who has a peculi...

I've always enjoyed this Ewan MacColl song, which I first heard on Planxty's eponymous debut album, but this gentle version (featur...

Songwriter Peter Case has a new record just out from Sunset Blvd Records . Entitled Doctor Moan , it's his first album of original songs...

The Memphis Jug Band was a shifting collection of African-American musicians that recorded some 70 or 80 sides of music between 1927 and 193...

About twenty years ago or maybe a little more, my wife and I went to a small music club called the Towne Crier , which at that time was loca...

The death of Kelly Joe Phelps on May 31st got me thinking about my favorite Kelly Joe song, so I've dug out and updated some notes I mad...

And it's funny that this comes out dark, it's not that bad There's still a sparkle of silver in my cavity that plays music in t...

A good friend let me borrow this LP of Scarlatti transcriptions for the guitar when we were in high school and I've always remembered it...

The revered British folksinger Norma Waterson has died. The Guardian has an obituary and a nice appreciation . Though she recorded contem...

A Josef Škvorecký novella set in wartime Czechoslovakia led me to this droll 1985 BBC documentary about the bass saxophone and its players,...

The gifted songwriter and performer Nanci Griffith has died at the age of 68. Here she is in her prime, with a lovely live version of one of...