Blues from Damon Fowler – Sounds of Home!!

I first encountered Florida native Damon Fowler a few years ago when he released his second album on Blind Pig Records Devil Got His Way, now his third record on the label Sounds of Home sits at # 4 on the Roots Music Reports Blues Chart and it’s rising!! Now that was when I officially listened to Damon Fowler’s music but Damon Fowler the musician who plays not only a terrific guitar but also steel guitar, dobro and lab steel has played on albums from artists like Jeff Beck, Buddy Guy, Johnny Winter and Edgar Winter, Robin Trower, Gregg Allman, Jimmie Vaughan, Junior Brown, Rick Derringer, Delbert McClinton, and many others. so there’s a good chance that I have heard his playing somewhere along the way. Read More

Books 3,4 and 5 of 2014 Part 1 – Let the Great World Spin – Colum McCann

Let the Great World SpinA few days ago at Socialstudious I wrote a post about Books 3 and 4 for 2014. Those two books are Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann and Plainsong by Kent Haruf, neither of these books are anywhere close to the type of books that I normally read. The genre that I normally read is reflected in the title of this blog. But last month after reading The Road Out by Deborah Hicks. A book about her attempt as a teacher to give a group of at risk adolescent girls a way to see their lives reflected in literature, and realize that there may be hope to attain their dreams, I thought hey am I missing out by not reading literature. So i decided that this year I would read at least one book a month that is considered literature. For the other books (I read about 3-4 books a month) I would include one history and.or political book, and one mystery or thriller. With that being said, because I have been on hiatus from work, due to lack of work, I have finished in addition to the two books already mentioned  a third book Theodore Roosevelt and the Assassin.… which I will write about shortly. Read More

Blues on the Rock Side from Sean Chambers – The Rock House Sessions

When I started my blog Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries, one of the first young blues artist whose music I explored was Sean Chambers. At that time he had just released his album Ten Til Midnight, initially, I couldn’t find the album on any of the music sites I use, so I listened instead to his 2007 release Humble Spirits and I was very, very impressed by his musicianship. What I didn’t know at the time was that from 1998-2003 Sean had toured with Hubert Sumlin, played lead guitar and was his band director! Sean was also named “One of the top 50 blues guitarists of the last century” by  Britain’s Guitarist magazine. So by the time he released Ten Til Midnight Sean had a pretty good resume going! Read More

This Day in Music – Feb 12, 1974 – The Bottom Line Opens in New York City!!

The Bottom LineOn this date forty years ago, The Bottom Line music venue in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan. The Bottom Line was an eclectic venue that booked just about every kind of musician. The club was owned by Allan Pepper and Stanley Snadowsky. The club opened (let’s do the math) on Feb 12, 1974.In 2003 the club was deeply in debt ($190,000 in back rent, plus several hundred thousand dollars in other expenses) and no longer bringing in large crowds. Its landlord, New York University (NYU), increased the rent to market level, which was beyond the club’s ability to pay, in contentious negotiations, the university threatened eviction,.and finally the owners closed the doors prior to being evicted. The last show was on January 22, 2004 just shy of their 30th anniversary! The building now houses NYU classrooms. Oh, but what a venue it was  everyone played The Bottom Line.The venue was famous for Read More

Life’s Soundtrack – An afternoon with the songs of Wyatt Easterling from Goodbye Hello!!

Wyatt EasterlingSo today I spent time listening to two artists whose albums are currently on the Folk DJ Chart for January. The first was Wyatt Easterling whose album Goodbye –Hello is #33 and the second Steep Ravine and their album Trampin’ On which sits a little higher on the chart at #20. Neither of the artists names were familiar to me. Read More

Today in Music – Feb 10, 1961 – Jazz Trumpet Player Paolo Fresu was Born!! (Video)

This morning the name that caught my attention on the list of birthdays at All About Jazz was Paolo Fresu,a trumpet player. Paolo is in fact not only a trumpet and flugelhorn player, but he is also an arranger and composer. And an award-winning  one at that!!  Paolo was born in Berchidda, Sardina on February 10, 1961 and he his musical career has spanned the last 30 years in which he has performed on over 300 albums.many as a sideman and lots as a leader of his quintet.But wait there’s more…(if you call now – just joking) He is also  according to Wikipedia: Read More

Americana Music from Texas’ Chis Beall – Gin Mill Hymns

Gin Mill HymnsChris Beall.’s 2013 release is titled Gin Mill Hymns. Now if I see an album with a title like that, and read that the musician resides in Austin. Texas, I’m gonna give it a listen!! Visions of Ray Wylie Hubbard, Slaid Cleaves and a dozen others dance in my head. The only other thing that would make it a certainty that I would listen is if I saw that the album was produced by Lloyd Maines. What I got was an album that’s full of great songs some really personal like :”Dug Down Deep” about his father, a Texas motorcycle racer’s crash in Missouri and his miraculous recovery. coupled with blues classics like Mississippi John Hurt’s “Spike Driver Blues”  Chris says his influences include David Grissom, Tom Petty, Will Hoge, Neil Young, John Mellencamp. But when I listen to the first and second tracks on the album “Half a World Away” and the aforementioned “Dug Down Deep” I hear a little Greg Trooper in his music. And I even think he stole his hat! Read More

Today in Music – Feb 9, 1982 – Vibraphonist Behn Gillece is born in New Jersey! (with video)

Solarstalgia - Aton Five

One of the reasons that I explore the daily birthdays at All About Jazz is that it gives me names of musicians that I don’t know, like yesterday, when I discovered  Pawel Kaczmarczyk the great young Polish jazz pianist. The odds of coming across his name elsewhere are pretty low. Anyway, the first name on the birthday list is actually someone I already knew, but only because when I was checking the birthdays at All About Jazz, I  saw his latest album on the same page! That artist is  Behn Gillece and the album is Top Shelf. Read More

Today's Reads – Feb 8, 2014 – The Bible and Camel Bones and the War on the Poor and Middle Class

Ok so it’s been a while since I posted some new reads but here are a few that caught my eye today. The first one is from Juan Cole and discusses the writing of the Bible based on Archeological studies. I think it shows that while maybe inspired by God, the Bible was written by people who wrote it based on THEIR frames of reference!!

Camel Bones and Jerusalem: Archeology Shows Bible Written Late, Full of Errors 

from Truthdig,com and Informed Comment

A new paper by Israeli archeologists Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef, [pdf] posted at the University of Tel Aviv web site, is bad news for biblical literalists and far right wing Israeli nationalists who use the Bible for support.
The Hebrew Bible’s oldest chapters– Genesis, Exodus, and even Judges purport to discuss events thousands of years ago. The custom in Western biblical scholarship is to date Abraham to e.g. 2000 B.C. This dating is based on nothing more than counting generations (“begats”) backward and assigning an arbitrary number of years to each generation. In fact, Genesis is replete with myths and assertions of people living hundreds of years, and was only historicized in this way by 19th century positivists.
But here is proof that the Bible was written late and projects later developments into the distant past: it alleges that people had domesticated camels four millennia ago in what is now Israel. And that assertion, folks, is simply not true. That is the finding of Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef.
E.g. Genesis 24: 64 says, “Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac she dismounted from the camel.” If this encounter happened circa 2026 BC, it was happening a thousand years before anyone was riding camels
Continue Reading at Truthdig.com or at Juan’s website  Informed Comment Read More