Old Friend – New Music – John Batdorf

I guess it all started about 40 some odd years ago. I was going through the Graham Area lobby at the University of Florida and  stopped when I heard two guys with guitars playing some incredible music. When they finished I asked them if the tunes were theirs. They said no they were from an album by Batdorf and Rodney! Well, the next day I headed to my favorite record store in Gainesville and picked up Off the Shelf and I’ve been listening and enjoying this album since then. So many great songs “Me and My Guitar”, “One Day”, “Can You See Him” and “Farm” what great acoustic guitar work. I was so happy when a few years ago when the album became available on CD. Well about a year ago, I was listening to XM Radio and heard a live performance of  Batdorf and Rodney, so I came home and discovered that sure enough they had gotten back together for a show at the XM Radio studios and in fact they had put out a new CD Still Burnin’. So I went to emusic.com for the album and soon I was enjoying Batdorf and Rodney again the album has many old favorites including the aforementioned “Me and My Guitar” and “One Day” but the CD also includes great songs from their Batdorf and Rodney album “By Today” and another of my all time favorites “All I Need” based on the book Johnny Got His Gun. So I was a happy camper but wait, John had released a solo album called Home Again. So I went back and downloaded that album and have enjoyed it since then. There are some great tracks on this CD like “Home Again”, I Don’t Always Win” and this one “Something is Slipping Away”. I had forgotten this song until I heard it last week and really listened to the great lyrics Read More

Thursday’s Music – Quick Notes

So today was a long day, it’s the first time in a long time that I had some work to do outside! Thankfully, it was a beautiful day but my butt was dragging when I got home! So some quick notes on what was playing on the trip down and back to Carneys Point! On the way down I listened to a little Texas Country – two younger artists that I discovered a while back who I really like Rich O’Toole and Casey Donahew. I listened to O’Toole’s album In a Minute or Two and tracks from The Casey Donahew Band’s two albums Live-Raw-Real in the Ville and Moving On. Read More

No Time for Goodbye – Linwood Barclay

No Time for Goodbye – Linwood Barclay (Book 12 of 2010)

Book No 12 of 2010 is Linwood Barclay’s No Time for Goodbye. What would you do if one day you were a normal fourteen year old with a mother, father and brother. You get caught with a boy in a car at the mall drinking, your father pulls your butt out of the car, you go to bed, wake up the next morning and YOUR FAMILY is GONE! no note, no evidence of a fight or struggle they are just gone! That what happens to Cynthia Bigge in No Time for Goodbye. Read More

Blues Wednesday – Tab and Buddy

As I was heading down Hartford Road this morning toward the site I was going to in Medford, I was checking out the wooded wetlands along the way. After two days of rain they looked a lot like the Louisiana Bayou and I knew I had the right CD playing, Night Train to Nashville by Tab Benoit. This is a favorite (aren’t they all?) and captures Benoit at his best. The album has a great mix of music (I’ll write more about the album tomorrow when I get my notes!) I do know that three songs that really stood out again today aside from the title track were “Too Sweet for Me” with outstanding harp work from the Fabulous Thunderbird’s Kim Wilson (who I left out of Sunday’s shopping mix because it was on the way home!), “Fever for the Bayou” and “Muddy Bottom Blues” Read More

Blues Wednesday – Tab Benoit is on that Night Train to Nashville

NightTrain to Nashville2

As I was heading down Hartford Road this morning toward the site I was going to in Medford, I was checking out the wooded wetlands along the way. After two days of rain they looked a lot like the Louisiana Bayou and I knew I had the right CD playing, Night Train to Nashville by Tab Benoit. This is a favorite (aren’t they all?) and captures Benoit at his best. The album has a great mix of music (I’ll write more about the album tomorrow when I get my notes!) I do know that three songs that really stood out again today aside from the title track were “Too Sweet for Me” with outstanding harp work from the Fabulous Thunderbird’s Kim Wilson (who I left out of Sunday’s shopping mix because it was on the way home!), “Fever for the Bayou” and “Muddy Bottom Blues” Read More

Parnell Hall – You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled (Puzzle Lady #8) Book 11 of 2010

You Have the Right to Remian Puzzled 2 Book No. 11 for 2010 is the 8th book in the Puzzle Lady series by Parnell Hall, You Have the Right to Remain Puzzled. Now I read my first book in the other series by Parnell Hall featuring Stanley Hastings in 1991 and have loved that series. I read the my first Puzzle Lady book,  Book 1 A Clue for the Puzzle Lady of the series in 2000. Why I’ve waited ten years to read another I don’t know! Maybe it’s like being an Mets fan and not being able to root for the Yankees or the Giants and the Jets anyway to hell with that, I loved this book! Read More

Kerrville Songwriter Winner – Louise Mosrie brings it Home

Home Louise Mosrie 2

Sometimes, like the gathering of the elements that make the perfect storm, the music, the lyrics, the vocals all come together to create songs and an album that just “blows you away”. That happened to me this morning when I listened to the new CD Home by Louise Mosrie. When I heard that opening dobro and the images of Home painted by a talented songwriter, blessed with a great voice, I knew I was going to like this album! Any doubt of my liking the album was erased when the lyrics on the second song  included “in the Indian summer heat John Prine playing on the radio”! The song “God Lives in Arkansas” goes on to paint a vivid picture of Arkansas complete with Rebel flags and sweet peaches. Louise can do something that I love in music and that is create a “sense of place” vividly painting people and places so well that they become  real to the listener and she does it well on songs like “Backroads”, “Blackberry Winter”  and “Tennessee”. She also creates the bleak life of a miner in the song “Battle of Blair Mountain” with the haunting lyric “find a vein and drain the black gold, hoping to God that the timbers hold, like my father before me, I only live to harvest the coal” Read More

Sunday Shopping Mix

So shortly after the birth of our third son Peter, my wife said that she had had it with grocery shopping and since I know what I’ll eat or want, I can do the shopping! So for the last 24 years I have done the grocery shopping. I usually go on Sunday mornings and typically over the last several years I’ve made a playlist exported it to the MP3 player and listen while I shop! Recently, I just put the player on random and listen to what’s there! Today I took the old ZenV and the mix contained some music I haven’t listen to in a while! It started with a great song off of John Batdorf’s Home Again CD “Something’s Slipping Away” and then Leonard Cohen’s “The Stranger Song” from his first album Songs of Leonard Cohen, When ever I hear that song I think of the movie McCabe and Mrs Miller, especially references to giving up the holy game of poker and the bridge or somewhere later, both lines fit the movie perfectly! Read More