It seems fitting that the first and title track on Ellis Paul’s new holiday album celebrates the spirit of New York, a city that survives and thrives, transformed each year by the sights and sounds of the season.  The “City of Silver Dreams” (2012 Black Wolf Records) peers through the ribbon draped…

Photograph of Blue Sky Riders by Louise Uznanski

Gary calls it the "45 degree angle tour".  He claims that at the start of each concert, every head in the audience is turned at 45 degrees, looking at Kenny.   Why, he says, I did a show in Pennsylvania about a week and a half…

by Holley Dey with Louise Uznanski

The album opens with a love song, a sweet and soft come hither that builds to a crescendo to ask “Darlin, what did you do to my heart?”, and that ends with the simple, seductive tease, “And when…when can you do it again?”  It’s the kind of song that turns on the ability of the vocalist to set the scene and convey the feeling.  Rebecca does both, caressing the notes in a supple vocal that belongs to the intimacy of…

I asked Boo Hanks to sign the photograph, and then watched as he took up the pen.  Each letter of his name was slowly and carefully formed; the “B” and “H” stand ramrod straight.  There are no flourishes, no vanity swirls.  Like the man, his signature speaks a plain, straightforward language.

James Arthur “Boo” Hanks was born and raised in Virginia, just over the North Carolina line.  For the majority of his eighty-four years he has been a laborer, working the tobacco…