Working On A Building

Tim Hensley, George Jones, Lilly Pulitzer, Christopher Hanna Ripple On…

I’m at the Rhiga Royale, now called the London. Once upon the time, it was the high, but not most nosebleed expensive rock & roll hotel: a place where Billy Gibbons and I once passed the night talking about heaven only knows, where running a “Regis & Kathie Lee” performance with a young client, Nanci Griffith heard my laugh and ran up to…

Buddy Miller and Jim Lauderdale have been friends so long, making a record seemed almost beside the point. They’ve played in each other’s band, recorded each other’s songs and followed each other from New York to LA to Nashville, and along the way done a fine job carving out the sonic roots and origins of today’s Americana movement.

But time teaches people to honor their core, seek those things that are overtly pleasurable. Thankfully, Buddy…

Out in Hollywood, all the pretty people were swirling down the red carpet. Decked out to be seen, glittering and sparkling, heels that theaten nosebleeds or spinal injuries, clothing folded like origami armor or barely there to catch the eye.

They tromp that camera-line, professing their undying love for Bruce Springsteen, a working class hero who rose from the practically Asbury boardwalk to sing their truth with bravura and an insistence that let them know that someone saw. For him…

I don’t own a tv. Maybe five, six years ago, I realized how easy it was to get sucked into stuff that didn’t matter; but even worse, to obsess about bad news. The pornography of the unthinkable, snuff films for the suburbati… the compulsive this-just-in and gruesome rehashing ad nauseum of the unthinkable.

Not out of denial, but survival, I cut myself off. Gave the tv to a home for older people, and didn’t look back. But that doesn’t inure me to tragedy or the insanity of what goes…