It's a dark winter's night on Tybee Island.  Up and down Tybrisa Street, near the pier, the souvenir shops have all closed and a brisk breeze is whipping from the beach, only a few yards away.  The neon glow of Doc's Bar spills out onto the sidewalk and as you step inside you hear the ringing of old guitars and the throaty strains of harmonicas and singing.

 

Huddled in the back room, in a circle facing inward, sit the strumming, humming, picking, grinning members of Doc's…

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It seems that everywhere I turn these days folks are eulogizing the music industry and what I think they're doing, me included, is eulogizing their own hopes and dreams....the dream of the big hit, the cash bonanza, the big burrito full of cabbage. I even heard millionaire and legendary songwriting icon, Smokey Robinson, the other day on TV saying that we've gone back to 'the era of the minstrel, where everyone is making music but no one is paying for it.'



So, in minstrel times like… Continue

LET THE COWBOY RIDE: An Ode to Cowboy Jack Clement

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I don't know why but Cowboy Jack Clement has been on my mind lately.



I made music in Nashville for a quarter century and one thing that I learned in Twang town was, "Never Meet Your Heroes". They do not live up to your fantasies...any of them. I met too many of those poor megalomaniacs but I never met Jack Clement and maybe that's why I've been thinking about him. I don't know him...so I still want… Continue

England felt downright balmy after the blustery bite of Berlin. Jean jacket weather. I was giddy and ready for a walkabout.



My British manager, Lee Williams, had booked some shows in London and throughout southern England and I dubbed it The Blood Pudding Tour, named after that breakfast delicacy pretty much unknown to us Yanks.



No need to recount each show but some highlights shine more than others.



The Halfmoon Putney is a wonderful, old pub in South London… Continue