Archive for November, 2012
Happy Birthday, Bruce Hornsby!
Hornsby, a mind-boggling piano virtuoso who runs the gamut stylistically from jazz to bluegrass, didn’t actually start playing the keyboard until he was about 17 years old — although he does confess that he and his brothers did actually take piano lessons for about a year when he was seven. “My brothers and I all […]
Happy Birthday, Gordon Lightfoot
Gordon Lightfoot turns 74 on November 17th of this year, but to those of us who came of age during the folk revival of the early ‘60s and the singer/songwriter boom of the mid ‘70s, the man is already immortal. “Early Morning Rain,” “For Loving Me,” “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” “The Wreck […]
Thoughts on the First Thanksgiving
As I’m knee-deep in the frantic (and seemingly futile) house cleaning before family and friends come together for Thanksgiving—and rehearsing lines to best dodge the post-election landmines of differing worldviews and opinions, all teetering together at a dinner table—I started thinking about this country’s first cooperative effort that was successful and pure: the one between […]
Happy Birthday, Lyle Lovett!
Excepts from a Performing Songwriter interview with Lyle Lovett where he discusses his songs and approach to writing.