Flirtation
Seeing a show by Jo Serrapere and the Willie Dunns is like a languid Sunday drive through the country. Serrapere’s stage presence is so reassuring, so soothing, that before she even starts to sing I’ve snuggled under...
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Killing Ground
A tiny blotch of blood stains the wide green lawn backed by a distant line of trees and a speeding car’s rising dust cloud. The photograph shows the modern-day appearance of the Virginia Civil War battlefield where Ann...
Read MoreU.S. Army Field Band
China has more than 2 million soldiers in its army. North Korea has more than 1 million. Both Russia and the United States have fewer than half a million each. But no other army in the world — not the Chinese, the North Koreans,...
Read MoreElwood Reid
On the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a man later known as D. B. Cooper hijacked a plane in Seattle, collected a ransom of $200,000 in used twenties, and parachuted into the forest of Washington or Oregon. He was never heard...
Read MoreFrom Here to Eternity
"Isn't that the film with that great wave scene on the beach?" asked my inquisitive friend. Yep, that's the one. If you think the "wave" is just a fan phenomenon at sporting events, you've...
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The Big Chill at the Clements
Peppy exhibit curator Jan Longone opened the upper door of the elegant old-timey wooden icebox, the size of a large stereo speaker, standing on the Clements Library carpet. Inside: a gleaming block of ice. Closer inspection...
Read MoreThey Might Be Giants
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, in a desperate attempt to make her cantankerous children happy, a young mother loaded them in the car for a "mystery trip" to a motel on Lake Michigan. It was raining and cold...
Read MoreThe Siegel-Schwall Band
There are no six degrees of separation between the Siegel-Schwall Band and the Chicago bluesmen who so powerfully influenced rock 'n' roll. Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall, white college students in the early 1960s, honed...
Read MoreAs You Like It
Nature's ability to restore and transform is a long-standing theme in Western life and culture. In the eighteenth century, Queen Marie Antoinette often found it amusing to escape the perfumed protocol at Versailles by...
Read MoreRichard Buckner
Something about Richard Buckner's music makes people want to drink and break things. After one Buckner show, friends of mine split a whiskey bottle with him and took him to the nearby public radio station to surprise the...
Read MoreRodney Crowell
Rodney Crowell's Fate's Right Hand mines the tunnels of a dangerous cave; issues of life, death, faith, and fate can easily sink the songs of a lesser writer. But Crowell's a master. The eleven songs here dig and...
Read MoreSteve Forbert
Few can match Mississippi-born songwriter Steve Forbert's way with a crowd. Although he always records with a band, he tours solo, with just a guitar. I saw Forbert play at a Vermont club a few winters back, with the outdoor...
Read MoreJudith Guest
Back in 1980 we all knew about Judith Guest. Her first novel, Ordinary People, a story about a dysfunctional midwestern upper-middle-class family originally published in 1976, was turned into Robert Redford’s directorial...
Read MoreEllis Marsalis & Danilo Perez
I do not know who decided to pair two extraordinary jazz pianists at this year’s Summer Festival, but it is an inspired idea. Ellis Marsalis and Danilo Pérez are both regarded as modern jazz players, in the broadest sense...
Read MorePorchsleeper
When Porchsleeper guitarists Brian Raleigh and Derek Vertin were seniors in high school, they had a mutual friend who needed a place to stay. He spent the last part of the year moving between their two houses. Apparently, when...
Read MoreThe Arb daffodils
When my friends and I snuck into Nichols Arboretum with stolen dorm cafeteria trays on winter nights to go sliding down the hills back in the mid-1980s, the Arb was a wilder place — mostly just leaves and paths. When I visited...
Read MoreBYOBaby at the Madstone
Imagine taking your ten-month-old baby to the movies. You go into the theater knowing full well that unless the baby takes a nap, you'll be lucky to see even part of the show. You expect to endure the disapproving looks of...
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