I’ve Still Got My Guitar and the Red Sox Going for Me

Clinton, South Carolina, Wednesday, May 17, 2017, 8:54 a.m. Middle of the week. Last night traded one kind of music for another. A trip to Charlotte to see my favorite band, Reckless Kelly, fell through, but I visited my nephew’s lovely children – held them, made faces, sound effects, tossed the older lightly in the …

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You Can Hear the Music Burning Down Copperhead Road

Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 30, 2017, 6:59 p.m. It was about ten years ago, at Robert’s Western World in Nashville, where I was working on a chapter of a book called True to the Roots: Americana Music Revealed, and the subject of the chapter was Jesse Lee Jones, who owned Robert’s. I was sitting …

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Things Could Be Worse, but It Takes Imagination

Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 16, 2017, 9:52 a.m. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I write. On Inauguration Day, I shall write. Other than that, the bookends of the weekdays have nothing in common. Writing must be the tie that binds. Writing must be the salvation of sanity. I must find comfort in writing. …

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The Old Snow Days Just Ain’t What They Used to Be

Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, January 7, 2017, 10:28 a.m. The snow hasn’t completely covered the grass I probably should have cut one more time before it stopped growing. It fell in hits and misses, and here it mainly swung and missed. It’s fallen in greater amounts most everywhere else, and TV tells me that one …

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Not a Fond Farewell but a Farewell, Just the Same

Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, December 31, 2016, 10:54 a.m. It’s the final day of 2016. The year will soon be tucked snugly in bed, and all the Trump partisans will have sugarplums dancing in their heads, that is, if they can get to sleep amid all the fireworks. That’s my metaphor for Year of Our …

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