āSeven Spanish Angelsā When I pick up the guitar to sing, I like to launch into the long ballads. The melody sinks in to me through repetition. The lyrics, many refined over time by unknown self-appointed editors, flow out. If … Continue reading →
Murder ballads made for dancing The Corriesā performance of āThe Massacre of Glencoeā on our Facebook page several days ago prompted one reader to comment that older songs like it differed with more recent āhardcoreā musicĀ in that the tenderness of … Continue reading →
Jeffrey Foucault and Mark Erelli This is the second post this week on Norman Blakeās āBilly Gray.ā Ā Read the first here. Outlaw Rhetoric That I havenāt read Aristotleās PoeticsĀ yet is a gap in my education. Ā Iāll need to get right … Continue reading →
Bob Weir [This is the fourth post this week on Marty Robbinsās āEl Paso.ā Ā You can find the first one here, the second here, and the third here.]Iāve found over the course of doing my weeks at the blog that … Continue reading →
[This is the third post this week on Marty Robbinsās āEl Paso.ā Ā Read the first here, and the second here.] In todayās post, letās give a listen to some of the Western material that Robbins created both at the time … Continue reading →
Laurette LuezĀ [This is the second post on the song āEl Paso.ā Ā Read the first one here.]Crossing BordersIn his essay on āEl Pasoā in The Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad,ā music critic and … Continue reading →
Out in the west Texas town of El PasoOf all the songs Iāve explored so far in this blog, none has proven quite as elusive as āEl Pasoā to find the proverbial handles to grab on to it and open … Continue reading →
āListening for the secret, searching for the soundā¦ā I am one of those people who early in life, somewhere around age four, started grappling with the existential āproblemā of death. Ā I donāt know why. Maybe it was because my grandmother … Continue reading →
