Movie still from “The Shawshank Redemption” (Frank Darabont, 1994)

On the lam … again.

As our long-time readers know, we typically take off the month of December. Life is busy, and we want time to recharge for the next year. Many readers have joined us just recently, so may not be aware of this “holiday hiatus.” If that’s you, stay tuned in 2016, and explore our archive in the meantime.

That we have many new readers this year is largely thanks to our friends at Sing Out!, who invited us to post the blog on their site beginning this year. On behalf of all our bloggers, thanks to Mark Moss and Matt Hengeveld for all they do.

We were lucky this year to have Steve Jones join us as a new, regular blogger, bringing fresh vision, a fine hand with a pen, and some new connections. His posts have brought some new outlets for our conversation, including some cross-posts of Murder Ballad Monday on other sites.

We’ve also been fortunate to talk this year with musicians, writers, and other artists clustered around our area of interest, including Forest Mountain Hymnal, Dom Flemons, Patterson Hood, Dan Dutton, Paul Slade, Julyan Davis, Philip Rice, and Cindy Hunter Morgan. Cindy also joined us late in the year as a blogger, and we hope it becomes habit forming. Thanks to all of these good folks (and any I forgot) for sharing their time and insights.

Thanks as always to you, the readers. We look forward to being back in 2016 with some new songs, and perhaps some return visits to some of our “old friends.”

Coda – Jason Tyler Burton and the Observer Effect

Jason Tyler Burton (photo by Eric J. Reed)

We don’t like to give you any post without at least a little music. We’ll leave you with this short story, and a new murder ballad suite with a tie to Murder Ballad Monday.

The Observer Effect has a variety of different manifestations, mostly amounting to “observation inevitably affects the observed.” I was surprised and pleased to get an email a week or two ago from Jason Tyler Burton, a Kentucky-born artist living in the American West. Burton had penned and performed a companion song to Gillian Welch’s “Caleb Meyer” entitled “Caleb Meyer’s Ghost” which concluded our cycle of posts on that song last year.

Burton mentioned to me in our interview that he had another song. “The Ballad of Sally Moore,” which he thought might be a murder ballad. In his recent email, he said our earlier conversation about “Caleb Meyer’s Ghost” had inspired him to tell the “Sally Moore” story from a few more points of view, bringing into being two new songs. Just last week, Burton released the three song cycle as an EP on his Bandcamp site. I’ll give you Part One, “Road Runner,” below, and you can check out Burton’s site for the rest. Our thanks to Jason for sharing the songs.

Here’s wishing you all some fresh inspiration in the year ahead.