Spoke to Doc Watson today (Mar. 3). It’s his 87th birthday, y’know. Conversation started mildly enough, at least for me if not for Doc, who was nursing an earache, but became deep and rather intense after about ten or fifteen minutes of palaver.
But first things first. The reason I’ve posted the accompanying vinyl album slick [...]
I want to at least start a post on the late Bob “the Bear” Hite, mover and shaker —— especially shaker——with my all-time favorite blues band, Canned Heat, since Feb. 26 is his birthday, and this is Feb. 26. But it is also the eye of one of the great mid-Atlantic snowstorms of recent times [...]
I just received a late Christmas present from my two sons: a 1969 Harry Belafonte album, By Request (RCA LSP-4301), on which trax I played guitar. My sons’ timing was great: Harry’s birthday is next Monday, March 1. He will be 83.
Altho’ Harry himself has hardly been central in my life, he’s touched it in [...]
Had several exchanges with Diane Bouska, mandolin-player Roland White’s wife, over the last few days. Among the many tasty morsels the two of them have put on his website, http://www.rolandwhite.com/, is a brand new demo of Roland slowing down and explaining his instrumental version of Danny Boy.
I wish I were still trying to learn mandolin, [...]
Spoke to Roland White one nite last wknd. Roland is one of the four or five best Bluegrass mandolin players on the tour and a terrific singer. Following a family tragedy in 1973 he took a hiatus from bandleading to sing and play guitar with Bill Monroe. You can’t get better credentials for love or [...]
Today is one month and one day since folklorist Bess Hawes passed away. She was a stand up gal who contributed mightily to the folk and roots-music movement in the middle of the last Century, at a time when it really mattered—the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. But it’s reading her obits and seeing her name [...]
This, from writer/historian Jason Odd, when I asked him what he does that takes him to a place and time (Southern California, 1960’s) I know well from 50 years ago (Jason, are you even half that old yourself?):
“I’ve done various freebies online, a Bakersfeild section for the Rockabilly Hall Of Fame, and a buddy of [...]
Attention Jason Odd. To reward your loyal Power Pickers fanship I’ve tried hard to recount a true John Fahey/Country Al story. It will be another chapter in the saga, “Country Al & His Ash Grove Buds.”
I was at a party chez Barry Hansen* in Santa Monica, prob. in 1966 or ’67. My girlfriend at the [...]
Jason Odd asks if I know of any live Ridgerunners tapes orbiting about out there that he could get ahold of (btw, Jason, let me know something about you so I can share you with the rest of us arcane esotericists).
The Ridgerunners, you may recall, was a Bluegrass band out of Berkeley, Ca, formed in [...]
My partner, Gregg Conners, and I are going to try to develop an act, whose form and content I have absolutely no idea of. Embedded here is our very first performance, at an open-mic op on Sept. 12, in Pleasantville, NY. I’m the one with the guitar. We hope to get better.
In other news…I’m posting [...]
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