"Let the boys have the damn song." How "Over the Rainbow" almost didn't make the cut for "The Wizard of Oz." A look back at a "sacred" song in the American canon, on the occasion of a down-and-dirty music video version by the boys.
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Here's a conversation with God about the whole idea of God. Raising the possibility that everywhere you turn can be an occasion for exclamations of 'Lo and behold ...'
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What to keep an eye upon come what may on the political scene and in our lives: beauty. A one-minute harmonically converged reminder ...
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She had the greenest of thumbs, a bright intellect and dreamed of being the kind of writer that Toni Morrison, a hometown contemporary, became. What to do when your mother — in the late stages of Alzheimer's — is moving mutely toward her departure from this life?
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I spent the day before my birthday making a ridiculous music video that shows only lambs, sheeps and rams for three minutes. Here's why
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John Prine has passed on. Here's a video homage to one of America's greatest singer-songwriters—a video version of his tune "Paradise." May he awaken in his paradise.
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Here's an instrumental track I made yesterday, taking two passes on my Guild classical guitar. Calming music for crazy days. If you like it, download it for free at the link.
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I don't know whether spending the better part of a day crafting a music video from an old performance is the height of absurdity and uselessness as a tsunami of global suffering bears down upon the human race. But we could do worse, as we hunker down together, than to listen to this Clementines version of Hazel Dickens' great "West…
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A soul-sister Appalachian pal sorta-kinda challenged me to record something straight to smartphone as part of the contagion social media movement afoot of Quarantine Performances. Here's a first take from the John Lennon Memorial Studio of Appalachia.
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In which we go deep on the gorgeous Scottish-Irish ballad "Wild Mountain Thyme and its faerie-filled backstory. And let you hear what this sweet ballad sounds like—twice. With thanks to Simon the Singer in a Quaker living room.
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I have decided I don’t need a shelf of poets in my life, right now. One, two or three—will do. But who? One’s for certain. I travel with him these days, tucked into a pocket of my rucksack.
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Take a trip to Havana and some Cuba-inspired music in the debut episode of "The Listening Room," featuring troubadour Susan Werner.
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