Category — Features

Originally published in Discoveries magazine, November, 2004

In the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, Vegas knew how to swing. In fact, that was what Las Vegas was all about. The lounges and the skills of the players on their stages were every bit as important as the casinos. Music gave that town life. It injected it with a jazz sensibility that couldn’t be found anywhere else. [Read more →]

Originally published Discoveries magazine, December, 2005

Vegas, 1958. A place and time of slot machines, fancy hotels, high class restaurants, dancing girls, wild entertainment, and music that swung. The slot machines are still doing fine in the twenty first century, so are the hotels and the stage shows, but they’re different. Real different. The original Sands Hotel, the Sahara, the Desert Inn, all gone, and the shows are dominated by magic and gymnastic circuses. The music is still a big deal, with major acts that have set up shop there, like Barry Manilow and Elton John. But their work is in Vegas, not of Vegas. [Read more →]

Originally published Discoveries magazine, September, 2001

‘I’m not the one to tell this world how to get along / I only know that peace will come when all hate is gone / I’ve been searching for the dolphins in the sea / And sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me.’ — from ‘The Dolphins’

Fame is a funny thing. The average American in 2001 could easily spot and identify Jennifer Lopez walking down the street, though most over the age of 21 would be hard pressed to name one of her hit songs. Pop culture, marketing, and pervasive electronic media have done their jobs, ensuring that we all can, at the very least, identify Miss Lopez as she walks down the street. [Read more →]

Originally published Discoveries magazine, July, 2006

“I love Maine, I used to live up here. I got to visit my brother last night. He’s got a little house in the woods about a hundred miles south of here.” Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has traveled everywhere and met everybody, from cowboys to presidents. And right now, from a hotel room just an hour before he hits the stage in Maine, he’s mostly interested in talking about the place where he is and the person he just saw. I’ve learned quickly that trying to harness Jack Elliott is like trying tame a bucking brahma bull (which, incidentally, is something he knows how to do), so I figure my best bet as his interviewer, is to let him say what he wants to say. It’s all interesting. [Read more →]

Originally published Goldmine magazine, November, 24, 2006

In the beginning, it was just about free beer and pizza. A loose affiliation of pickers and friends would gather to share songs at the pizza joint where one of them worked. Eighteen months later, they were all on a jet flying to London to record their first album, with producer Glyn Johns, who’d already worked with The Who, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. [Read more →]