David Matthews Portable Bohemia

I had never heard of Fred Hersch until I happened on a piece about him in The New York Review of Books (Christopher Carroll, The Piano Ain't Got No Wrong Notes). Here he performs Thelonious Monk's In Walked Bud. Sweet. #SaturdayEveningwith

Easing into year's end with a nice rendition of an old favorite, "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" Bob Dylan and Norah Jones, "I Shall Be Released" #SaturdayEveningwith

I came to Larkin Poe by way of Noble Prize economist Paul Krugman's Friday Night Music on his blog The Conscience of a Liberal, which gave me the notion for the Saturday Evening series, something a little lighter than the usual fare, and I hope fun. Larkin Poe is a sister duo from Atlanta. Here is a fine rendition of "Preachin' Blues" by the great Delta bluesman Son House. I'm gonna get me some religion I'm gonna join the Baptist Church I'm gonna get me some religion I'm g

I was led to Joni Mitchell this evening by Mark Ford's fine piece about her in the current issue (October 26, 2017) of The New York Review of Books (She Shampooed & Renewed Us). Unfortunately, the full article is available to subscribers only. The excerpt online gives a taste of it. Woodstock Free Man in Paris #SaturdayEveningwith

It doesn't get much better than this. #SaturdayEveningwith

Marcus Mumford, "I Was Young When I Left Home" Marcus Mumford covers Bob Dylan, "Farewell" Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Old Crow Medicine Show, "This Train Is Bound for Glory" #SaturdayEveningwith

Josh Ritter, "Girl in the War" #SaturdayEveningwith

Bird on a Wire David Remnick, Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker, The New Yorker, October 17, 2016 #SaturdayEveningwith

My mai n man made the news this week. Newport Folk Festival 1964 #SaturdayEveningwith

Been listening to Laura Nyro. Her sweet voice soars and carries us away to a time long ago and a place far from here. And When I Die Sweet Blindness #SaturdayEveningwith

A few days ago I happened on a piece in The Guardian about a pair of landmark documentary films from 1976. One was Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz, a recording of The Band's farewell concert in San Francisco. The other was New York filmmaker Jim Scalapski's Heartworn Highways, a profile of the new country scene emerging out of Nashville and Austin, what came to be known as "outlaw country." The film featured young singer-songwriters Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Steve Earle,

Mississippi John Hurt (1893–1966) is among a number of great bluesmen who made recordings in the 1920s and '30s and afterward lived in obscurity, oblivious to interest in them and their songs, until they were rediscovered during the blues revival of the early 1960s. Blues enthusiasts more or less took for granted that they were dead and gone, their 78 rpm records all that remained. Then, amazingly, one after another, they began turning up: Son House alive and well in Rocheste

My old college pal Allen Mackey turned me on to Old Crow Medicine Show some years back when he emailed a link to the "Wagon Wheel" video. If I recall correctly his lovely daughter Susan turned him on to Old Crow. He thought I would like it. He was right. "I Hear Them All" is in the tradition of 1960s protest songs performed by the progeny of Woody Guthrie, people like Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Janis Ian, Tom Paxton, and Phil Ochs...and Woody's old comrade Pete Seeger. Wagon Wheel

This evening NPR happened to be airing a Prairie Home Companion rerun with John Prine as a guest while I was fixing dinner. John Prine sang "Grandpa Was a Carpenter" and another song. Afterward Garrison Keillor did a little fact-check. Was Grandpa really a carpenter? Yes, he was. Chain-smoked Camel cigaretters? Prine responded that when he debuted the song for his family, his mother's sister pointed out to him, Johnny, it was Kools. Prine explained that he needed a cigarette