Entertainment

Sixteen summers ago, fiddler Donna Hebért was in Altamont, New York at the Old Songs Festival, watching performers on the children’s stage when Director Andy Spence asked her, “What do you think of this?”  Without missing a beat, Donna, whose music and forthright manner I’ve …

It’s hard to explain just why being in the know, an insider in the music world, has been so important to me for, well, forever.  Years ago, when we worked together at a fundraising company, and had been out of college for some appreciable amount of time, my high-school buddy Caryn and …

Four years ago, Lauren de Albuquerque signed me up to write about music for her new venture, The Jambalaya News, where, along with goodbyes to musical mentors, heroes and friends, I’ve been able to usher in new music and new performers to the homes of readers. In these pages, I’ve mostly …

I was listening to “Dirty Rice” on KRVS-FM, driving to New Orleans to catch my flight to Phoenix, when I was startled by a cheeky comment made by Bill Boelens, the show’s host. As he back-announced a spin of “Hear My Train A Comin’ by Jimi Hendrix, he said, “That’s from People, Hell and …

A few weeks back, my law school bestie (and former opera singer) came to town for a packed week of culture.  She invited me and the POSSLQ to leap in and join her and some other friends for any of the events. The only one that really took my fancy was the Carnegie Hall (in its smaller …

A few years ago, I was very happy to report in these pages [The Jam, May 20, 2010] on Steve Earle’s GRAMMY Award-winning tribute album Townes (released on the New West label) that gathered together some of the best of the late, great songwriter Townes Van Zandt’s words and music. He's held a …

It’s been said that American culture has overtaken the cabled and wired world, and for the most part, regrettably, I find it’s true. Not because I mind others enjoying what we create and take pride in or just take for granted, but because it often eclipses and supplants the cultures of …

The 12th century Jewish sage and physician, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (also known as Maimonides, or Rambam) outlined a code of Jewish law based on the Rabbinical oral tradition of analyzing and interpreting the Five Books of Moses (the Torah) that Jews study, refer to and follow to this …

If your inbox looked anything like mine during the last few weeks of 2012, you were running ten-to-one end of year “last chance” philanthropic requests to personal emails. If you’re like me and feel moved to gift more as the holidays draw closer, you know it’s really hard to choose how to spread …

The POSSLQ and I returned from our November circumnavigations on the last day of the month, and rushed into warmer clothing to hear my old pal Robin Greenstein and her seasonal program singing partner Cecilia Kirtland at the 17th Annual Port Jefferson Village (New York) Charles Dickens dress-up and …

Back in the spring, I led a workshop on holiday songs at a Folk Music Society of New York weekend, and I racked up an impressive list of celebratory days for which there are songs. Turns out my artist sister Alli’s birthday is also “Belly Laugh Day,” clearly a day for jollification, while my own …

We Long Islanders came through Superstorm Sandy pretty well, considering, and thank you all for asking how we’d weathered it. When I say pretty well, I mean my immediate family’s losses were relatively few, especially as compared to those of some of our friends and colleagues. My mom’s apartment …

If you have any interest in the personalities of the artists who perform music you like, you’ll inevitably run into photographs and moving images depicting their live performances and the events and people that surround them. Some of the photographers are as well-known as their subjects, and you …

As I write this, I’m listening intently to the Helsinki Complaints Choir on YouTube, tunefully voicing their specific mundane and unexpected grievances which are simultaneously translated in a running caption at the bottom of the video screen: “Old forests are cut down and turned into toilet paper, …

A couple of weeks ago, the POSSLQ and I celebrated his birthday with a Tom Paxton concert at a small movie theater in Bay Shore, Long Island, made over into the Boulton Center for the Performing Arts. We’d learned about the show only a few days earlier, and felt lucky to get great seats, right down …

The POSSLQ and I spent a lot of weekends this summer in the company of our famous folksinger friend Heather Wood, and that’s led to some interesting musical adventures, because we like to show her a good time. This past weekend, we went to the revived Fiddle & Folk Festival, literally up the …

I was standing in the photo pit at the main stage in a deluge, wearing a flimsy yellow plastic poncho that was keeping my torso dry but wasn’t doing a thing for either my SLR Nikon or digital Lumix cameras, neither of which was cooperating in the heavy wet. Yet staring up at Mary Chapin …

If you’re going to catch the country-chart-topping long-lived vocal harmony group the Oak Ridge Boys at the Isle of Capri this weekend, you can count on a family-friendly show packed with country-gospel and country-pop hits. It may include their 1982 GRAMMY winner, “Elvira,” a few patriotic songs …

When GRAMMY-winning musician and vocalist Alison Krauss (Raising Sand with rockmeister Robert Plant, an amazing album) was a teenager winning fiddling contests in the Midwest, the sage elders of our national folk fan club – performers, presenters, promoters, producers, publicists and the press …

When Carolyn Woosley and George Swift and I formed the Music Museum of Southwest Louisiana to celebrate our area’s rich musical heritage, we quickly learned that the class of 1912 had produced an enormously creative, inventive and talented group of musicians, many of whom were still living. So our …