More Triangle!
This weekend I sat in with Piper Road, a legendary bluegrass/swing band I’ve joined occasionally for many years. These guys are so transcendent on strings that I stick to percussion, banging and scratching rhythms in the background to whatever they’re playing. So it was to the band’s great surprise– and nobody more than myself– that […]
At Last, a Stamp for Brother Ray
I have more than a passing interest in The Genius, a.k.a. Ray Charles. I wrote a book for young people called Uh Huh! The Story of Ray Charles (see books page) shortly after he died in 2004. Unfortunately his passing was overshadowed by that of Ronald Reagan only five days earlier. Reagan got a U.S. […]
Made in America: Budweiser, No; Duggleby, Yes
In case you missed it, Budweiser staged a so-called “Made in America Festival” over Labor Day weekend headlined by Jay-Z and Beyoncé, with about a gazillion others. I’ve heard of very few beyond the headliners (call it an age thing), but my personal favorite band name was Diarrhea Planet– perhaps the spiritual heirs of one […]
School’s in Session!
Let’s say you’re the little town of Cottage Grove, Wisconsin. You have a beautiful but rapidly aging 1910 schoolhouse on a piece of prime real estate not far from the Interstate. Do you: A) Bulldoze it away for a strip mall like the one across the road? B) Hope someone might save and salvage it? Fortunately Cottage […]
Clucking Good Time!
I just got back from shaking my tail feathers from Minnesota to Milwaukee for inaugural performances– in chicken costume– as “John Cluckleby” in my new “Boogie in the Barnyard” kids show. Each stop was “egg-static”: Mankato with its modern sandstone-sheathed building that loomed like a local quarry. Lake Crystal, where, in a building multi-tasked for […]
Sweet Hemptation
As part of a national movement– and now, congressional bill– to legalize growing industrial hemp (not to be confused with pot) in the U.S., Milwaukee recently held a Hempfest to showcase the many uses of the versatile product, which was once raised legally in our country, as it is in at least 30 others. As part […]
A Singing Chicken? You Bet Your Tail Feathers!
Let it never be said that, as a performer, I’m inflexible. I’m still pliable enough to wiggle into a chicken costume (ask me sometime how I got it), and by Foghorn Leghorn, I’m doing it in a new musical program. “Boogie in the Barnyard” celebrates country life and animalia from around the world, with songs […]
Bye-Bye Boogie-Woogie Bugle Babe
One of the giants of recorded music, Patty Andrews, passed this week. “Who is Patty Andrews?” you might ask if you’re anywhere younger than my parents. Patty was the lead singer and last surviving member of the Andrews Sisters, a trio of youngsters who blew out of Minneapolis like a hurricane and dominated the pop […]
Silent Morning
It’s a white Christmas morning on my little cul-de-sac behind the Cheddar Curtain, thanks to a blizzard five days ago that registered as the second-highest 24-hour snowdump in Madison history. I’m flushing out the cobwebs with coffee after attending an old-fashioned midnight service with all the celebratory trimmings with my neighbors at their cathedral-like church. […]
Bright Saturday
Does it strike anyone else as curious that the gluttonous shopping orgy we call Black Friday has the same label used over the years to describe: One of the worst financial days in U.S. history A windstorm on the Scottish coast that killed 189 fishermen A women’s suffrage event where over 200 females were assaulted by English police A day […]