The arts will hold our hands through the darkness. These are the backstories of five artists who provided us with survival soundtracks for the year that never seemed to end.
Author: Don Wilcock
Don Wilcock
Now into his second half century as the warrior music journalist, Don Wilcock began his career writing “Sounds from The World” in Vietnam, a weekly reader’s digest of pop music news for grunts in the field for the then largest official Army newspaper in the world, The Army Reporter. He’s edited BluesWax, FolkWax, The King Biscuit Times, Elmore Magazine, and also BluesPrint as founder of the Northeast Blues Society. Internationally, he’s written for The Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards program, Blues Matters and Blues World. He wrote the definitive Buddy Guy biography 'Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,' and is currently writing copy for a coffee table book of watercolor paintings of blues artists by Clint Herring.
Keith Richards once told Bill Payne that Little Feat and The Stones were part of an exclusive club both bands belong to. “He pulls me in, and he says we’re all part of the same cloth.”
The variety of styles of all these artists who guest on this album says something significant about Dion’s own eclecticism and underlines his already well established 66-year legacy
Conversations with iconic duo Larry and Teresa are like an open jam where two guitarists vamp off each other, or a first date where a couple clicks and both people know and trust the time together is magic.
Jorma is perhaps the most unassuming rock icon I’ve ever interviewed. Not only did The Jefferson Airplane bring psychedelic music of the ’60s to a wider audience than The Grateful Dead scored for more than a decade to come, but Jorma’s work with Hot Tuna opened a door to folk fans that Dylan had first explored when he went electric.
The Animals’ “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” became the unofficial theme song for all who were caught up in the mandatory draft and sent to Vietnam. Country Joe and the Fish’s “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” captured the anger of a generation caught in the net of war.
Tab is homegrown, but his dexterity on guitar is needle-sharp, and his rapport with an audience likewise in need of musical therapy was nothing less impressive than what I’d expect from an Apollo Theater crowd on a hot Saturday night in Harlem.
“It became clear to me that I had to shape this new music myself from the ground up.” Out now, ‘Pure’ is unlike any recording the 5x Grammy nominee has ever done.
“I think if you listen to the lyrics on ‘Ordinary Madness,’ they’re about as true and deep a view of who I am as I’ve ever done.”
Paul is an everyman whose music addresses things we all think about but few can articulate…