Monday, February 17, 2014


Ladies and gentlemen, damas y caballeros, I present a phoenix rising from the ashes.

After his home studio burned to a crisp in 2013, guitarist Joe McMahan brought his band Luella and the Sun in and filmed a video in the rubble. This is the blues, and THIS HERE is the way you play it...

Sunday, February 16, 2014

American Music (with Guitars)

A guitarist for 25 years, I've been learning about music my whole life. The blues has always been essential to me and I'm starting this blog to have a forum for myself and others to write about a genre called Americana. It's ambiguous what Americana means.

I prefer the term American Music. Fairly recently I've come back to country music, a form I only appreciated occasionally when growing up in Texas.

No other art form matches the power of the greatest songs, for me at least. Some that do it for me are The Missing Heart by Dwight Yoakam, Better World by The Rave-Ups (led by the great Jimmer Podrasky) and Death Letter Blues by Son House.


Also Come On In My Kitchen by Robert Johnson, along with his Hellhound on My Trail. The greatest songs haunt me in ways I want to be haunted.