Marcia Ball
Marcia Ball
“Fifty years have passed in a flash,” says Texas-born, Louisiana-raised pianist, songwriter and vocalist Marcia Ball of her long and storied career. Ball, the 2018 Texas State Musician Of The Year, has won worldwide fame and countless fans for her ability to ignite a full-scale roadhouse rhythm and blues party every time she takes the stage. Her rollicking Texas boogies, swampy New Orleans ballads and groove-laden Gulf Coast blues have made her a one-of-a-kind favorite with music lovers all over the world. With each new release, her reputation as a profoundly soulful singer, a boundlessly talented pianist and a courageous, inventive songwriter continues to grow. Her love of the road has led to years of soul-satisfying performances at festivals, concert halls and clubs.
The New York Times says, “Marcia Ball plays two-fisted New Orleans barrelhouse piano and sings in a husky, knowing voice about all the trouble men and women can get into on the way to a good time.”
The Houston Chronicle says simply, “She’s as perfect as an artist can be.”
Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer, actress, and civil rights activist. She has recorded and performed with her family’s band The Staple Singers and also as a solo artist. Staples was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Blues Hall of Fame in 2017. Wikipedia
Jeff Lindsay
Location – Miami FL (Dexter series)
Jeff Lindsay
Jeff Lindsay is the pen name of American playwright and crime novelist Jeffry P. Freundlich, best known for his novels about sociopathic vigilante Dexter Morgan. Many of his earlier published works include his wife Hilary Hemingway as a co-author. Wikipedia
Ann Beattie
Ann Beattie
American writer of short stories and novels whose characters, having come of age in the 1960s, often have difficulties adjusting to the cultural values of later generations. Beattie graduated from the American University in Washington, D.C., in 1969 and received a master of arts degree from the University of Connecticut in 1970. Her short stories were published in The New Yorker and other literary magazines beginning in the early 1970s. She published her first collection of stories, Distortions, in 1976. Her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, also appeared in 1976; it was subsequently adapted as the film Head over Heels (1979), which was later rereleased as Chilly Scenes of Winter (1982).
Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter
Josh Ritter is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and author who performs and records with the Royal City Band. Ritter is known for his distinctive Americana style and narrative lyrics. In 2006 he was named one of the “100 Greatest Living Songwriters” by Paste magazine. Wikipedia
Ritter also penned a novel released in 2012. Check out:
James Crumley
in memorium
Crumley was the quintessential novelist for post Vietnam War America. His disillusion was equal to his romantic streak, the both of them stoked by abundant appetites and consumption of just about every substance under the sun. He was a slumming poet in the vein of his icon, Chandler, and a consummate writer’s writer, capable of more feeling and more beauty in a sentence than many authors could fit into a book. Ask your favorite crime writer for a list of their most admired books and the odds are you’ll find The Last Good Kiss or some other adventure from the C.W. Sughrue or Milo Milodragovitch series among them.
(Crimereads)
A special crime novel 
A look at Vietnam
