John Dunning
Location – Denver
John Dunning
is an American writer of non-fiction and detective fiction. He is known for his reference books on old-time radio and his series of mysteries featuring Denver bookseller and ex-policeman Cliff Janeway. Wikipedia
Band of Heathens
Band of Heathens
Performance Video — Heaven Help Us All
When The Band of Heathens decided to dub their sixth studio album of original material Stranger (its first since 2017’s Duende), the veteran band, formed in Austin, TX nearly 15 years ago, had no idea how prophetic that title would turn out to be. Although the name references the famed existential Albert Camus novel and Robert Heinlein’s sci-fi classic Stranger in a Strange Land, it also touches on the “strangers” who make up the band’s loyal fan base, who supported the band during this period with all touring canceled.
As co-founder Ed Jurdi acknowledges, it is certainly an unusual time to release a new album. “The strangest,” he says. “Maybe no time stranger. Since we started, there have been sweeping, revolutionary changes in the music business, but, in this global pandemic, we’re just a microcosm.”
“We’re really fortunate that we have been able to turn directly to our fan base during the pandemic,” adds fellow co-founder Gordy Quist. “The last few months we’ve spent four nights a week live-streaming personal private concerts to fans, and one night a week publicly live-streaming with the whole band Zooming in from their respective homes in California, Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee. At first it seemed very strange until
these walls started coming down and we realized how connected we are by the fabric of music.”
Extending the metaphor of Stranger even further. The Band of Heathens traveled to another city, Portland, OR, with a brand-new producer, Tucker Martine [The Decemberists, My Morning Jacket, Modest Mouse, Camera Obscura], and the result is something different – a more airy, intimate atmosphere, with added emphasis on songcraft and intricate arrangements set in a spacious sonic landscape that reinvents the band’s sound. These are songs stripped of pretense, but teeming with the emotion borne of personal experience, as has been The Band of Heathens’ method from the very start. Stranger moves off into a new place, but still echoes the group’s artful songwriting and multi-layered narrative observations.
The Stranger was released in 2020 and is a top ten roots rock album riding high in the charts.
Florida Writers
Going to Florida?
Don’t Forget to Write!
Florida. True, it is the land of retirement, sunshine, Disney, traffic, crime, and hurricanes. Let’s not forget environmental and immigration problems. What a great place to write about. Some who write Florida fiction make it to the best-seller list some don’t. Most, however, write a darn good story.
John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee set the standard for Florida crime fiction. Prominent on bookstore shelves is Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen. His quirky novels are “laugh out loud” events, even if they don’t always make it to critical acclaim at the box office (i.e. Striptease.) In memory, I have never recommended a Hiaasen book to a friend and gotten anything but terrific reactions.
The list of well known writers boiling just below superstar status is a fairly long one. On it are some of my favorites. Some would qualify as mystery writers, some, a half step away, suspense/crime. Others have simply created memorable characters, many reappearing, and all enormously engaging. Laurence Shames, Randy Wayne White, James W. Hall, Les Standiford, John Lutz, Paul Levine, Ed McBain’s “Matthew Hope” series and the unforgettable Charles Willeford, who although deceased may have been the “writers writer” in the Florida genre.
In the past several years several writers have emerged as best-selling Florida writers. Jeff Lindsay, the creator of Showtime series character, Dexter has four books to date featuring the intrepid “Dark Passenger.” James Grippando is hot and so is James O. Born.
If Key West has ever enchanted you, authors Laurence Shames and Tom Corcoran can put you there in a fashion that most tourists would surely miss. They each have casts of characters, recurring in their books, zany New York transplants, good guys and bad guys, funny guys and hard guys. Sometimes a minor character in one story becomes central in another. Throughout their work; humor, love, unusual criminals and unlikely heroes abound. It may have been Hemingway’s town once, with Shames and Corcoran, it’s a whole different trip.
Honeydogs
Brothers Noah and Adam Levy were already veterans of the Minneapolis rock scene when they formed The Honeydogs in 1994. Elder brother Adam spun his favorite country, soul and rock influences into a vintage-sounding batch of songs on the band’s eponymous 1995 debut featuring bassist Trent Norton. Noah took time off to record and tour with Golden Smog featuring members of The Jayhawks, Wilco, Their second outing, featuring added guitarist Tommy Borscheid, Everything I Bet You (1996) further honed the band’s merging of country and rock, sounding like a Flying Burrito Brothers/Beatles/Clash hybrid. The band toured extensively and secured a major label deal with Mercury Records–leading to their first commercial release, Seen A Ghost (1997 )
Now, in the mid-2020s, a new Honeydogs album is in the works, while for the last five years, Adam Levy has joined forces with two lovely voices to form Turn Turn Turn and tour around the country when they venture from their hometown Minneapolis.
Brandi Carlile
Brandi Carlile
Brandi M. Carlile is an American singer-songwriter and producer whose music spans multiple genres. As of 2018, Carlile has released six studio albums and earned seven Grammy Award nominations, including one for The Firewatcher’s Daughter and six for By the Way, I Forgive You. Wikipedia
The Jayhawks
The Jayhawks
One of the most enduring and beloved groups of the last thirty years, The Jayhawks first emerged from Minneapolis in the mid-1980’s, though their commercial and critical breakthrough didn’t arrive until the release of their 1992 masterpiece, Hollywood Town Hall. Over the ensuing decades, the band would go on to record a series of highly influential albums and tour the world countless times over, sharing stages with everyone from Bob Dylan and Tom Petty to Lucinda Williams and Wilco along the way. Following an extended hiatus in the mid-2000’s, Louris and his long-time bandmates—bassist Marc Perlman, drummer Tim O’Reagan, and keyboardist Karen Grotberg—returned to the studio, most recently releasing the acclaimed Paging Mr. Proust and Back Roads and Abandoned Motels in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
The 11th Jayhawks studio album XOXO was released on July 10, 2020 through Sham/Thirty Tigers. Recorded in late 2019 at Pachyderm and Flowers Studios in Minnesota, XOXO represents a bold step forward. For the first time, all four members contribute writing and lead vocal duties. XOXO is the most diverse and wide-ranging in the group’s storied history. Rather than marking a sonic departure, though, the collection signals a sharpening of focus for the band, an elevation in understanding of who they are and what they do best. In classic Jayhawks fashion, the songs here mix the influence of American roots music with British invasion and jangly power-pop, but there’s a newfound vitality at play, as well, an invigoration of confidence and energy that could only come with the injection of fresh blood. The result is an album that, much like the band’s lush harmonies, brings multiple distinctive voices together into a singular whole, a collection that, ironically enough, finds unity in individuality and identity in reinvention.
