Month: November 2013

What’s In a Name? Or, a 59 Year Old Songwriter Finds the Milk Carton Kids

 “Gillian Welch & David Rawlings-meets-Simon & 

Garfunkel with a splash of The Everly Brothers“

I am and always have loved the process of how books, music, ideas and people find me.  Life, for the most part, is an odd assortment of intentional seeking and being found.  Some people major on the former, others on the latter.  Freedom and providence is what we call it in theology.  Too much of either leads to bad theology and a distortion of reality. This is about “how the Milk Carton Kids Found Me.”  I love music.  Two of my parishioners, Kenny and Katherine Worley, love the Milk Carton Kids.  I love Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.  They figured, “he might like the MCK 800px-The_Milk_Carton_Kids(Milk Carton Kids from now on!).  So they had an extra ticket and invited me to Workplay,  a great venue in Birmingham.  I listened to them on YouTube, of course, but I was distracted by the handkerchief Pattengale tied to his Martin 000-15 and waved in a circular motion that reminds me of David Rawlings so much.  I came ready to dismiss them as wannabes, to tell you the truth.  I was so wrong. Wikipedia’s article about them describes them as:

…an indie folk duo from Eagle Rock, California, consisting of singers and guitarists Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan, who formed the group in early 2011. NPR has described their approach to music as “gorgeous contemporary folk”[1]and “Gillian Welch & David Rawlings-meets-Simon & Garfunkel with a splash of The Everly Brothers“, which fairly represents the band’s music while also appealing to the intended audience[i] Continue reading What’s In a Name? Or, a 59 Year Old Songwriter Finds the Milk Carton Kids

Jim Hurst Can Play a Guitar

Jim Hurst picks. He came dangerously close to Herb Trotman's "10,000 note limit"
Jim Hurst picks. He came dangerously close to Herb Trotman’s “10,000 note limit”

Last night, I went to hear JIM HURST, IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Guitarist of the Year.  That means he is a fast-pickin’ guy.  “Bluegrass,” like few other labels, can lock you in.  The people who love and adore it who are more on the “traditional” side (Has to be like Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs played it or it ain’t bluegrass) will leave you for growing, experimenting and deviating.  The rest of the music listening world (Country, whatever that is anymore, sheesh!), folk, indie, etc. is disinterested because they never get beyond stereotypes like “Deliverance” and the Beverly Hillbillies. Continue reading Jim Hurst Can Play a Guitar

Where Were You When President Kennedy Was Shot?

 It rolled at you across the land at 1800 miles per hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it….we saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit.   

Annie Dillard, in her book, Teaching a Stone to Talk, said that she and her husband once drove across the mountains of central Washington state to a place that would put them in the path of a total eclipse of the sun.  Early in that morning in 1979 they pulled off the highway and waited.  She said: 

The deepest and most terrifying [memory] was this: I have said that I heard screams….people on all the hillsides, including, I think, myself, screamed when the black body of the moon detached from the sky and rolled over the sun.  But something else was happening at that same instant, and it was this, I believe, which made us scream.  The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us.  We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder.  It roared up the valley.  It slammed our hill and knocked us out.  It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon….it was 195 miles wide.  No end was in sight—you only saw the edge.  It rolled at you across the land at 1800 miles per hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it….we saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit. Continue reading Where Were You When President Kennedy Was Shot?