Drummer Lisa Pankratz. A member of Dave Alvin’s band.
An online magazine devoted solely to female drummers.
Went to see the gigantically understated guitarist Leo Kottke at the Shalin Liu theatre in Rockport, MA., pictured here. Though it was at night, the stage uniquely allows the audience to peer out on the town’s harbor. Mr. Kottke was as tranquil as the body of water, free associating his way through the show, drawing from a kaleidoscopically fascinating career spanning over fifty years. And his association was free. He referenced his work with Rickie Lee Jones and Iris Dement. Samples following feature Leo on vocals on the first and electric and 12 string guitar on the second.
“Oh sacred place that sets my soul alive
There’s a rainbow above me that the storm clouds hide
And kind works will never die
’cause the magic in kindness springs from the love, love, love
Little acts of kindness and little words of love
Make our earthly home heaven above
And there is no sorrow heaven cannot heal
A fire within, no cross, no crown
Running from mercy, hidden and coy
Swimming upstream down oceans of joy
Die in the arms of a natural life
Waking our happiness drowning in light
Waking our happiness drowning in light
Little acts of kindness, little words of love
Make our earthly home like heaven above
And there is no sorrow heaven cannot heal
A fire within, no cross, no crown
This thing would end up on the wind
Slow to stop our ways sing
You, you wake up!, come on boy, come on little boy
Don’t you stop her, don’t you stop her
There’s that door
I’ve got that door
I know where that door is
Just follow me and you wake up
Come on with me girl
Tomorrow”
“Versts by the hundred, miles
By hundreds, hundreds
Of dim kilometers beneath our track
Reaches of salt marsh, feather
Grass that billowed
Beyond, the somber cedar
Groves showed black
As though, for the first time I saw my country
And, with a pang of recognition, knew
It is all mine and nothing can divide us
It is my soul, it is my body, too
...”
Here is a beautiful review of Iris’s “The Trackless Woods” from reviewer Ken Tucker on Fresh Air
https://www.wbur.org/npr/431906542/poetry-is-set-to-melody-in-iris-dement-s-the-trackless-woods
Drum element, Woodland St. Worcester, MA 2022
When the now defunct band the Gourds were poppin, they were the toast of Austin, Texas especially with all the existing groups that keep the city pumpin. One of those collectives where all the members can play one another’s instrument. Just not at the same time. This one is obscurely great
“O Suzanna, please radio to the tower it’s time to go
To the furthest reaches of the ham-fisted box of gloves
O Delilah, please endure the white haired ape’s allure
His long distance roots are sound, since he sold his weapons to the crown
Please get yer hats off of my bed
Or I’ll wake up in the morning wed
To the emerging majority
Facing a stark presidency
O saliva, please withdraw from the tribunal cat calls
The bare the hallmark of guilty film
Projected badly, up on the hill
Please get yer hats off of my bed
Or I’ll wake up in the morning wed
To the emerging majority
Facing a stark presidency
O Lashonda, help the ugly ones purchase proper their vintage guns
Fly the flannel and put the dove in the ham-fisted box of gloves
”
“
There are or have been many wonderful musicians with Native American blood. Some examples are Jimi Hendrix, Robbie Robertson, Link Wray, Buffy Saint Marie, Jim Pepper, Mildred Bailey, Oscar Pettiford and many, many more. Count Bill Miller among them.
Bill has had his highs and many lows. For ten years leading up to 2021 he lost his desire to write and perform as he battled depression and heart failure and lost his marriage, both of his parents, his eldest son and his daughter. “I’ve been given a lot of second chances in my life,” he says. “I’ve been through alcoholism and other problems. I was lifted out of the ditch, and I still see a blue sky above. After years of living against the grain, I see things as rivers, creeks and rainstorms, as the liquid layers of my life.” But in 1993 in the small coffeehouse in Westborough his flute, guitar playing and singing were in great form.
The Old Vienna Coffeehouse closed in 1996. Some of the better known performers that graced it’s stage were Roger McGuinn, Richie Havens, Dar Williams, Richard Shindell, Leon Redbone, Gene Clark, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Jefferson Starship, Country Joe McDonald, Peter Wolf, Tommy Makem, and Liam Clancy.
Reservation Road by Bill Miller
I was holding on to my grandad’s hand
He was pointing to the promised land
That lay beyond the reservation road
He said don’t make promises that you won’t keep
Don’t betray the earth beneath your feet
As we walked on the reservation road
Chorus:
And just for that one moment we were racing with the wind
And sound of horses thundering they echoed once again
Back to a place where our hearts and souls belong
A thousand dreams away from
Chorus:
And just for that one moment we were racing with the wind
And sound of horses thundering they echoed once again
Back to a place where our hearts and souls belong
A thousand dreams away from that reservation road
A thousand dreams away from that reservation road
I was holding on to my grandad’s hand
He was pointing to the promised land
That lay beyond the reservation road
It went way beyond the reservation road
Have you ever walked on the reservation road?
Let me take you down the reservation road
Like to take some Senators down the reservation road
Let me take you down the reservation road
Let me take you down the reservation road
”
Sylvia Plath 10.27.32
“
Blackberrying
BY SYLVIA PLATH
Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.
Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks—
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.
The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills’ northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.”
““Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.””
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