Autumn Souvenir

It must have been around 1996 when my brother John and I began plotting it out. We didn't know exactly how or where to carry it out, but we shared the same dream of one day opening a rock club. We lived for music and aside from our beloved Yankees, it was literally all we talked about. The mid-to-late 90s was the "golden age" of music for us. That "sound" someone deemed alt.country was spitting out band-after-band and many of them were leaving lasting impressions on us. Wilco, The V-Roys, Slobberbone, Son Volt, Whiskeytown, The Bottle Rockets, Old 97's, The Jayhawks, Freakwater, The Backsliders, 6 String Drag, 16 Horsepower, Richard Buckner, Cheri Knight, Marah, Blue Mountain and the list went on. We almost couldn't keep up but we did. Tonight in a small coastal town in the Carolinas the day arived. Before a packed house, he hosted Austin, Texas' The Gourds. A band that we've adored for well over a decade played for over two hours and it was John

OP-ED COLUMNIST Wisconsin Power Play By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: February 20, 2011 RECOMMEND TWITTER COMMENTS E-MAIL PRINT REPRINTS SHARE Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.” Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Paul Krugman Go to Columnist Page » Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal Related Protesters in Wisconsin Say They Are Staying Put (February 21, 2011) It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it. In a

If I were teaching a sixth grade civics class, the events happening in Wisconsin would provide the perfect opportunity to highlight the differences between our two major political parties. The republicans wish to strip union rights from those trying to hold onto their collective voices. The democrats, who side with cops, teachers and line workers over the bosses, refuse to vote and have floored it out of state. End of lesson. Let's order a pizza. Oh, and thanks for the inspiration, Egypt.

"Our deep reality may take over in moments when we are so carried away by joy that we forget who might be looking at us, or when we are unselfconscious in moments of extreme pain, moments when we have a deep sense of sadness or of wonder. At these moments we see something of the true person that we are. But no sooner have we seen, that we often turn away because we do not want to confront this person face to face. We are afraid of him; he puts us off. Nevertheless this is the only real person there is in us." Courage To Pray / Anthony Bloom "You need faith for the same reasons that it's so hard to find." Thin Blue Flame / Josh Ritter

I first heard Richard Buckner early on in my Uncle Tupelo/Jayhawks/Bottle Rockets re-awakening. Uncle Tupelo came first on December 9, 1993, the day after I passed up a free ticket to see UT in favor of some crappy band on my college campus (Blues Traveler, maybe?). When the summer of 1994 rolled around, I was fully immersed in this thing someone dubbed alt.country. Most rejected the label, but I loved just about every act that fell within this emerging "genre." I joined listservs, subscribed to magazines, and went to as many shows as possible. Joe Henry, 16 Horsepower, Steve Earle, Hazeldine, Blue Mountain, and somewhere in there, Richard Buckner. Buckner's first release, Bloomed, was initially far too folk for my ears. Armed with vocal chords that bounced and scaled notes, it was his cadence that took me even longer to warm to. But the lyrics hit me immediately. I think it was the words of "This Is Where" when Buckner finally took hold. "I'm gonna si