My life took the pleasant turn of being slightly musical the last few days. It's not that I don't frequently listen to music, but the music just hasn't been drawn out of me for some years now. The constant composing going on in the Freeks and Folkhead circles around Notre Dame just weren't there after I left South Bend for doctoral studies. The ( Read more... )

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I talked for a long time this afternoon with Mark about Chrysogonus, after letting him know about his death, as well as just catching up. I told him I'd make the digital files of the Chrysogonus Fest recording available to him, as I converted the tape to mp3 files some time ago. Now that I've finally figured out Megaupload's site, I can do this ( Read more... )

Oi. Happy New Year Part Two - the Saw Doctors' second of their double-header gigs at Milwaukee's IrishFest this year. Last night's show was more of a "greatest hits" set; tonight it was a lot of their great stuff that doesn't make that top list so often, which made the show all the more cool, to my mind. And this time, I recorded it:
That's What ( Read more... )

The setlist for the Saturday 16 August 2008 10:30pm concert at the Aer Lingus Stage by the mighty Saw Doctors. Mike has, in the company of Saw Doctors newbie Diane, a very happy new year.
N17Macnas Parade ( Read more... )

Damn. Michael tells me that all of the music and poetry recorded from the Wyoming Retreat jam sessions last month, a weekend featuring:Michael's “Love ( Read more... )

Crap. I just found out that Ellis Paul was in Milwaukee playing Shank Hall last month, and I missed it entirely. I spent an evening with him in an Amish-style pole barn back in the fall of '98, I think, with a huge smile plastered across my face as I listened to his songs for the first time - to the point where it began to hurt, I was smiling so ( Read more... )

Over The Rhine appeared at the Miramar Theatre in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, the 28th of November, and in the more than a decade that I've been taking in their shows, I think this was the most fun I'd ever had seeing them live. They were in a pretty giddy mood, themselves, light-hearted and relaxed. I was there with Mike and Donna, Dan and Amy ( Read more... )

Monday nights should always be characterized by options like ours last night, when Julie and I spent the evening at The Rave with Regina Spektor. We had been grinning and giggling to ourselves for the last month as though we had done something insufferably clever in getting tickets for the show. The Rave was packed by the time we strolled up, ( Read more... )

Some busy last few days. I got together for tea with Moon-ju Shin before she takes off for Seoul and spent an hour or two talking, hearing some of her plans for taking American poetry, especially her Emily Dickinson, home to a Korean context, talking Trinitarian theology, and accent and dialect nuances of American and South Korea. She laughed as ( Read more... )