City and Colour is the stage name of Dallas Green (get it?) and he is one of those happy discoveries. “Two Coins” was on a shared playlist I created a long time ago with my wife and I thought she added the song. She thought I did. Eventually, I proved it was me. I just…
According to one source, this park is so named because a Cherokee family was being pursued by a war party, and after hiding his family, the father led the pursuers away. After being surrounded by the party the father threw himself from a cliff and onto the granite rocks below. The war party then went…
Yesterday I drove to Dockery Lake to hike the long way to Preachers Rock. 11.5 miles to the top and back by my GPS, though I’m starting to wonder if it’s miscalibrated. It’s strange to me that this has a Cleveland address as I feel like it should be Dahlonega or Suches instead. But I…
These pictures are from my sunrise hike on Currahee Mountain. The rest are just in the order in which I took them. This is the famous trail from the training episodes of the Band of Brothers miniseries that followed Easy Company in World War II. Currahee was the training camp for the 506th Parachute Infantry…
What is the first thing you think of when someone mentions ZZ Top? Okay, now that we’ve acknowledged the chest-length beards, what do you think of next? I imagine that casual fans perhaps think of mid-1980s classics like “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” Maybe you also think of Ford coupes and sheepskin-covered guitars as seen…
Fact: it’s not hard to sing a song better than Ozzy does it. I love Black Sabbath—particularly the first five albums—but the strength of that band lies more in Geezer Butler and Bill Ward than anything. That’s not a dig on Tony Iommi or Ozzy Osbourne. At any rate, Charles Bradley doesn’t just do a…
I claw at my face(This storm will soon be lifting);It does me no good.
What do I say about this woman when my feelings for her are ineffable? Jessica suggested I say she had straight teeth. Because “she’d like that”… Jess is right. She had beautiful teeth. Everything about her was beautiful. But still. A eulogy? I’m not good at speeches. I’m too soft-spoken to be a wonderful orator.…
After Lara got her Stage IV cancer diagnosis, one song she often requested was Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” She even asked my dad’s band to play it at her fundraiser. My dad wanted to even though he didn’t think he could through the lyrics. But the only other guy in the band…