Welcome to my blog!

Here, we'll explore the American landscape from a largely musical perspective.  Keep in mind, however this will not be much of a travel-log or a dashboard-side guide to accompany your GPS.  Music after all is an art form and places have a tendency to transform under the forces of time.

Before delving any further into this blog I'd encourage you to think of the places in your world where you make music.  Could it be beside your child's crib where you sing them lullabies?  Or at in your Grandparent's living room where you tap happily on their piano?  Consider how those places will transform as the years progress.  Your memories both of the music you made and the places where you made it will merge with your imagination.  Perhaps when you hear a series of atonal piano notes, you'll conjure the warm colors, textures, and smells of your Grandparent's home.  Or when you hear the first verse of "You Are My Sunshine" you'll recall your child's shadowy, peaceful nursery filled with soft quilts and baby powder.  The nursery is painted now and the crib is in the garage.  Your child is a teenager.  The power of songs and music however can ignite our memories and imagination.  It makes places sacred.  When we do this on a collective level, we can assemble a songbook of music that remembers and re-imagines all places in all times.

This blog and furthermore my next book convey just a few tiny pieces of this notion.  It explores the transformation of slave spirituals into the blues of the Mississippi Delta, the expression of urban angst and regionalism in Hip-Hop, the songs of Native Americans as their landscapes forever changed, the incendiary musical legacy of sweet home Chicago, the sprawling soundtracks of the great western deserts....  Is the tunnel in the photograph above haunted by the ghost of John Henry, one of America's greatest heroes of folk song?  Let's try to find out.

Also in the spirit of interaction, I invite you to comment.  Music and places after all belongs to all of us.