In 1991 I had the great honor of getting to meet and interview Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the world’s greatest singer of qawwali, a devotional vocal style associated with the mystical Islamic practice of Sufism. Sadly, in 1997, I was tasked with penning his obituary.
Tom Waits: Weird Science
If you ever find yourself interviewing Tom Watis, don’t expect straight answers. Don’t even expect bent answers. He doesn’t really answer questions. He questions questions. […]
Why We Need Phil Ochs Now More Than Ever
“Phil Ochs was like Lenny Bruce – he just totally uncensored himself. He wrote the songs nobody else would.” — Butch Hancock
Yoko Ono: She Who Laughs Last
It’s been said that falling in love with John Lennon was the worst career move that Yoko Ono could have made.
Remembering Michael Jackson
A decade ago this year, Michael Jackson died. Two days after his death on June 25, 2009, I wrote the following tribute for The Charlotte […]
Folk You! (The Early Days of Antifolk)
In the mid-1980s a ragtag group of folk musicians led by the one-named singer-songwriter Lach, along with Roger Manning, Cindy Lee Berryhill, Kirk Kelly, Michelle […]
‘To Live Without You Would Only Mean Heartbreak’: Aretha Franklin, 1942-2018
Easily the most influential female African American singer that popular music has ever produced, Aretha Franklin took the gospel music of Mahalia Jackson out of church and onto the pop charts.
R.I.P. Grant Hart: On Sugar Lake with Hüsker Dü
I was lying on a raft in the cool, crystal blue waters of Sugar Lake, a rock quarry near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, beer in […]
Name That Tune: The Embattled Art of Digital Sampling in Hip Hop
In 1989, the legal and artistic implications of sampling were reaching a boiling point. Old-school rockers called it “stealing,” forgetting that their own heroes of rock guitar […]
Hank Shocklee: The Bomb Behind Public Enemy’s Squad
In 1991, when I interviewed Hank Shocklee — the Bomb Squad production crew member who Chuck D once called the “Phil Spector of […]