A highlight of my career as a music journalist was being asked to write liner notes to a box set of music by my all-time favorite singer and songwriter, Phil Ochs — and then getting a Grammy nomination for my work.
‘Leaving Eden’: A Story of Music, Race, and Old Endings in an Old Southern Mill Town
Leaving Eden tells the story of countless small towns across the South since the days of slavery.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: ‘Dreams’ Deferred
I first wrote the following commentary in January 2011 for the now-defunct Option-Magazine.com. At the time, America had a Black president. We were cautiously optimistic. […]
“Civil rights freed the white southerner… It gave us grace”
Those words come from the late Phil Walden, one-time manager of the southern soul singer Otis Redding and southern blues-rock band The Allman Brothers. It […]