
We haven't traveled together since last summer's journey to Germany, and we've got the time. So my father and I are on the road again, just an hour or two ahead of an old-fashioned New England blizzard, off to Memphis, Tennessee, for the short gap between Christmas and New Years. So far, we've penciled in The Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the National Civil Rights museum, Sun Studios, and a chance to see the Gibson luthiers in action; the Smithsonian Rock 'N Soul Museum is actually in our hotel, so we'll be sure [...]

Winter Solstice - the longest night, hinge of the year... Considered one of the finest carols by choirmasters and choral experts, this song is not so well-known by the general public, at least here in United States - but it's one of my favorites, and the version from Windham Hill's "Winter's Solstice" series is particularly fine, one of the absolute gems on those collections ... Pierce Pettis, "In the Bleak Midwinter" - from A Winter's Solstice III [...]

We're long overdue for a comprehensive look at the Guthrie legacy here on these pages. And with Arlo's infamous long-form Thanksgiving narrative Alice's Restaurant Massacree riding the airwaves this weekend in anticipation of next week's inevitable all-Christmas-all-day switch-over, it seems there's no time like the present. Thinking more deeply, though, Woody's songbook also bears out well as a soundtrack for giving thanks. So many of his narratives point to the dustbowl world, with its depression-era desperation for that which we take for granted today, from freedoms to support structures, [...]

Pierce Pettis ' 1989 sophomore release While The Serpent Lies Sleeping was the first solo folk album I bought with my own money; I still have the vinyl put away somewhere, waiting for the day the tinnitus fades, and I can appreciate the fidelity. I bought it because of the power of a single song, the title track to Legacy: A Collection of New Folk Music , a Windham Hill collection of up and coming singer songwriters which would also lead me to John Gorka , Bill Morrissey [...]

Pierce Pettis will be perfoming a benefit concert October 20, 2008 at One Trick Pony. CMC | 88.1FM WYCE