Steve Thorngate
Long Player Late Bloomer, by Ron Sexsmith
Why don't more people listen to Ron Sexsmith? The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter crafts masterful pop songs, records them with topflight producers and sings them in an understated croon....
Summer reading list
Woody Guthrie: American Radical, by Will Kaufman. I love musician
biographies; Humphrey Carpenter’s of Benjamin Britten is the most
fascinating book I’ve read in years. I also love Guthrie’s music--he’s
so much funnier and sharper-edged than the earnest troubadours who
mimicked him in the 60s--and I’ll read anything about politics.
The Party Ain’t Over, by Wanda Jackson
Wanda Jackson may be the queen of rockabilly, but Jack White is king of this collaboration. The roots-obsessed producer takes charge, offering a high-octane reimagination of various '50s styles....
Leading by following
President Obama seems to be moving in the direction of openly supporting same-sex marriage....
Demons, by Cowboy Junkies
Vic Chesnutt, who died of an overdose in 2009, was one of the best and most unusual songwriters of his generation. Country-rock veterans Cowboy Junkies are far more conventional....
Colbert's commencement sermon
Stephen Colbert's commencement speech at Northwestern wasn't as funny as Conan O'Brien's at Dartmouth, but the inevitable "now I'm serious kids, please keep listening" section was far better--it was pretty much a hard-hitting sermon.
In the Cool of the Day, by Daniel Martin Moore
Nostalgic country-gospel records inhabit a liminal space between personal-historical document and genuine religious statement. Daniel Martin Moore's latest follows this path but enlivens it a bit.
Two people I'm admiring this week
The most Christlike behavior I've seen in the news in some time comes from a Muslim victim of a hate crime.
The pointless ethanol subsidy
On Tuesday, the Senate rejected a measure that would eliminate
...
The pious primary is underway
Mark Silk notes an interesting moment at the Republican
presidential debate Monday night in New Hampshire: Rick Santorum's take on
religion in public life sounds an awful lot like the one then-Senator Obama articulated in 2006.
A just way to fix state budgets
All 50 states have regressive tax structures: the lower your
income, the larger share of it goes to state taxes. While a few states have
...
Don't blame social media
Well, now we know: Rep. Anthony Weiner used Twitter to send a lewd picture to a young woman. He then lied about it repeatedly before finally confessing.
...Another Twitter frenzy
I don't know whether Rep. Anthony Weiner sent a lewd photo
of himself to a college student via Twitter. The evidence is mixed: on the one
...
Locally produced for you
The day before my wedding, I picked up ten cases of table wine from a local winery--and one bottle of sweet wine for communion....