Even if school wasn’t your favorite place to be growing up, I am going to lay odds that you have memories of at least one of your teachers. While attending school was always one of those things we were mandated to do before we were set free into ‘the real world’, there were always […]
Norman Greenbaum was watching TV one night and saw country music legend Porter Wagoner perform an old Gospel song. Norman thought to himself, “Hey, I could do that,” and thus inspired, he proceeded to write his one and only No. 1 hit song Spirit in the Sky. An urban legend went around that Greenbaum […]
On one of the occasions when my mother’s father was staying with us for a few days back in the mid-1960s, I had an interesting discussion with him while playing cribbage. Grandpa was never overly talkative so it took a bit to get him to carry on a conversation. With the CBS news about […]
Our good friend Gary Tanin at Daystorm Music in Milwaukee recently sent along Jim Eannelli’s first solo album Just Deserts which is set to be released in both digital and physical formats on September 27, 2024. Yours truly was visiting Eugene, Oregon to catch John Forgety’s 56th Anniversary Celebration concert. When the Just Deserts […]
Living in the northwoods as we do, it is hard to escape the inevitable misadventures that occur when someone goes missing. Whether the final outcome of these episodes is a joyous reunion or an ongoing mystery, the connecting thread between them all are those who drop everything at a moment’s notice to join the […]
On Saturday, August 17th, 2024, I got to attend my second show at the Cuthbert Outdoor Amphitheater. Unlike the first show (Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band in June of 2023), this 2024 show involved dodging a few raindrops. The day of the show, a rare thunderstorm rolled through Eugene, Oregon in the afternoon but watching […]
The first week of August falls halfway between the June 20 Solstice and the September 21 Equinox. While our daylight hours have been growing slightly shorter, we will still be seeing about 14.5 hours of sunshine (hopefully) ahead of the 12 hour split between light and dark that gives the September Equinox its name […]
It was 1915 when tire manufacturer Harvey Firestone first coined the name ‘The Vagabonds’ for their little troupe of travelers. It was during that golden age when people were just beginning to see cross country travel by automobile as a new form of recreation. The nation’s roads were still a long way from the […]
The employee recreation building at the Huron Mountain Club wasn’t extravagant by any imagination. A couch, a chair or two, a TV with no reception, a small stereo system of unknown age, a fireplace no one ever built a fire in, and a ping pong table. The turntable on the stereo was not going to […]
There has been a suggestion that I spend too much of my time ‘living in the past’. If one considers last week’s article about the Marquette band Walrus, then the verdict would have to be ‘guilty as charged’. My wife lets me know when I stray too deep into my musical history growing up […]