Food.
Family.
Gratitude.
Once a year’s plenty for most holidays.
Thanksgiving couldn’t come too often.
Dolly Varden, “Thank You” (For A While, 2013)
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lagniappe
art beat
Paul Strand (1890-1976)
Barns and Sheds, Louiseville, Quebec, 1936
only rock ’n’ roll
Dolly Varden, “California Zephyr,” live, Chicago, 1999
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Last Saturday, with my wife Suzanne and son Alex, I heard these folks at Fitzgerald’s, a wonderful club in Berwyn (just outside Chicago) that I’ve been going to since long before Alex, now twenty-five, was born. Some people, if given the chance to be anywhere in the world on a Saturday night, might choose Paris. Others might take Rome. London would likely get some votes, New York too. For me, last Saturday anyway, there was nowhere I would rather have been than Berwyn.
Saturday night, between trips to Northwestern’s Pick-Staiger Hall, I caught these folks at Chicago’s City Winery.
Dolly Varden, “Forgiven Now,” live, Chicago area (SPACE, Evanston), 2011
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Here they talk about, and play songs from, their new album (For A While).
two takes
Dolly Varden, “Surrounded By The Sound”
Live, Chicago, 2008
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Recording (Forgiven Now), 2002
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A lot of stuff like this, at least on the surface, I can’t stand. This I love. Why? Well, for starters, there’s the way the voices interweave. Then there’s the way the words sound. Take the hook, for instance: “I want to be surrounded by the sound.” And, too, there’s the presentation, disarmingly modest. Nothing’s oversold.
music clip of the day 