We interrupt your regularly scheduled podcast reruns for this important announcement. Well, more a series of linked anecdotes and advertisements, really.
Dunleath Porchfest 2023
My wife and I both enjoy live music. She can deal with big stadium shows, but I prefer something smaller and more intimate. An outdoor venue with lots of little front-yard stages is the best of both worlds. And it’s free! This has been going on since 2017, and I had never attended until today. Let me tell you, I feel pretty stupid.
Of the 62 performances, I only caught five.
noon: Taboo Sue
1pm: BuddyRo
2pm: Doug Baker
3pm: Ashley Virginia
4pm: Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs
That last band, Brown Mountain Lightning Bugs, was my favorite of the day. I have never heard anyone do funk riffs on a five-string electric banjo. It was a seamless blending of genres, which I have a weakness for, and also some clever songwriting, like the one about their van breaking down “on the way to Watkins Glen.” They ended their 45-minute set with “Come On Up to the House,” which seemed appropriate to the moment, and was much more pleasant sonically than Tom Waits’s raggedy-ass voice on the original version you can hear on Genius Lyrics.
I went downtown for half an avocado hoagie from Mellow Mushroom (no, I am not going to post a picture of it) and a second set from my second favorite, BuddyRo, who styled himself the Dive Bar Troubadour. In the early afternoon sunshine he played some of his own songs, like “My Playground Was a Radio Station.” In the face of the streaming juggernaut, he wasn’t even trying to sell CDs, just offering them for free to anyone who left him a tip. I grabbed two, the above album and another of a group called the Mighty Fairlanes, who were backing him up at a coffee house a couple doors down from MM. The first set was really bluesy, but the second went all Top 40, and I lost interest.
On the walk back to my distant parking spot, I was on the phone with my sister in Kentucky, who hipped me to these upcoming performances at Renfro Valley.
While it’s unlikely that I’ll make any of them, it’s good to see that they’re booking more ambitiously than the last time I visited there, ten or fifteen years ago.
Back in the car, the Martha Bassett Show was on WFDD, with a good set from another guy I’d never heard of named James McMurtry (apparently the son of novelist Larry).
All of this convinced me that I’ve been ignoring new music for far too long. As Webb Wilder, “Last of the Full-Grown Men,” once said:
Remember, real music is out there and real people are making it.
Probably more than once, actually.
Time’s Arrow
For those of you jonesing for a more big-think science piece, this popped up on Pocket after I got home on Saturday night.
Can’t get much more philosophical than that! I personally have little way of evaluating this, but it just so happens that I know a professional topologist, who might be willing to answer some impertinent questions, if y’all are interested ...
Otherwise, I’ll just point out that
is posting a book on Substack that reminded me about philosopher, anti-guru, and all-around cool frood Alan Watts, whose recorded lectures are all over YouTube, like this one,which I will definitely be using with my students this summer.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled podcast reruns.
Wow, I'm going to need to do this next year!
Forgot to say that you can see two of the bands I mentioned at Scuppernong Books downtown, this very day -- starting in 34 minutes.
https://www.scuppernongbooks.com/event/songwriters-scup-5
I will not be there, but I wish the artists well.