Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #21: An Interview with Jad Fair
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #21 by Stephen McClurg An Interview with Jad Fair Jad Fair has had anything but a conventional music career. Known for collaborations with everyone from Daniel Johnston to Moe Tucker to John Zorn, he made a recent album with songwriter and puppeteer David Liebe Hart. Also a visual artist, Fair is… Continue reading
-
Episode 473: A Discussion of Tom Waits’s Swordfishtrombones with Stephen McClurg!
Episode 473 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing). In this week’s show, I bring music blogger Stephen McClurg aboard as we talk about one of the most transformative, dramatic, atmospheric, strange, American pastoral… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #20: Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (2020)
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #20 by Stephen McClurg Gwenifer Raymond: Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain (2020) Gwenifer Raymond’s approach to fingerstyle guitar has an almost punk aesthetic, something she’s called Welsh Primitive, referencing the term American Primitive used to describe guitarists who play music influenced by the Delta blues and other folk styles as… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #19: Silica Gel’s May Day
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #19 by Stephen McClurg Silica Gel: May Day (2020) Silica Gel’s May Day opens with the title track, a lilting version of an estampie by twelfth century troubadour de Vaqueras. The liner notes say, “We hope our rendition, with drums-a-pounding and whispering voices reminding you of all you love but cannot possess allows you… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #18
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #18 by Stephen McClurg Christopher C. King’s Lament from Epirus: An Odyssey into Europe’s Oldest Surviving Folk Music (2018) In an interview, Christopher C. King said that he doesn’t listen to music after 1940. The least generous image that came to my mind was a Mr. Show segment in the… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #17
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #17 by Stephen McClurg J.J. Anselmi’s Doomed to Fail: The Incredibly Loud History of Doom, Sludge, and Post-Metal (2020) A music history flavored with memoir, Doomed to Fail could be a user’s guide for anyone interested in metal and its hideous progeny. Along with histories of the guitar and distortion effects in… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #16
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #16 by Stephen McClurg Dua Saleh: Rosetta EP (2020) The songs on Dua Saleh’s Rosettasurge through rap, pop, and rock–sometimes in the same track. Considering the namesake of the EP is Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Dua Saleh’s Sudanese-American Musilim background, the record expresses the desires, joys, and challenges of a multi-hyphenated existence. A video… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #15: An Interview with Tina Mozelle Braziel
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #15 by Stephen McClurg Tina Mozelle Braziel is an Alabama-based poet whose first book, Known by Salt, won the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. The book captures specific elements of growing up poor in the South and how one navigates life by constructing a self, a family, or a home.… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #14: Sweating to the Goths
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #14 by Stephen McClurg Sweating to the Goths In middle school, I couldn’t elude the yearly discussion of the science fair project on how different music affects plants. In English classes, someone would try to recycle their report as their English research paper. Today, there is keen interest in the… Continue reading
-
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #13: Palm’s Rock Island
Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #13 by Stephen McClurg Palm: Rock Island (2018) A something in a summer’s noon – A depth – an Azure – a perfume – ~Emily Dickinson Sing, cuccu, nu. Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu. Sing, cuccu, nu. ~Anon., “Summer Is I-cumin In” Palm’s Rock Island conjures an aura of summer, from… Continue reading
About
The Drunken Odyssey is a forum to discuss all aspects of the writing process, in a variety of genres, in order to foster a greater community among writers.