It was a great weekend for music in the Shoals…
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit launched their CD – Seven Mile Island - at the newly remodeled Shoals Theatre in downtown Florence. It was staggering to see this iconic venue from my childhood develop to fantastic music venue.
The place was packed with friends, family, fans. Fame Studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, music giants Dick Cooper, Spooner Oldham and others watched as the theatre transformed.
CONGRATULATIONS go out to Spooner Oldham, and his wife Karen, for Spooner’s recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. What a great, and well deserved, honor. All of us in the Shoals are proud to call Spooner friend and hero.
Also, a GIANT shout-out to Shonna Tucker (more amazing than everyone raves) of the Drive-By Truckers for stories, laughter, good food and company… we can’t wait to photograph Shonna for the upcoming Songbirds catalog.
And we are all looking forward to seeing the Truckers @ the Shoals Theatre in the near future..
Thanks to Traci @ Thirty Tigers and Logan @ Lightening Records for making it all happen…
It is just been so COLD outside. All the southerners are complaining so I can’t imagine what it is like to be up north at the moment. It seems that the weather has made the transition from the holidays back to work especially difficult this year (almost impossible) and the grey landscape could definitely use a bit of color right now. Does everyone feel that way?
As I sit in my winter living room and look out the window, I think about what an amazingly full, rich, intense year it has been. I recently made the joke that I sometimes I feel like Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) in Blade Runner… when I am lying on my death bed, I will say, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain….”
“As we abandon long-established notions of the past and truly embrace this young century, the agricultural community will become the planet’s new elite, dominating our essential needs and inspiring years of farmer styles. After all, the farmers of the future will clothe us, house us, feed us, fuel us and hopefully even heal us. Ultimately they will be able to engineer design and grow furniture in a symbiosis of technology and biology, and therefore rural and urban lifestyles will merge and become one; resulting in an inversed social landscape with a greener city and a more contemporary countryside.
Blue skies, rolling lands, rich fabrics and faces, recycling – using what you have available to the best advantage. Ingenious. Colorful. Respectful and full of joy…
“The Moth, a not-for-profit storytelling organization, was founded in New York in 1997 by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings on his native St. Simon’s Island, Georgia, where he and a small circle of friends would gather to spin spellbinding tales on his friend Wanda’s porch.”
Thanks to all of you who have sent letters and words of encouragement for my father.
I am very excited to be included in this seminar and looking forward to visiting Stavanger and seeing 
As you will have noted, I had taken a small break from posting here while we were working on our