Songs about how parents have had their good lives and now it’s entirely their 20-something progenies’ turns piss me off. You would think that would make me hate the AJR concert I went to the other weekend. And yet, I enjoyed it, being there as I was with my family, including my two sons and […]
Author Archives: jimknable
March
08
KNABLE GAZING: Reflections on a Dylan Dream
posted by jimknable
“We were in front of a house I knew in the dream but never in real life. He had a black Camaro that I regularly took him out for rides in. I had to do the driving and it was my honor. Top down, dirty old car, two-door so it opened wide and he climbed […]
October
13
KNABLE GAZING: The Performance or the Nachos?
posted by jimknable
In college, I had a part time job at the Music School stage managing the final recitals for the graduate students. It was just the musicians and me in the tight backstage space, so I would see them intimately in their pre-performance states before they walked out through my expertly held door and throughout the […]
August
16
KNABLE GAZING: Mel and The Tall Boys in the Delta of Rockwood
posted by jimknable
An experiential concert review I’ve never felt so uncool as when I stood in the back of the venue where I played in my band’s halcyon days, the only medically masked man in a room full of people in their 20s. The three-man band opening for Mel and the Tall Boys played covers with originals […]
June
18
KNABLE GAZING: Diana Drollinger and the Awakening Influence of Music
posted by jimknable
I met Diana Drollinger the first time I went to “Song Club,” in the back room of the sadly-now-shuttered Fawkner on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. She came across as a self-possessed and exuberant woman in her sixth or seventh decade, exuding matriarchy while simultaneously glowing with a teenage enthusiasm for music. As in, […]
May
17
KNABLE GAZING: Songwriters Under the Influence of Songwriters
posted by jimknable
I was at an open mic once in my early NYC songwriter days at which a singer introduced himself by saying that he was running out of influences because mainly he just listened to tapes of his own songs when he was driving in his car. I remember nothing about the song he sang, but […]
March
13
KNABLE GAZING: The Songwriter Parent
posted by jimknable
Making babies and making songs are not the same thing despite all the metaphorical comparisons we make about each to the other. A song may be said to be born as a dependent creature that eventually becomes independent, but a baby is not a well-crafted 2-5 minute experience that can be recreated through live performance […]
January
26
KNABLE GAZING: Antifolk This
posted by jimknable
Or, Reckoning with Someone Else’s Antifolk Playlist* On February 5, Ain’t I Folk? Weemayk Music Covers Antifolk Classics drops on BandCamp followed by a February 17 drop on all streaming services. Its lead single is Herman Düne’s “Futon Song” as covered by Cucaracha, a.k.a. Cockroach. ///**// Cockroach, I remember ye well. Hunched and buggy with […]
January
08
Knable Gazing: Talker-Songwriters in the Age of COVID
posted by jimknable
I have a secret dream that’s not so secret anymore because I’ve told too many people about it. I want to be a late night talk show host. Somewhere between Steve Allen and David Letterman, with a twist of Wallace Shawn from My Dinner with Andre. I have actually been fortunate enough to dabble with […]
December
03
Knable Gazing: Jasper Lewis and his “1000 Songs” on Yard Deer
posted by jimknable
I thought I was a prolific songwriter. Then I met Jasper Lewis. Probably not an uncommon experience. At the time, he was in the midst of his year of answering every single weekly song challenge thrown out by Niall Connolly (or his proxies) in the glorious days of Big City Folk Song Club at Fawkner […]
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