JOURNAL EXCERPT: Roots Musicians Aim to Bring More Thanksgiving Songs to the Table (No Depression)

I originally wrote this for the No Depression Fall 2022 print journal. Click below for the full article.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As readers in the US celebrate Thanksgiving this week, we’re sharing this story about the holiday and roots musicians’ complicated relationship with songs about it. To read the full piece, buy the Fall 2022 issue of No Depression or, better yet, subscribe and support nonprofit music journalism in print and online for a full year!

As late summer’s sunsets start signaling the parade of fall and winter holidays in the United States, there’s certainly no scarcity of festivities for those who choose to celebrate. For many, Halloween has grown into a monthlong bacchanal full of bottomless candy dishes, horror movie marathons, and pop-up retail stores helping to outfit a plethora of costume changes. Christmas has inspired so much merry-making ephemera that there are entire film franchises to binge and genre-specific radio stations to play around-the-clock holiday music from late November to early January... Click here for the rest of this article.

‘Okay, Edge, Play the Blues!’: An Oral History of the Night U2 Jammed With Stevie Ray Vaughan at Antone’s (No Depression)

I originally wrote this for No Depression. Click below for the full article.

Thirty-five years ago this month, the biggest band in the world dropped into the home of the blues and ended up playing in one of the most star-studded impromptu jams of all time. 

On Nov. 22, 1987, U2 was in the middle of the third leg of their global, star-turning Joshua Tree tour and followed their Sunday night sold-out show at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas, with a night out at the legendary blues mecca Antone’s. Before the night was over, the intimate crowd was treated to a surprise performance that included U2’s Bono and Edge, blues legends Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimmie Vaughan, producer savant T Bone Burnett, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Chris Layton, and others... Click here for the rest of this article.