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SOLOST: DISCOVERING A VISIONARY HERMIT MUSICIAN-ARTIST

How to describe our hero... Musician? Artist? Furniture maker? Visionary hermit? All-of-the-above? Yes, all-of-the-above. That would be it. Hidden away in a secretive corner of a haunted-looking...

By Dave Anderson

WAIT OF WORLD

A conversation with Arkansas artist buZ blurr. “Although my father and his father were railroad men, my maternal grandmother's father was a newspaperman who published weekly in three different cities...

By Matt White & Matthew Thompson

MAKE-BELIEVE IS FOR DINERS

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.  Dining out was not something I got to experience every day, but when I did, it was special and I wanted to participate in the way that made...

By Osayi Endolyn

MONUMENTAL

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By. There is no static history. It lives on, layered in the landscape, painted on the brick mills. Through investigating the ripples of the words and...

By Sarah Riazati

MADDOG

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.  I devoted twenty years of my life to football. Played quarterback at every level: peewee to professional. After my playing days were done, I...

By Eli Cranor

MEMENTO MORI, MOTHERFUCKER: DO YOUR JOB

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.  To remember your death is to know a powerful clarifying truth: this ain’t no dress rehearsal. My favorite Stoic, Epictetus, suggests we teach...

By Christopher Brunt

A NIGHT WITH LOU REED

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.  As for the movie I’m watching, I came to adore it more than I ever expected to. It sent me down a Lou Reed rabbit hole. Transformer and Mick...

By Elizabeth Nelson

FOUL IN WISDOM

Following up on Ryan Adams. Last week’s news is a colossal disappointment for Adams’s fans—many of whom, like myself, had remained loyal to his music despite his career of public tantrums and...

By Maxwell George

THOSE ODD THINGS WITH MELODY

This liner note was originally published in Oxford American ’ s 5th Annual Music Issue in 2001, accompanying the track “Down to the Well” on the sampler.  I’ve written poetry since I was...

By Kevin Gordon

COMMUNITY EFFORT

An essay supplement to our North Carolina Music Issue. After processing their set, I asked them to tell me about Venezuela and the places that have faded into the backdrop of spotty, childhood...

By Claudio Ortiz

WITNESS

A lyric essay supplement to our 2018 North Carolina Music Issue—plus H. C. McEntire covers Led Zeppelin. God is right there, in the brier. Turn the rows, change the tires, bow the heads, feed...

By H. C. McEntire

TINY CHANGES TO EARTH

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By.  I yanked down a shoebox of old letters, and a tiny folded sheet of paper floated out: a hand-drawn cartoon card that Scott had given me the...

By Julien Baker