I wrote earlier that, of the hundreds of interviews I have done over the years, almost all of them were a pleasure. Only two were not: The one that never happened with Lyle Lovett and this one. To begin with, I make it a habit of referring to musicians and entertainers as “Mr.” or Ms.” So when the Sherman people hooked me up with U-God, one of the Wu Tang Clan, it presented a dilemma. “Mr. God?” Please. It took fifteen minutes to get three lines from the guy. I felt like saying, “Look, putz, you do understand that the purpose of an interview is to say English words that can be reproduced in print, right?” I was reduced to asking some of my youngest son’s friends what the appeal of this kind of music is. For a bluegrasser … [Read more...]

One interviewee I spoke with laughed at himself when he used the term “famous jazz musician.” Most Americans couldn’t name three seminal jazz greats, but jazz is certainly more ubiquitous than most suppose, and especially in this new millennium encompasses a huge variety of sub-genres, from Dixieland and big band music to the plaintive wail of a single sax in the dusky night. What is so striking about the jazz scene here in the Poconos is how robust and multi-generational it has become. Of course New York was the fertilizer that made the Blue Ridge Mountains sprout jazz music, a ferocious fecundity that has spawned a musical culture unrivaled in any but the largest cities. The regard these musicians have for one another, and for any and … [Read more...]

What kind of idiot would dismantle the Eiffel Tower or repaint the Mona Lisa? But that’s what the administration of ESU has done with the music program at what was once a pretty dang good little college. Shame on you, Marsha. You wouldn’t know art if it bit you on the ankle. This was once a commonplace in our town, along with a sterling community choral and instrumental program. All gone. Pffft.   I bet the football players all got new shoulder pads or something, though. ***********************************************************************************************************************     This Sunday, guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli and bassist Jay Leonhart will lead “A New York Swing Session for John … [Read more...]

There was a COTA 2010 piece as well, but I don’t know where it is. I did one more of these in 2012, where I made two glaring errors that actually caused me to lose sleep. That was at a time when I was fighting a losing battle to continue to teach, and it was getting increasingly hard to keep all the balls in the air. I detest the victim mentality, as they say, but just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. I retired in 2012, and wound up giving up free-lance work for several years thereafter as well. In fact, I did very little writing after getting my doctorate in effective writing instruction. Academia kind of sucks sometimes haha. There was also a much earlier interview I did with Bob where he talked … [Read more...]

Although I was around to enjoy jazz at The Back Door in Stroudsburg and The Lone Pine Inne in Henryville away back in the 70’s, I have somehow managed to stay blissfully ignorant of the finer points of the genre. Of course I know who Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and John Coltraine are, but I bet you a donut I would not be able to accurately identify one from the other by listening to a jazz recording. Heck, I can’t even do that with bluegrass half the time.   I could demur and blame it on the fact that I am still trying to learn to play songs I first heard in the 70’s, or that after I moved away from the audio footprint of Alison Steele, I boycotted any radio show in which I was not the jock (thanks, WJC!), or because I wanted … [Read more...]

I remember when Little Feat burst onto the scene, with an infectious NOLA groove and lyric blues licks underpinning a hard-driving rock rhythm. Arguably one of the best rock and roll albums of all times, Feats Don’t Fail Me Now had me from the first notes that hit my brain-pan. The thought of interviewing the only surviving member of Little Feat would have seemed impossible back in the 70’s, when I was still struggling to cement my own musical style and legacy, if I might be so vainglorious to name it so. I spent a decade living in Durham for two years, steadfastly resisting the prevailing cultural climate that kept pushing me towards bluegrass and old-timey music. My interest was in the Delta blues and finger-picking guitar. My icons … [Read more...]

No compendium of musical lore in East PA is complete without some reference to The Deer Head Inn, a jazz institution known world-wide for the stunning talent that breezes through the Victorian-era front door. The Deer Head achieved notoriety under the steady hand of Bob Lehr and his family, who hired a young Johnny Coates to anchor what evolved into the most prolific jazz scene this side of The Blue Note in NYC. It was here that the terrible trio of Ed Joubert, Rick Chamberlain and Phil Woods devised a cockamamie scheme to have a jazz and art festival in Water Gap that evolved into the Celebration of the Arts, simply COTA for jazz aficionados. COTA annually draws thousands to the sleepy little East Pennsylvania village, and the surrounding … [Read more...]

The face of the Poconos has changed dramatically in the years following 9/11. The housing boom that began in 1972 when Route 80 was completed from Hackettstown to the Water Gap reached manic proportions in the new millennium, with commuters doubling the county’s population in a decade. Schools were bursting at the seams, crime sky-rocketed, and gangs came to the gated communities that had morphed from second homes for rich people to suburbs for exhausted commuters. Many families that moved here were sold a bill of goods, with unscrupulous developers neglecting to explain that the mortgage is only a part of home ownership, which often included association dues, road maintenance fees, and the cost of wells and septic systems. It was an … [Read more...]

I wrote perhaps 300 articles for The Record over three decades on Arts and Entertainment, and had a chance to deal with a stunning spectrum of owners, operators, promoters, musicians, artists, schemers, shills and sopranos, mavens and maestros. Pieces I did for the Sherman Theater sometimes involved Rich Berkewitz and the shows the Theater actually booked. Other times, the Sherman would be essentially rented to other promoters and I had to chase down promoters who had their own reasons for getting into “the biz.”   This schizophrenic reality made writing some of these pieces a royal pain in the ass. Like trying to push a rope, it was hard to do and the rope didn’t appreciate it. In fact, it was an insufferable boob organizing a … [Read more...]

`````There was an era when sterling versions of live music could be had almost every night of the week in the Poconos. Monday was Asparagus Sunshine, Tuesday, Chairdancer, and Wednesday belonged to Potbelly Stove. I think Thursday everybody stayed home and rested up for the weekend and The Lost Ramblers, the Steamin’ Jimmies, Thunder Mountain and Johnny Coates. Today we have drum machines and strum and hum singles acts doing top 40, complete with loops and effects. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But as late as the 90’s, the glory days were reprised with reunion events like this one. For more recent transplants, The House of Ming is a THai place, Brownies is The Sycamore Grille, and Gene Mayung is living large in Florida. … [Read more...]

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