Everyone has a Chávez Ravine, if you live long enough to remember a place that only exists in the here and now as a memory. There are several in my life: a bucolic swimming hole that was paved over to be a parking lot, a rugged hillside topped with oaks that was scarred, shaved and [...]

Ry Cooder is an iconoclast and a searcher, and when he chooses his collaborators, he tends to ally himself with characters just as fiercely enigmatic. This is to be expected from a man who pores through discarded, cheap guitars, looking for a sound or tone he hasn’t yet heard (except in his mind). It was [...]