Author: Michael Perry
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #66 Nov-Dec 2006
Greg Brown – Hallelujah anyway
When as a young child you are called by the Lord to rise from your metal folding chair in the basement of the Moose Hall and commit your life to Christ upon the commencement of the final chorus of “Close Thy Heart No More”, you remain forever susceptible to the lexicon of faith. All subsequent [...]
Screen Door - Last Page Essay from Issue #40 July-Aug 2002
Authentically Alternative
We met in prison. And that’s where the David Allan Coe/Merle Haggard shtick terminates, because John Shimon and Julie Lindemann are photographers, and I am a writer-for-hire, and we were sent to the Big House under the aegis of a popular magazine. A freelance gig. A single afternoon, in and out. Medium-security, no less. Still, [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #36 Nov-Dec 2001
Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown – Sittin’ on the dock, with the world at bay
Friday, September 14, 2001. At the University of Wisconsin in Madison, 20,000 people are shoulder to shoulder on the Library Mall, honoring victims of the attacks in New York and Washington. The air is cool, but the sun is high and bright, intensifying all the red, white and blue. A man wielding a tall flag [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #33 May-June 2001
Kyle Yule – Radiate
File rodeo clown/bullfighter Kyle Yule under hardbitten romantic. The characters in his songs ride Greyhounds, bald-tire cars and wicked horses. They sleep down by the mission, die in back alleys, and enter the Pearly Gates, “old straw hat in hand.” Yule’s voice — dusty-dry and gently weary — has the ability to invest his characters [...]
A Place to be - About a Place from Issue #30 Nov-Dec 2000
End of the Line for a Depot Man
Everybody’s got a Greyhound story. You haven’t really yanked the slack out of the Great American Road Trip until you’ve gone Greyhound. And you will wind up with a story. The Grey Dog is every country music song ever written, on wheels. It’s a rolling Coen Brothers film with casting by John Waters. Ray Grams [...]
Waxed - Record Review from Issue #27 May-June 2000
Steve Earle – Transcendental Blues
Depending on how you keep track — that is, depending on how tight you want to wear your documentarian-geek beanie — Transcendental Blues is Steve Earle’s tenth album. Beginning in 1986, he blew the doors off Nashville with Guitar Town, blew their cover with Exit 0, and blew town with Copperhead Road. The Hard Way [...]
Town and Country - Shorter Artist Feature from Issue #27 May-June 2000
Wylie & The Wild West – Home on the range — really
“There’s no mystery,” says Wylie Gustafson of Wylie & the Wild West, “to what we’re doin’.” Home in eastern Washington between shows to promote Ridin’ The Hi-Line, his third release on Rounder, Gustafson is smack in the middle of the mise en scene that feeds his muse. “When I’m off the road, my wife and [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #25 Jan-Feb 2000
Jerry Jeff Walker – Let the time go by
He roared across the continent creating the legend that still grows and changes and threatens altogether to becloud the personality of the man who wrote the poems… – John Malcolm Brinnin, Dylan Thomas In America Now some of you would live through me, lock me up and throw away the key… – Steve Earle, “Feel [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #22 July-Aug 1999
Marty Stuart – A pilgrim’s progress
I’ve used up every trick that I had hidden up my sleeve Think it’s time I reconcile with what I had to leave – Marty Stuart, “Redemption” The president of the Country Music Foundation — currently serving his third term — is gigging at a casino in Reno. He is following an elephant act. Wayne [...]
The Long Way Around - Feature from Issue #17 Sept-Oct 1998
Son Volt – Anatomy of an interview
No person can ever fully comprehend another, nor can any history be truly complete. Yet with practice, guidance, and self-awareness, you can learn to talk with a patient and obtain the comprehensive, organized set of data that constitutes the traditional health history. You must know (1) what information to get and (2) how to get [...]
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