In her forthcoming feature on jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux (including an eleventh-hour interview with the notoriously evasive performer), Alli Marshall praises the authenticity of Peyroux’s latest album, Half the Perfect World. I, too, would like to praise the return to real form of Madeleine—but it has nothing to do with the artist’s art.
Author: Melanie M. Bianchi
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Why did Zippy’s parents have to get divorced?
Haven Kimmel, author of A Girl Named Zippy—the best do-nothing memoir EVER—comes to Malaprop’s next week (March 9) to promote the paperback release of Zippy‘s sequel, She Got Up Off the Couch, and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana.
Whoops, his ego is showing: MOFRO’s JJ Grey
From MOFRO to JJ Grey and MOFRO
Love in the land of swimming holes
Early spring, 1999: Our love blossomed in Rutherford County’s Rocky Broad River, along with Scott’s revelation that even 50-degree water is no match for the stirrings of new romance. Hypothermia is for lovers: The author at Midnight Hole on the N.C./Tenn. line. Midnight Hole is fed by pristine Big Creek, which boasts some of the […]
Sucker punch
photo by Sheryl Nields Addicted to love: Aimee Mann’s latest CD may be her most heartfelt to date. Only Aimee Mann could believably sing the word “chanticleer.” That rare synonym for a rooster crops up in Track 9 of her most recent album, last year’s The Forgotten Arm. In her unmistakable, ice-pick soprano, Mann can […]
In like Lynn
“Polished music don’t fit my voice,” Loretta Lynn declared in a recent phone interview. Loretta Lynn’s publicist is as dodgy as a groundhog on a garden raid. After almost a half-year’s worth of attempts to interview the comeback country queen — in April for her gig at MerleFest, and this month before her appearance at […]
New material
Where’s Gretchen? In David Sedaris’ latest book, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, readers get plenty of updates about the other Sedaris siblings. Younger brother Paul, for instance, marries and fathers a baby — everyday stuff — and becomes the subject of two chapters. Famously highlighted in Sedaris’ last essay collection, Me Talk Pretty […]
Nothing to prove
To stand out in today’s Old Crow-feathered scene, any bluegrass-ish band needs a cute publicity trick or two up its sleeve. Promising North Carolina boys the Avett Brothers boast a Web site “printed” on faded parchment paper; the effect recalls a “Wanted” poster from the Wild West. And speaking of west, the further in that […]
What’s next for Loretta Lynn?
When she plays MerleFest this Thursday night, Loretta Lynn will have capped a comeback more extraordinary than Ralph Stanley’s resurrection after the second coming of “Oh Death.” Van Lear Rose, her peeled-back, Jack White-produced retrospective album released last spring, was lapped up by country-phobic critics from Shaker Heights, Ohio, to shakingthrough.net. In February, Lynn’s Rose […]
The ‘Banjo Man’ exhibit
Banjo Man: The Musical Journey of Earl Scruggs will run at the Country Music Hall of Fame (222 Fifth Ave. S. in Nashville, Tenn.) through June 16 of next year. The exhibit comprises displays of Earl Scruggs’ vintage and custom instruments, costumes, old photos, visual art, archival video, old show posters — even Louise Scruggs’ […]
MerleFest facts
MerleFest 2005 happens Thursday, April 28, through Sunday, May 1, at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, N.C. General-admission day passes are $35/Thursday, $45/Friday, $50/Saturday and $40/Sunday. General-admission weekend passes are $125/Friday through Sunday, $145/Thursday through Sunday. For information about assigned-seating passes and passes with camping privileges, and to order tickets, get directions, or view a […]
Poetry Contest winner
Mountain Xpress‘ staff A&E Reporter Alli Marshall pored over a Dagwood-sandwich-sized stack of entries to name Naomi Johnson’s “The Man Who Trained Shamu” the winner of Xpress‘ first Off the Road Poetry Contest. Marshall, who holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont’s Goddard College, especially praises the poem’s “strong sense of story,” accomplished with “an […]
Wedding Guide: Food/reception
“Before the 1880s, a couple was required by law to have a morning ceremony.” The foregoing factoid was uncovered on a wedding-history page linked from an investors’ Web site, www.fortunecity.com. Really, “fortune” is the operative word here — as in, what most of today’s ceremonies cost. And it’s usually not a “small” fortune, either. This […]
Like a sinner against the tide
Though she’s still an eagerly decorated newcomer in these parts, Australian singer Kasey Chambers first embraced thinking-girl’s country music at age 10. Why then, at 28, is this admitted Lucinda Williams disciple getting away with writing such cliche-sprinkled lyrics as the ones that crop up on her otherwise gorgeously realized new album, Wayward Angel? Inexperience […]
And for dessert …
Only masochists want to know how their hot dogs are made — but viewing the humble beginnings of, say, apple pie, is still a fairly yuck-free endeavor. In conjunction with the North Carolina Apple Festival happening in downtown Hendersonville on Labor Day weekend, Apple Wedge Packers & Cider will open its Fall Into Apples Production […]
Facing the music
Last November, Anne Murray’s publicist declined to let her speak to Xpress for a story promoting her upcoming holiday concert at Thomas Wolfe Auditorium — a bewildering diss, at best, coming from a performer whose heyday was concurrent with the Nixon administration. But for every fusty Canadian songbird who blows us off, there’s a genuine […]
Mean girl does good
“People are utterly convinced that I must be the biggest bitch in the world to have played that part.” – Alison Arngrim on her character Nellie Oleson Like the diseased sheep herd that brought anthrax to Little House on the Prairie‘s Walnut Grove, ‘70s child stars can be an unpredictable lot. The late Dana Plato, […]
Rabbit food, reconsidered
Growing up, I had this unfortunately memorable baby sitter, a sort of career Mary Poppins gone wrong whose house was painted — this is true — borscht pink. She was a real storybook spinster, with a fetish for ceramic turtles and an actual beehive hairdo. But her most grievous shortcoming as a child-care worker was […]
The burrito wars
Most Americans who do lunch — even declared pacifists — end up immersed in the burrito wars, like it or not. Restaurant owners, on the other hand, have been embedded for years, covert strategists in the ongoing battle to offer a five-star wrap. I’m referring here not to the original Mexican burrito but rather the […]
Finally, the finish line
When we officially announced our first-annual Indie 500 Fiction Contest (500 because short-story entries were restricted to that many words; “indie” for independent newspaper), we expected a decent trickle of entries — and received a deluge. Kind of like this year’s winter-weather scares, except the other way around. After spending months poring over a snowy […]
More tang for your buck
You expect to encounter a certain amount of furtive tooth-picking at a barbecue joint. If you’re lucky, you may stumble upon some sizzling flat-picking too. Sure, you can always blend your meat-and-music fix at one of the regional summer festivals that smartly combine these two Southern staples, as does the Blue Ridge BBQ Festival in […]