I have told both of my children this many times over, regarding life and one’s expectations:

“All you can know for sure is that it won’t happen as you imagine it.”

Nearly 3 years ago, i toured Japan for the first time. I accepted the invitation with uncertainty, believing that –since i had never been– i’d be starting from scratch...

dear friends, now it can be told… throughout much of june, i will be touring in collaboration with my friend and sister, the great lisa hannigan of ireland. we...

This past Tuesday afternoon, many of us began to receive and share word that Levon Helm was in the final stages of his long and heroic battle with cancer....

I am delighted that Bonnie Raitt has finally announced the upcoming release of her first studio album in seven years, “Slipstream.” The project, releasing on her own newly-formed Redwing...

My new album, “Reverie,” will release on October 11, and as such, I have been invited to perform that very evening at the historic Largo/Coronet Theatre in West Hollywood;...

Dear friends of the fourth estate. I thought it might be a good idea to bring news and announce my intentions to you directly, since time is short and...

I got up early this morning, put on a black suit and drove through a pissy rain, past the airport, to Gardena in south Los Angeles for Solomon Burke’s...

These are dark and death filled days we are inhabiting. As optimistic as I feel about the new year ahead—and I do, for reasons I can’t exactly account for,...

Mose Allison, Harry Belafonte, and a poem from France It would seem that, even here in Southern California, autumn is upon us. It may reach 74 degrees today, but...

Dear friends, Greetings from Bay City, Michigan: The Land That Time Forgot. I spent yesterday, the release day of “Blood From Stars,” in the company of my wife’s 98-year-old...

The Martin Luther King Parade, Los Angeles, 2005 My family and I spent several hours yesterday at the corner of St. Andrews Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. We...

In 1967 I was six years old and my family moved from Charlotte to Atlanta, leaving behind all kinfolk and everything I knew to be familiar. In our new...

The music of Thelonious Monk is, for me, purely devotional and endlessly life-affirming. And I am devoted to it, as Monk was my doorway into jazz. In fact, I...

I had a dream. A “vision,” I’m tempted to say. But that would sound too mystical, and make me sound like…I don’t know, like…Sting. Not something I can afford...

In 1966, as a 5-year-old living in Atlanta, I loved songs without thinking about them as a matter of any choice. I listened to them the way I ate...