A Country Boy Can Surmise

There is so much good music right now that it awaits us like a feast. Here are some of my current favorites. After the jump you'll find embedded videos of some of the songs. Let me know what songs you're listening to these days. Playlist (in no particular order) 1. Old Before Your Time-Ray LaMontagne 2. Save Some Time To Dream-John Mellencamp 3. Wise Woman-Caroline Herring 4. Evening Kitchen-Band of Horses 5. Golden-My Morning Jacket 6. Sweet Marie-Daniel Martin Moore and Ben Sollee 7. Whispering Sea-Eilen Jewell 8. Holding On-David Gray 9. I Miss You-Courtyard Hounds 10. The Cave-Mumford & Sons 11. Kind-Cheyenne Marie 12. Still-Great Lake Swimmers 13. Smoking From Shooting-My Morning Jacket 14. Swept Away-Avett Brothers 15. Lantern-Josh Ritter 16. Broken-Chely Wright 17. Easy in the Summertime-Allison Moorer 18. Cindy Gal-Carolina Chocolate Drops 19. For the Summer-Ray LaMontagne 20. All Creatures Of Our God and King-Patty Griffin

There are so many mediocre (or downright bad) books, movies, television, and music that it's sometimes hard to remember that there is so much great art being produced these days. So, a list of things I've enjoyed very much recently. Books Little Bee by Chris Cleave. This is the most powerful book that I've read in a long while. The plot is so intricate and wonderful that I hate to even describe it for fear of giving something away, so I'll describe it as being about a young Nigerian refugee who is living with a British journalist and the way their relationship is formed and how it blooms into a profound friendship. The novel is about much more than that, and opened my eyes to atrocities being committed around the world that I had absolutely no idea about. I loved Little Bee especially because it is that rare thing: a literary page-turner. The language is precise and beautiful and the pages fly by due to the feverish plot-driven pacing. I can't recommend th...

President Obama recently toured the Gulf to see firsthand the massive oil spill that has been plaguing us for more than a month now. He also convened a long press conference about the spill. We see coverage of the spill at the top of the news, often accompanied by a live shot of the oil pumping out into the ocean from a camera situated a mile below the surface. I can’t imagine the president doing a flyover of a mountaintop removal site, or holding a press conference about it. And I’ve certainly never seen a mountain blown up on national television—not even once, much less every morning on the Today show. Yet I would venture to say that mountaintop removal (MTR) is as devastating as the oil spill in the Gulf. I don’t mean to compare suffering. What I’m saying is actually the opposite of comparison: they’re equally as bad, yet everyone is outraged about the spill while very few people even know about MTR. Both th...

Once again, I have two albums as my top album of the year because they are both so masterful that I cannot choose between them: Golden Apples of the Sun by Caroline Herring and Give Up the Ghost by Brandi Carlile. These are the two albums of 2009 that anyone who really loves great music (read: that which is most likely not on contemporary mainstream radio) must buy right now. Last year Caroline Herring topped my list (in a tie with Ben Sollee’s Learning to Bend ) with her album Lantana , a record that I believe to be as packed with as many keen observations about humanity and the Gothic South as the best of Flannery O’Connor or Lucinda Williams. The standout track on that album, “Paper Gown,” a modern murder ballad about Susan Smith, is among the best songs I’ve ever heard in my life . I didn’t think she’d ever be able to outdo herself, but then she goes and records the best album of 2009, and a modern masterpiece: Golden Apples of the Sun . If there was any justice ...

The (Im)Perfect Word Writers are always looking for the perfect word, the perfect sentence. Put a bunch of writers together for a little while and you’ll most likely hear one of them declare “I love that word” in response to something someone has uttered. We are not normal (and don’t want to be); we actually discuss our favorite words. Mine is “gloaming”. A friend of mine prefers the word “Sabbath”. Another favors “diaphanous”. Writers are people who love words, plain and simple; that’s our craft, our job. Of course it is the sound that draws us in first. How can a person not appreciate a word like “diaphanous” if they say it aloud? So yes, we pronounce these words audibly, savoring them like fine chocolates on our tongues. We roll them around in our mouths, feel them taking flight from our lips. Yet it is more than that. We even love the way words look. Take another perfect word for an example: Appalachia. Not only is i...

Good dogs are everything that humans hope to be, but never have quite achieved yet.   When I think back on all my good dogs I had when I was a boy, I can't help getting a little bit sad. There was Arky, a little obese weiner dog my aunt in Arkansas gave me.  He thought he was a big, ferocious dog, and would bare his teeth to anyone who threatened me.  He sat right beside me when I propped my back against a tree to read a summer afternoon away.  There was Fala, a white spitz I named after FDR and Eleanor's trusty dog.  Every day Fala trotted out to Hoskins' Grocery where my bus let me off. Everyone on the school bus crowded to one side so they could see him sitting there patiently awaiting my arrival.  When the bus screeched to a halt there he'd wag his tail--three thumps on the ground behind him--then jump up to walk home with me.   Those were the two I had the longest, although there were others along the way.  I miss them every single one.   And now I have other dogs,...

Every morning the whole world gives us the opportunity to start our lives anew.  That's what I kept thinking as I drove the winding roads of Eastern Kentucky yesterday as the land came awake.  A thin mist breathed out over on the hills and hollers.  A white rind of moon in the struggling shadows of first daylight.  The sky burned purple and gray on the horizon.  I passed through Big Hill, Morrill, Clover Bottom, Sand Gap, Gray Hawk, Mummie, Elias, Traveller's Rest, Levi, and other little communities.  In each of these, the houses along the road were coming awake, too.  Yellow rectangles of light in the windows.  An occasional square of blue where a television flickered the morning news.   Best of all, the people stirred outside.   A woman sweeping her porch, her mind on something far, far away. Two women sitting on a bench outside the Little Angels Daycare Center, smoking and laughing. One of them threw her head back to cackle out; the other slapped her knee. A man stretching b...