By Greg Cahill | From the January-February 2021 issue of Strings magazine. Downbeat magazine recently named jazz violinist Tomoko Omura one of its Rising Star Violinists for the fifth year in a row. Her new album, Branches Vol. 1 (Outside in Music), was inspired by Japanese folktales. It solidifies her reputation as a gifted composer and passionate instrumentalist.

Buy one of the following Los Lobos CDs from amazon.com: 'How Will the Wolf Survive?' The first time Los Lobos appeared in the North Bay, shortly after the release of their 1983 Slash Records seven-song debut EP . . . And a Time to Dance, fewer than two dozen people braved a rainy winter night to congregate at Uncle Charlie's nightclub in a small Corte Madera strip mall.

Here’s a little known fact about Bob Denver. The late actor, best known as the namesake of, and hapless first mate on, the ’60s sitcom Gilligan’s Island, had deep bohemian roots—his ex-wife, Maggie, worked in Bob Dylan’s management office and was the inspiration for the title of the tousle-haired troubadour’s song “Maggie’s Farm,” a snarling, comic lament about working for the man. But Denver himself played an earlier, and culturally significant, role as Maynard G. Krebs, the kooky beatnik sidekick on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. That sitcom, which ran from 1959-1963, was centered on the self-centered exploits of Dobie Gillis, a buttoned-down, perennially love-struck teen (portrayed by Dwayne Hickman). The often bootlegged series was just released official for the first time as a four-DVD box set by Shout Factory!. The series is known for introducing such regular cast members as Warren Beatty, Tuesday Weld, Michael J. Pollard, and Eileen Brennan, to name a few, and for its groundbreaking portrayal of youths and Beat culture. “Dobie Gillis was the first TV show for and about the emerging teen culture of the baby boomers,” Slate opined in a 2005 tribute to Denver, who died that year of cancer. “Denver’s character, with his surrealist one-liners and trademark aversion to work (work!), could be seen as a kind of predecessor to the 1960s hippie.” In many ways, Krebs was a stereotypical beatnik, but he also championed Beat culture on mainstream TV. He wore a goatee (in high school, no less) and dressed in a soiled sweatshirt, faded chinos and sneakers. He was a dreamer and a proto-slacker. “Maynard was sweet and caring, and was passionate about everything he did,” the poet Lawrence Carradini remembered in an Internet tribute to Denver. “He was not disengaged. Of all the ‘types’ representing the capitalization of Beats, or what the average American of that time period could put their arms around when trying to process what it was the Beats were ‘working’ so hard to convey, Maynard G. Krebs came closest to the heart and soul of what the core of it was all about. Which was openness, acceptance and inclusion of right-thought-right-action-soulfulness from wherever it originates, integration. “Cool, man.” Maynard also helped introduce bebop to mainstream audiences. He had an affinity for jazz, routinely name-checking bebop greats Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk, scat singing, playing ocarina and banging on bongos or garbage cans or his school desk or whatever else was handy when the mood struck. He also played a key role in introducing one of pop culture’s most enduring terms. In his song “Cobwebs,” singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III credits—or blames—Krebs, along with Beat poet and novelist Jack Kerouac, for putting the work “like” in vogue. In fact, during the series, a rumor circulated that Denver, as Maynard G. Krebs, had recorded an album called “Like What?” “The whole thing was a myth, and never actually happened,” the show’s star, Dwight Hickman, writes on his website, “but Bob had people offering him big money for a copy of the album. Even here on the web the legend continues, and it’s reported that the album is a highly sought-after collector’s item fetching thousands of dollars in mint condition. They even show a picture of the so-called album cover. Bob, himself could never figure out where the picture came from. Possibly a CBS photo shoot—but even Bob wasn’t absolutely sure!” Over time, Denver’s endearing beatnik character has continued to work his way into pop culture: he was the inspiration for Shaggy on the Scooby-Doo series (actually all the “human” characters on that animated hit show were based on Dobie Gillis), and Maynard has been referenced on The Simpsons and The Family Guy. Krebs even inspired Frank Zappa. The avant-rock composer took the title of 1966’s jazzy “Return of the Son of the Monster Magnet,” his first extended experimental tune, from a Dobie Gillis episode in which Maynard invites Dobie to accompany him to a double-feature of the film The Monster that Devoured Cleveland and its sequel, Son of the Monster that Devoured Cleveland. Bob Denver remained true until the end to the spirit of the free-spirited character he’d created. In 1998, the then–63-year-old Denver was busted for possession of pot and paraphernalia. Supposedly, his former Gilligan’s Island co-star Dawn Wells (aka Mary Ann) had supplied the weed. Prosecutors were eager to nail her. But Denver took the rap. “Given Denver’s role in the creation of two of the archetypal TV slackers of our culture, there’s something sweet about this story: The image of the then–59-year-old Mary Ann acting as Gilligan’s supplier; his loyalty in refusing to name her in court,” Dana Stevens of Slate wrote in 2005, “and most of all, the image of an aging Gilligan/Maynard G. Krebs, still dreaming away in his hammock or jamming on his bongo drums, smiling, a little high, and not quite ready to leave the island yet.”

When Mark Sandman, the founding father of “low rock” and frontman for the jazz-lounge band Morphine, collapsed of an apparent heart attack onstage at a 1999 Rome music festival, his untimely death closed the book on one of the best cult bands of the 1990s. Throughout the last decade, Morphine routinely topped college-radio play lists with a gritty, bluesy blend of jazz-rock driven by Sandman’s loping, homemade, detuned, two-string electric bass and such opiated vocals and bohemian hipster lyrics as could have been inked by Jack Kerouac.

From the February 2017 issue of Acoustic Guitar | BY GREG CAHILL. I like a guitar that packs a punch. And the newly relaunched Guild D-40 fits the bill. With a solid Sitka top, Sitka spruce bracing, and solid mahogany back and sides, this surprisingly light (4.5 lbs.), US-made dreadnought has the sonic punch of a cannon—strumming with a heavy pick while palm muting in drop-D is a revelatory experience.

Better late than never. Neil Young recorded this “lost” album between 1974 and 1975, a period that also spawned On the Beach and Zuma. Young has called the ballad-rich Homegrown “a bridge between Harvest and Comes a Time.”. Young cancelled the original release because it was inspired by his breakup with actress Carrie Snodgrass.

Keep Connected chronicles the ways in which string players and organizations are supporting and keeping in touch with their audiences or students throughout the global coronavirus pandemic. Even as society reopens, virtual concerts and social-media outreach programs are a phenomenon that have kept performers in the public sphere, since concerts, festivals, and other large gatherings remain largely restricted.

He’s the last American troubadour, a complex mix of Midwestern common sense and bohemian Zen appeal inhabiting a poet’s soul. In some ways, there are two Greg Browns: tender and tough, acoustic and electric, funny and sorrowful, cynical and filled with an unquenchable thirst for life. One careens down country roads in the dead of night in a broken-down farm truck, no headlights, a bottle of Wild Turkey wedged between his thighs and pioneering country-star Jimmie Rodgers blaring on the stereo.

By Greg Cahill | From the November-December 2020 issue of Strings magazine. “Hello Weakness, You Make Me Strong is, for us, about finding empowerment in the things that have previously held you back,” violinist and arranger Rachel Ruggles says of her new album, a collaboration with songwriter and keyboardist Gracie Coates, “but really it’s whatever you need it to be.”.

Last night I read a great article in The Atlantic written by Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame. He laments the loss of live music we are currently experiencing. But he is looking forward to the days and nights we can all be together again enjoying the live music we all crave. He eloquently summarizes the essence of the rock concert experience, and the longing we have as human beings to share those experiences with others.

Call it the passing of the torch, in this case red-hot soul music being handed down from 1960s blues and soul heavyweights to today’s hip-hop generation. The feature film, expected to be released on DVD this year, celebrates the intergenerational and interracial musical influence of Memphis in the face of pervasive discrimination and segregation.

By Greg Cahill | From the July-August 2020 issue of Strings magazine. The new technology dazzled the Brits, as they listened to the music pouring from the device’s tinny brass horn, but Sullivan, whose music had been captured on the phonograph, had reservations about the invention. “I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening’s experiments,” he said, addressing Edison, “astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.”.

Gordon Lightfoot is a songwriter’s songwriter. No less a wordsmith than Bob Dylan has sung his praises, saying, “Every time I hear a song of his, I wish it would last forever.”. And there is a timelessness to Lightfoot’s folksy material that is heard throughout Solo (Rhino), a new album of previously unreleased acoustic demos recorded between 1996 and 2000, all of them solo.

Concert cellist and recording artist Hee-Young Lim hails from the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and recently livestreamed the Elgar Concerto with the Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra. Lim, 33, is a graduate of the New England Conservatory and has studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris.

It’s been 35 years since composer Angelo Badalamenti unleashed his dreampop–influenced Twin Peaks film score on the world. But few know that the 4AD collective This Mortal Coil, featuring members of the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, served as the inspiration for his “Mysteries of Love,” as well as “Floating into the Night,” sung by filmmaker David Lynch’s dream-pop protégé Julee Cruise. Lynch had wanted to include the Cocteau’s haunting version of Tim Buckley’s “Song to the Siren” on the soundtrack, but producer Dino DeLaurentis refused to shell out the $50,000 licensing fee. So Badalamenti was left to create something equally as moody.

30 years ago, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle released their debut albums. Nashville has never been the same. “I first met Steve Earle in 1985 at a George Strait concert. Steve had come out from Nashville to play for a while and to see what was going on in LA. I didn’t really know who he was when we were introduced backstage at that show.