Blog Archives
Old School Breakin’
Do the roots of breakdancing stretch all the way back to the 1930′s? It’s unlikely that the connection is conscious, but this clip from the Mills Brothers’ film Caravan shows that there seems to be some kind of genetic memory at play in the evolution of the form. The whole clip is entertaining, but the [...]
Tell Me A Story
Here’s a song from my upcoming album, The Wicked. This is a performance from a few weeks back at Tavern 96 in Nashville, TN. This was the second of The Sundown Sessions organized by my pal Andrew Adkins. Andrew and Daryl Wayne Dasher have done a great job producing two superb songwriter showcases on the [...]
Basement Band
45 years ago, in 1969, The Band released their classic sophmore album and changed rock ‘n’ roll forever. But, how did a group of nearly-all Canadians seem to absorb the entire history of American music from folk, to blues, to country to jazz and recreate it in their own inimitable way? While the band received [...]
Woodstock 45
This past weekend we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The event was a legendary happening that’s been illuminated from so many angles, it’s hard to shed any new light on the subject. That said, it is — and always will be — a milestone in the establishment of the [...]
Adam Raised a Cain
Played a show on Wednesday night and premiered this re-working of the 1977 Bruce Springsteen song “Adam Raised a Cain.” I was just messing around with the chords a few months back and working on the song while rehearsing other material for the shows I’ve been doing lately. It occurred to me that the biblical [...]
The Godmother
Sylvia Robinson was known as Little Sylvia when she started her recording career at the age of 16. Her first taste of fame came when she joined forces with Mickey Baker and Mickey & Sylvia topped the R&B charts in 1957 with their timeless single “Love is Strange.” However, Robinson’s biggest impact on popular music [...]
Birth of Devo
Today we celebrate the birthday of Mark Mothersbaugh, lead singer and co-founder of Devo. While best known for one of the sexiest MTV videos of all time for “Whip It,” the band’s mission as absurdist satirists of mainstream culture is what secures them a place in the rock pantheon. Devo rejected hippie escapism as well [...]
Beastie Birthday
The Beastie Boys are the bastard sons of the kind of b-boy/hardcore mongrel that could’ve only been born in 1981. After a short tenure as young punks inspired by Black Flag, the boys teamed up with Rick Rubin to create a metal/punk/hip-hop sound that sounded like the inside of the head of a 13 year [...]
Jim Morrison’s HWY
45 years ago, in the summer of 1969, Jim Morrison shot his experimental film HWY in Los Angeles and in the Mojave Desert. Morrison had hitchhiked hundreds of miles in his younger days as a college student and the thumbs-up locomotion of the protagonist (played by Morrison) at the center of HWY finds the director/actor [...]
The Riddle of Robert Johnson
Here at Insomnia, we love the strange crossroads of hardscrabble blues and high weirdness that come together in the life of legendary singer/songwriter/guitarist Robert Johnson. The story of the blues pioneer finds the gifted musician rejected by his family, living the reckless, itinerant life of a musician, drinking heavily, womanizing, dying mysteriously and infamously associating [...]
