Tag Archives: Jack Kerouac

On the Road. 60

Today I came across an article in the Independent celebrating Jack Kerouac’s On the Road at 60. I read Kerouac’s book when I was an undergrad writing my own poems and short stories, and scheming my own cross-country road trip which I actually took in 1992. Kerouac’s book, page-to-page, was both the best and worst [...]

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Kerouac Wax Stack

I love Open Culture’s treasure trove of free and accessible media. So many great things to find there. If you’re on Twitter you should follow OC @openculture. Every tweet is like opening a surprise and yesterday I discovered that all of Jack Kerouac’s recorded works are available for listening on the site through their curating [...]

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Black Rimbaud

Bob Kaufman was a Beat poet who might be thought of as the Anti-Ginsberg: The Howl author’s legendary hustling made sure that the world new his name along with those of contemporaries like William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, and it’s not overstatement to say that Ginsberg was every bit the carny-huckster-PR man that he [...]

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Professor Ginsberg

I love the Open Culture site and I’m always anxious to share a good find. The other day I fell down a Beat rabbit hole at the site before stumbling upon this set of recordings of Allen Ginsberg teaching the history of Western poetry at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Poetics in 1974. There [...]

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Beat Booty

It’s Monday morning after a pretty fun weekend. I stayed in on Saturday night to watch the Deontay Wilder fight and to get a good night’s sleep before my show at Mad Donna’s last night. I had a ball at the East Nashville Songwriter’s club, sharing the stage with Rich Mahan and Lauren Farrah. Jean [...]

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Evergreen Review Returns

Over the weekend, I found out how timely my recent Jack Kerouac post was when I stumbled over a notice at Flavorwire announcing that the legendary counterculture magazine Evergreen Review was about to undergo a 21st century reboot. Here’s the word… One of the most influential and essential American literary publications will return to readers [...]

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Kerouac’s Crash

Dennis McNally is the author of my favorite Jack Kerouac biography, Desolation Angel. I love the book because it places Kerouac’s story in the context of a creative movement that saw artists of every stripe striving for their authentic, original, individual voices. McNally invokes Monk, Cassavetes, Dean, Pollock and Brando into his universe, demonstrating that [...]

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This American Burroughs

Hey, Insomniacs! I’m getting a slow start on the week after spending Monday driving back from Asheville, North Carolina. I played a solo singer/songwriter gig there over the weekend and had a real blast bumming around that great little mountain town with my girlfriend. Check out my YouTube channel to see videos from the show. On [...]

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Miles on Burroughs

British author Barry Miles is a prolific chronicler of the counterculture. He’s authored books about Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and the Ramones. The Beat Hotel is the definitive account of the Beat Generation in Paris and his coffee table volume Hippie captures 60′s flower power in full color. Miles’ 1993 biography [...]

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Beat. Bad. Baraka!

Writer Amiri Baraka was born Everett Leroi Jones in 1934, but changed his name in 1961. Baraka’s poetry included insightful and incendiary critiques of social mores and politics during a time when the American way of life at home and at work, in the bedroom and the boardroom and at the ballot box was being [...]

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