Arts + Entertainment
Discovering ‘Stoner,’ the novel I almost missed
In a review written in 2013 of John Williamson’s “Stoner,” Tim Kreider snagged the attention of The New Yorker readers with this title: “The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard of.”
This year, when my friend Anne introduced me to “Stoner,” I still belonged to the ignorant crowd. I’d never heard of the man or his book. Given the title and its publication in 1965, I immediately assumed “Stoner” featured hippies and potheads.
Highway junkie: A conversation with Andy Thomas
There’s a heaviness when you listen to Andy Thomas’ latest album, “Highway Junkie.” Not only from the swamp rock meets honkytonk melodies, but also the underlying tone and hard truths of this whirlwind journey of a singer-songwriter pushing into the next phase of his promising career.
“It’s crazy when you set everything aside and put your mind to something,” Thomas said. “I’m a hard worker, and this album is a product of that.”
Author creates a marvelous world for children
If you go to a child’s birthday party and bring a book as a present, you may not win the most popular present award.
Having been invited to the party of a little girl I know, who was six turning seven, I decided to forego the popularity part and I headed to my local bookstore.
Where the river goes: Dean DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots
With the untimely passing of founding member and longtime lead singer Scott Weiland in 2015, and the tragic death of replacement singer Chester Bennington (originally of Linkin Park) in 2017, the Stone Temple Pilots were at a crucial crossroads with one question in mind — pack it all up and shake hands goodbye or push ahead, hell or high water.
Rediscovering place in Southern Appalachia
As author Thomas Rain Crowe discovered during his own long journey from Western North Carolina to California to Europe (and with due respect to another Western North Carolinian, Thomas Wolfe), you can go home again. Crowe did.
It's a great day to be alive: A conversation with Darrell Scott
At age 66, legendary singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Darrell Scott is having a career rebirth of sorts.
Though he’s always been known as a prolific and productive artist — whether in Nashville musical circles as a performer and producer or through endless touring from coast-to-coast and beyond — this current chapter of his storied life has evolved into a full-circle kind of thing, one where Scott is reevaluating just what it means to create and cultivate in your autumn years.
The founding of ‘The Farm’ in Tennessee
Georgia poet and author Rupert Fike and I lived in the San Francisco Bay area during the 1970s in a time of social renaissance and spiritual awakening. He was with a core group community of some 300 young activists and idealists. The earliest beginnings of this community go back to San Francisco and a weekly meeting called Monday Night Class.
Lonesome road blues: New album celebrates late Haywood banjo legend
In what will amount to an early Christmas present for bluegrass pickers and music lovers across Western North Carolina and beyond, there’s a brand-new album from the late Carroll Best.
“What he did with the banjo was above and beyond,” said French Kirkpatrick, a Haywood County musician, who was part of The White Oak String Band with Best. “He was, probably without a doubt, the most creative banjo player I was ever in a room with.”
Toltec wisdom resonates in today’s world
Recently, I was gifted the use of a book to read on Native American wisdom by my Sylva dentist Dr. David McGuire. Thousands of years ago, the Toltec were known throughout southern Mexico as “women and men of knowledge” and who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones.
