Tag: Music
On the Road Again. And Again. And Again. And Again…
by Michael Yessis | 02.04.03 | 4:53 PM ET
What’s it like to be the guy who drives a truck for touring musical superstars? Chad Smith reveals the ups (prime rib dinners, luxury hotels, free concerts) and downs (400-mile drives in the middle of the night, few breaks, little sleep) of hauling equipment for country act Brooks and Dunn in a piece in this month’s Road King. Smith keeps his rig clean and spit-polished. Why? “It’s a rolling billboard,” Smith told writers Cindy Hazen and Mike Freeman. “It gets a lot of attention. Wherever you go, someone is riding beside you. Occasionally they’ll snap a picture, and I’m blinded by a flash.”
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Yahoo! BuzzWho Is Stompin’ Tom Connors?
by Michael Yessis | 10.16.02 | 7:54 PM ET
When people ask Cleo Paskal who her favorite travel writer is, she answers Stompin’ Tom Connors.
“I know I am supposed to answer with a soliloquy on the comparative merits of Bruce Chatwin and Bill Bryson, perhaps throwing in something about how the
genre has not been the same since Homer. (The Homer, not the yellow fellow ontelevision),” she writes in Canada’s National Post. “But I can’t.”
Just who is Stompin’ Tom, you ask? He’s a songwriter. And a best-selling author, Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement award winner, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Honourary Goodwill Ambassador for Prince Edward Island, a multiple Juno winner, a recipient of two honourary doctorates (prompting him to name one album Dr.
Stompin’ Tom, Eh?), he had his own TV show and put out dozens of albums.
“If you can name a corner of Canada,” Paskal writes, “chances are Stompin’ Tom has written a song about it.” It’s true. We surfed his Web site and came across dozens of dandies, including a nice little ditty about that most Canadian of pastimes: Ice hockey.
Kissing E with the Hair Band
by Mark Edward Hornish | 06.02.02 | 12:39 AM ET
Photo illustration by Michael Yessis. When Mark Edward Hornish hit the road to see America, he hoped for adventure. But the last thing he expected was help from a Rock Group on Tour.
Interviews with Bud Greenspan, Andrew Solomon and Suzanne Vega
by Michael Yessis | 02.22.02 | 11:55 PM ET
The Savvy Traveler jumped on the Olympic bandwagon last week, talking with documentary filmmaker Bud Greenspan about life on the road and his decades-long infatuation with the Games. “Since I’ve been doing this I’ve probably got seven or eight million miles under my belt,” says Greenspan. “I spend as much time on planes as I do on the ground sometimes.” Previously, Savvy Traveler writer-at-large Tony Kahn spoke with Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, and the show’s host, Diana Nyad, tracked down musician Suzanne Vega, who comes from a family of traveling musicians.
Colombian Kids Find Salvation in Hip Hop
by Michael Yessis | 02.21.02 | 11:57 PM ET
“I’m Going Down to Lebanon, Tennessee / From Where I Stand, It’s as Good a Place as Any”
by Michael Yessis | 02.07.02 | 2:59 PM ET
Those are the opening lines of Ron Sexsmith’s song “Lebanon, Tennessee,” and they burrowed so far into Peter Jon Lindberg’s head that he hopped in his car and drove there. Along the way, he meditates on music’s ability to democratize, mythologize and inspire. “Songs turn our Nowheres into Somewheres-until all those Winslow, Arizonas (‘Take It Easy,’ the Eagles), and Slidell, Louisianas (‘Joy,’ Lucinda Williams), are inseparable from the melodies they inspired,” Lindberg writes in the February issue of Travel + Leisure. “‘It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw,’ sang Simon and Garfunkel, and from the glory in that line, they could have been singing about Valhalla.”
He Said That While Playing a Solo, he Would Often Find Himself Thinking About Eating a Sandwich
by Michael Yessis | 11.07.01 | 9:38 PM ET
The Funerals, an Icelandic “slow country band,” recently embarked on a spontaneous tour of their home country. Iceland has less than 300,000 citizens, so the tour only took four days. Still, much happened along the way. New York Times music writer Neil Strauss tagged along as the band endured, among other things, broken-down buses, broken ankles, payments of smoked fish and a sighting of Einar Melax, the reclusive former guitar player for the Sugarcubes. “On a Saturday night the band arrived in Akureyri, Iceland’s second-largest city, after Reykjavik,” writes Strauss. “It was therefore a disappointment when the only audience members were three women. Nonetheless, the band pledged to perform its best show and delivered, having a lot of fun in the process. ‘I’ve done a hundred rock ‘n’ roll shows,’ [guitarist Olafur] Jonsson said afterward. ‘But tonight I did the best show of my life. And for what? For three ladies in Akureyri. Isn’t that the story of my life?’ ”
The White Zone is for the Immediate Loading and Unloading of Pilots and Contortionists Only
by Michael Yessis | 08.24.01 | 9:10 PM ET
Musician, artist and frequent flyer Peter Gabriel, and director Robert Lepage, have teamed to create Zulu Time, a “theater piece” set in an airport. According to Rolling Stone, the work features pilots, stewardesses, terrorists, drug traffickers, dancers, robots, acrobats and contortionists. “I think it’s surprising how little mythology there is about airports,” Gabriel says. “If you look at what there used to be about trains and stations. There’s so many road movies that it’s a genre in itself, which isn’t the case with air movies, aside from Airplane.” Zulu, which has already been performed in Zurich and Paris, debuts in the United States September 21 at New York City’s Roseland Ballroom.
Anthem Soul
by Rolf Potts | 07.06.01 | 1:00 AM ET
James Brown tunes seep through walls in a Syrian hotel. Rolf Potts listens in and finds new meaning in "Sex Machine."
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