Category: music

This song reminds me of her, and it makes me smile. There is something about its joyful energy that captures what words sometimes struggle to express: the way one person can make the world feel a little brighter just by being herself. When I hear it, I think of affection, gratitude, and the wonder...

Some songs remind you of a year. Some remind you of a place. This one reminds me of her. Last year, I saw CAKE in concert with a close friend. Now, whenever “The Distance” comes on, that shared experience comes back with it. Music has a way of keeping a little piece of our lives ready for us,...

Here’s Mark Kimbrell playing “Hush” with Roadside—a moment from our musical history featuring a guitarist whose roots run deep in Birmingham music. Mark’s musical world spans jazz, rock, blues, funk, and improvisation. His connection to Alabama’s music community is also a family story,...

Some videos hold a whole chapter of your life. This is the original Another Roadside Attraction, following our days as Exodus, being introduced at Mountain Brook Junior High School by Alan Hunter. There we are: me, Jase Carns, on bass; Sims Crawford on guitar; Franklin Sechriest singing; and Brian...

Some songs seem to float between the world we can touch and the one we can only feel. For me, this one also opens a door straight into childhood. The Police released Ghost in the Machine in 1981. I was twelve that year, going to lots of bar mitzvahs, dancing, and having such fun. Looking back,...

To Alabama: home, complicated, beautiful, still mine. This one is for the state that has given me so much: my roots, my family, my music, and more memories than I could ever fit into a single post. Alabama is where so much of my story lives. It is where I have loved, raised my daughters, made...

Carry On Wayward Son — Kansas Before the instruments even enter, those opening harmonies demand attention. Then the riff arrives, and “Carry On Wayward Son” takes off with the force of a band that knows exactly how to make ambition sound exciting. Kansas brings muscle, melody, and movement...

Some songs announce themselves before the singing starts. A few bright guitar notes, a familiar groove, and suddenly a room full of strangers knows exactly what comes next. “Sweet Home Alabama” has that kind of welcome. Lynyrd Skynyrd made a record that travels far beyond the state line. It...

When I was younger, I thought there would be plenty of time. Time to make the record, write the story, take the trip, and call somebody back. Then one day you look around, and the children have grown, the band has changed names, and the stories you used to tell about last weekend happened thirty...

Clouds can look like a ceiling when you are standing underneath them. Get above them, and suddenly the same sky opens into something different. That is where this song finds me. Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now” makes room for the possibility that we can experience something deeply and still...