A few years ago, I attended a songwriting retreat with Andrea Stolpe in which Andrea emphasized the need for sensory details in songs (smells, sounds, textures…). By giving the listener some concrete details, we help the listener engage with the song. 

No one does this better than Lucinda Williams. Her breakout album, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, is full of vivid songwriting. Even the title puts us in the scene. The sound of car wheels on a gravel road instantly evokes the countryside and rural America. 

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I was raised in a church-going family. From an early age, I had instilled in me the habit of attending services on Sunday morning, followed by a family brunch. It became ingrained in me to have a day each week centered on spiritual and moral reflection. 

For people who grow up with a similar practice,  grounded in a faith tradition, but who then move on, how do they experience that time of the week? If they were raised Christian, what does Sunday morning feel like to them?

These questions came to mind when I…

In interviews and in public performances, Dolly Parton presented a public persona that was always upbeat, positive and bubbly. But the below surface was a songwriter with deep empathy for the struggles of poor women and children. From that empathy emerged some very sad songs.

In the song “Down from Dover,” for example, she writes about a young woman who has been abandoned by her lover and is facing the shame of being an unwed mother.  She's been kicked out of her home by her parents. She struggles to hold on…

When I first listened to Paul Simon's most recent album, Seven Psalms, I was struck by its prayerful tone, imagery and themes. It is a deeply spiritual piece of music. 

The Lord is my engineer

The Lord is the earth I ride on

The Lord is the face in the atmosphere

The path I slip and slide on

Wow, I thought. Where did this come from?

I've been a lifelong fan of Paul Simon but Seven Psalms caused me to revisit his music catalog to see if this album represented something new, or if it were an evolution of themes he…

This summer I've been diving into the life and music of Mozart. What has struck me is that Mozart's life as a musician wasn't that different from today's musicians. In his childhood, he, his sister and his father spent most of their time on the road, traveling from city to city, doing shows. Even as he became well known, he still spent a lot of time bumping along dirt roads, in all kinds of weather. It may sound romantic, to travel from one great European city to the next, but historians say that, in that…