“The Pelly twins on music, writing, and life beyond algorithms.”
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The Ballad of Ollie Jackson
“How the baddest man int he St. Louis underworld failed to become a folk hero.”
20 Years Later: Little Brother, “The Minstrel Show”
Like minstrelsy, Little Brother’s album shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing, while something else works behind the scenes.
Gillian Welch: This Land is Her Land
“You don’t need to shout it for the entire world, but you need to give hope to the people who need it, who you can speak to.”
Lost Recipes
“The Mind Squad and editorial staff like theirs—people who understood and loved the music—would create a new, vibrant, and deeply informed style of cultural journalism that defined an era.”
The Portal Opens
“People who love Phish do so with a quasi-religious devotion. People who dislike Phish do so with an equal fervor.”
10 Short Stories, The Power of Music, and Our Top 5
“I always admired how my father could play so delicately with such brutal hands. They were rough, mired with patches of psoriasis, calloused from playing the charango and the guitar, and scarred, scarred all over.” I have fond memories of playing the violin when I was a child, and over the years I’ve considered returning […]
My Father, Guitar Guru to the Rock Gods
“When the greatest musicians of the 1970s needed an instrument—or a friend—my dad was there.”
If You Think This Instrument Is Hard to Play, Try Building One
“The oboe has 500 parts. Turning a profit is a killer. But Jim Phelan is bent on reviving one of the great names in classical music.”

