Like minstrelsy, Little Brother’s album shows you one hand, convinces you of one thing, while something else works behind the scenes.
Search results
The Ballad of Ollie Jackson
“How the baddest man int he St. Louis underworld failed to become a folk hero.”
Acid Blues (Slight Return)
“The music of Jimi Hendrix continues to strike a chord.”
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 […]
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.”
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.”
Abandoned Music Dreams and The Week’s Top 5
“It felt like a homecoming but in retrospect seems more like a goodbye: a last great musical act before leaving that period of my life. It felt romantic, anyway, to record in a barn. We set the drums next to the tractor, tried to coax the chickens into cooing for the microphone, and had a […]

