Winters Come and Gone Since graduating from Berklee College of Music in 1992, Gillian Welch and her music partner, David Rawlings, have written many masterful songs. Their songs combine lyrics that seem as old as the Appalachian Mountains with...
What’s In a Name When I started second grade, we had moved and I was in a new school. On the first day, the new teacher mispronounced my first name, Carlyle. Once those giggles were past, she asked about my middle name. I have none, so I...
Hard Times Stephen C. Foster is considered the “father of American music” with over 200 songs written and published during his 37 years of life. The 2005 Grammy winning album “Beautiful Dreamer” is a recording of Foster’s songs, by...
I Am An Immigrant During the early years of Texas independence a lot of land was made available for settlement. Soldiers of the Republic of Texas had been paid in land grants and many of them needed money. After beTexasstate, from 1850 to 1860, the...
The Lord God Made Them All At an MDS project, most weeks are a mix of events and emotions that range from the very best to very difficult. This week at the McAllen MDS project I had the joy of signing the job card to start a new house, our 5th...
Blue Lines On a night back about 1975, Laura and I enjoyed listening to music by Steve Fromholtz, under the stars at Waterloo Park near downtown Austin. Over several decades, Steve produced a wealth of songs that resulted in him being named the “...
Broken Things Julie Miller is one of those Texas songwriters whose name few people have heard. Born in Waxahachie, Texas, she migrated to Austin and was part of that music community from an early age, writing and performing her songs and...
This week the eight long term volunteers on site had the pleasure of working with a group of two young men and nine young women from Wisconsin. We experienced beautiful music, both vocal and accordion, lots of giggles and outbursts of laughter, jokes...
A group of twelve young men and women from Pennsylvania and New York and their two drivers joined the eight long-termers for a productive week. We worked on three jobs, described below. At House #1 the crew continued to put up the siding, which was...