Musings

I didn’t expect a documentary. I expected a trashy, cash-in bio-series that would be fun to watch. I really like both Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain and figured they would make it entertaining even if the script was bad.

After a couple of retrospectives and buried headlines, a few weeks after Jerry Lee Lewis has passed it’s almost like he’s been forgotten.

I love Howlin’ Wolf because everything that comes out of his mouth, whether it’s singin’ or talkin’, sounds like the truth. What an incredible human being.

Here’s a cool new Christmas classic! I’ve been working a lot with Grey DeLisle this year, on her own stuff and a batch of kids-oriented tunes with Eddie Clendening under the band name “The Roughhousers.”

Charlie Gracie was a force of nature. You wouldn’t know it by his best-known songs (“Butterfly” and “Fabulous,” which were pop hits), but he was one of the true originators of the style that became rock ’n’ roll music.

Sad to hear that Dino Danelli, the explosive drummer of the Young Rascals, has passed away. What an incredible drummer he was!

I had a nice tour of the RTI record pressing plant in Camarillo this morning. I took some of my lacquer disc cuts in to Dorin, their metal plating manager, to see if they looked good enough to be metal plated.

TODAY’S THE BIG DAY: Sixteen Tons: The Merle Travis Story is officially released!

I’m very sad to learn of the death of Graeme Thomas, my good friend from Australia who was the brainchild of Preston Records and Preston Studios.

I’m not really in the market for anything, these days, which is nice. But every now and then an orphan will pop up that needs a home. This Standel acoustic guitar popped up on Craigslist the other day and I got it for 250 bucks.