Here’s a summary of the Substack posts I’ve published since the start of the year, with links to each.
1. The Whole Blessed Thing. An essay about the lessons we learn from songs, inspired by a lyric from a Robbie Fulks song: ‘If you’ve ever heard Hank Williams sing / Then you know the whole blessed thing’.
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/the-whole-blessed-thing
2. Songs About Musicians #1: Laura Veirs’ Homages to Carol Kaye, Alice Coltrane and Judee Sill. The first in a trio of posts on songs about musicians. This one is about the wonderful Laura Veirs and her musical subjects.
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/songs-about-musicians-1-laura-veirs
3. Songs About Musicians #2: Protest Singers. Dylan/Guthrie, Guthrie/Jara, Bragg/Ochs, Kristofferson/O’Connor.
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/songs-about-musicians-2-protest-singers
4. Songs About Musicians #3: The Tim McGraw Chain. What Taylor Swift got me thinking about musicians as proxies for memories.
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/songs-about-musicians-3-the-tim-mcgraw
5. All of This Is Fado (I). Vanquished souls. Lost nights. Bizarre shadows in Mouraria. A ruffian sings. Guitars cry. Love. Jealousy. Ashes and fire. All of this exists. All of this is sad. All of this is fate. Or rather, all of this is fado. Fate and fado are not the same thing …
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/all-of-this-is-fado-i
6. All of This Is Fado (II).
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/all-of-this-is-fado-ii
7. Why Write About Music (If We’re Doomed to Fail)? In which I write about the old ‘dancing about architecture’ chestnut and fail to convey why listening to Neil Young’s Way Down in the Rust Bucket has become such a sublime experience for me.
https://songstudies.substack.com/p/why-write-about-music-if-were-doomed
Late Voice 