Why did I call this album Music City Joke, you ask? 

It’s a fair question. 

Let’s step back in time about a decade. I was playing the low country bar band circuit, dodging alcohol-soaked song requests & a spilled…

Benjamin Braddock and Elaine Robinson riding away on the bus. Big smiles at first. Then pensive looks. Another big smile from Benjamin, then finally seeing Benjamin seemingly feeling the weight of his decision.

Is it happy? Is it sad? 

As…

Strange days indeed.
The following 4 entries are character sketches, really just manifestations of some thoughts I was feeling amidst this staying at home and walking around with masks on our face like some twilight zone episode.
 

James 
Harry 
Mr…

His room had not changed since high school. The Atlanta Falcons sheets on the single bed. The Yardbirds family tree poster, the poster of Butch & Sundance guns drawn & charging. 
His mother said that it smelled like teenagers. 
And…

“Swut they call a catch 22, I reckon,”  Harry said to the attractive doctor who was currently taking his blood pressure in response to why he still drank so much. “Booze got me on the street. But it also makes…

A plastic, crinkling cacophony spilled into the little girl’s ears. Her eyes darted to the sound, a blue and white plastic bag moving on its own. Jerky, unrhythmic dashes beside a line of plastic trash cans on the alley behind…

He was talking to his father on speaker. Casual catch up conversation, the current goings on. 
“Tell him what happened at the Publix today, Bob,” he heard his mother say in the background. 
“What happened in Publix?” 
“Oh, nothing really…

Small town southern son coming home from the movies.
Recreating what was just viewed.
Cameras nobody else could see.  
Kurt Loder interviewing River Phoenix, or somebody like River Phoenix.  
Ego lighting up like a flame thrower.  
I wanted to have…

The Charleston Pour House. Sometime around a decade ago. 
There were maybe fifty people in the audience. 
Truth & Salvage Company slid into their set with a genuine ease & confidence that cannot be manufactured. I remember reading the liner…

“This guy doesn’t know shit.” 
I’m assuming this was the first impression of the rest of the guys I was about to start a week long run with, as I walked into a bar in Anderson, SC, running a little…

Sleep didn't come easy for me the first night in Dripping Springs, Texas. The insomnia thing is a gift from my mother’s side of the family. Apparently, quite a few McKeowns spend a good portion of their nights staring up…

Yesterday, I was out and about, and my phone was almost out of juice. The charger chord in my car, which I’d been seeing some wire poking from behind the white, finally quit working all together, and so, I was…

Marvin. 
It was an unfortunate name. 
Marvin. 
Maybe not for the gray haired mechanic who had fixed your parent’s cars for years. But, a little off, antiquated, paired with the quiet, occasionally impatient fella who packed his own lunch every…

I remember eyeing the rock-n-roll rags on the magazine rack at the drug store when I was kid. Rolling Stone, Spin, maybe Circus or something, and it was very affective. I remember one time in particular, picking up…

“Woke up this morning my house was cold 
Checked the furnace, she wasn’t burning 
Went out in hopped in my old Ford 
Hit the engine but she ain’t turning” 

These are the opening lines to “One Step Up,” a song…

I spent a few long months in LA. I arrived in Los Angeles on a relative whim. I didn't get into graduate school, I had a buddy who was living out there, so, I drove across the country. The drive…

I wrote this coming off a week long run from Charleston through Mississippi and Louisiana and right on back. I didn't know it, but I had a brain tumor at the time. Far out. Maybe it shows in my writing…

One year it took me until Christmas Eve and hearing “2000 Miles” by the Pretenders to get into the Christmas spirit. I was driving west on Interstate 26, from Columbia to Greenville, South Carolina, and it just came on while…