Behind the song: “Lucky” by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat
“Lucky,” the sweet, swaying duet written by Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat with Tim Fagan, was originally released on Jason Mraz’s 2008 album We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things. ...
Behind the Song: “When the Master Calls the Roll” by Rosanne Cash
“When the Master Calls the Roll,” a brilliant story song from Rosanne Cash’s triple-Grammy-winning album The River and the Thread, has a back story that must be a rarity in...
Free Range Acoustic playlist
I’m lucky enough to spend my days and nights immersed in music—listening, writing about it, interviewing artists, teaching it, playing it. I just created a Spotify playlist called Free Range...
Behind the song: “Sunny Came Home” by Shawn Colvin
“Sunny Came Home,” Shawn Colvin’s bright-sounding but lyrically dark song that scored Grammies in 1998 for both Song of the Year and Record of the Year, has a highly unlikely...
Chris Thile on being a “serious, curious” musician
I think serious, curious musicians owe it to themselves and to the music-loving public to avail themselves of all the tools. You run into a lot of people who are...
David Rawlings on writing songs from tradition
[Poor David’s Almanack] came out of 20 years of thinking about folk music and the roots of things, and seeing that so much beauty comes out of the fluidity of...
Into the Here and Now
Through the doorway and into the street, around the corner and past the groaning school bus and down the hill… I walk through the waking neighborhood but actually see very...
Songwriting lesson: how to write a bridge
Think of the timeless ballad “Something,” from the Beatles’ Abbey Road, in which George Harrison muses on his lover’s allure over a wistful chord progression in the key of C. He...
Joan Shelley on fishing for songs
The analogy of fishing has been used before. You’re just trying to be there at the right time, when your brain is in the right state for catching new images,...
Re-creating the Beatles’ “Within You Without You”
In the summer of 2016, musician and producer Paul Davie contacted me and my duo partner Wendy Sassafras Ramsay about performing in his annual BeatleCuse concert—a major event involving 70 musicians from the...
