Saturday With a Chill Playlist

A quiet (and chilly) Saturday night playlist. Maybe some recent repeat choices ......

• Watchhouse - New Star
• Hiss Golden Messenger - Standing In the Doorway
• Gregg Allman - All My Friends ..... Flashing back. Freshman year of college. Eighteen years old. Playing this record in my dorm room. Probably should have played the record less and studied more.
• Stephen Stills & Manassas - Anyway ..... (A drastic switch for no particular reason in playlist tone and era.) I always seem to find my way back to the 70's.
• Souther-Hillman- Furay Band - Fallin' In Love
• The Beatles - Nowhere Man / Here, There and Everywhere
• Bruce Cockburn - Last Night of the World / Joy Will Find a Way
• Dan Fogelburg - Part of the Plan ..... There are some great songs on his early albums before he went all sugary sweet. Just my opinion.
• Grateful Dead - Box of Rain .... 'It's just a box of rain, I don't know who put it there. Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare.'

Greensky Bluegrass

"So many things about me nobody seems to know" ......

I've been a fan of Greensky Bluegrass for a couple decades now. My introduction was a Relix Magazine sampler disc with their song, 'Tuesday Letter.' I've seen them live two .... maybe three times. Bought a cd out of a suitcase from one of the band members at that first show. Dragged my brother along to a second show. I'm not always a fan of the long, extended jams .... my mind gets foggy after a while of the 'noodling,' which I'm not sure is an established term of 'Deadheads' or a description of my own making .....but the basic songs, which make up the albums, I love. 

James McMurtry

More storytelling from James McMurtry. A 2025 release. The illustration on the front cover was done in the 1960's by author, Ken Kesey while visiting James McMurtry's father, Larry. 

Singer/songwriter that I've followed since the early 1990's enjoying the stories I've heard along the way. All his recordings have been consistently great. 

I.G.Y. Playlist

Gotta be one of my all-time favorites. Wherever I am, I hear those notes and I never walk away until it's finished playing. I especially love the point where he croons: "Oooohhh Wahhhhh" ....

Since covid it's been my habit to get in and out of stores as quickly as possible. But this song comes over the store audio system, and I want to stay a while. 

I also associate it with a time long ago ..... a Sunday morning, lying in bed and it came on the radio. It's funny how you have these odd little moments .... you don't recall 99.9999-plus per cent of the individual minutes of your life but then you have two or three nondescript minutes that stand out clearly. Moments that have no real importance other that you remember and can visualize exactly where you were and what you heard at 7:22am on this random Sunday in 1982.

Making this into a mostly 80's playlist .....

• Steve Winwood - Arc of a Diver .... Another favorite to hear over the store audio system. 
• Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World .... I'm usually a pretty courteous driver when it comes to playing the radio too loud, but this song comes on and the volume's way up and I'm the only person on the road or in the world. When this song came out, it was the worst of times for me. When I hear it these days, I think I try to make up for the pleasure and joy that I couldn't feel back then. 
• General Public - Never You Done That
• Big Country - Restless Natives
• Jolene - Pensacola

• Bourgeois Tagg - I Don't Mind At All .... I love the obvious Beatles influence and inspiration.
• Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers
• Peter Himmelman - Eleventh Confession ..... 'I needed to tell you I needed surrender. I never was good at playing pretender."
• Warren Zevon - Searching For a Heart .... Just inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. About damn time!! I love the line in this song: "They tell me love requires a little standing in line."

Rituals

Now playing on the turntable: New album titled 'Rituals' from Watchhouse, Americana group formerly known as Mandolin Orange. More great songs about life!! Maybe my favorite non-jazz related release of 2025. One of those records where you think you've decided on a favorite song ..... but then you hear what's next and have to reconsider all that you thought you knew.

The dominant themes in my world these days is that of growing older, looking back on life and loving someone far away. Whether intended or not when the songs were written, I hear much in the lyrics and the feel of the music that creates connections to my daily issues and life questions.

The songs often lead to reflection and are personally haunting in how old memories are revisited.

In the song, 'Endless Highway Pt. 2' there's a couple minutes of fiddle playing that transported me back fifty years .... so eerily similar to the fiddle of the late, great David Lindley on Jackson Browne albums.