Tom’s tour- and Book

A friend in Alberta snapped this photo of Tom Russell and Ian Tyson in fine form at a concert up there. My informant said that he told a story of bringing his Swiss Father-in-law over the Continental Divide at night to visit us and our hounds and hawks. It could have been a fraught scene …

Read more

Leonard Cohen 1934- 2017 RIP

I first saw Leonard Cohen play at the Newport Folk Festival in 1967. Joni Mitchell, in an orange striped mini-dress, led him out.He looked like a rabbinical student. He played ‘Suzanne’ as I remember, and I vowed to buy it as soon as it was out. I have bought virtually everything he has done. I …

Read more

RIP: Merle Haggard,1937- 2016

 We are losing a lot of the great ones….                                                                                              UPDATE: a great tribute from Wisconsin’s Kirk Hogan, MD, scientist, patent lawyer (!) elk hunter, gourmand, and neo- beat, whose letters often read like poems… Great “Kern River”. My top pick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aILGaYsv_bc Didn’t even make the list of Merle’s top 35! A day hasn’t gone …

Read more

“Mesabi”

Tom Russell has a new album coming this fall, called Mesabi after the Iron Range mining country of northern Minnesota (Hibbing, home of Bob, Dylan stands there). It’s one of the best yet from the man who might be America’s best songwriter storyteller. Tom’s work is unique. It is not just that he is hard …

Read more

Guest Post: Tom Russell at Knuckleheads in KC

I had hoped to attend, but when I realized I couldn’t get to Tom Russell’s show in Kansas City I contacted my friend on the spot, honorary Magdalenian Jennifer Wilding, and inquired whether she would be interested in “covering” it for Q- blog. She was, and took her friend Rick Malsick. Turned out Tom was …

Read more

Gallo…

… de Cielo!This whimsical portrait of Tom Russell’s celestial fighting rooster came to live at Casa Q for my 61st birthday, as Tom and Libby conspired. Or as he put it, “…that was one we kept in our private collection but it wanted to move to Magdalena near the other wild birds.” (In addition to …

Read more

Visitors

Tom Russell would be too modest to say so but he might just be the best and most lasting singer- songwriter of my generation; while some annoyingly typecast him as a western or cowboy or border balladeer he is in all ways an American bard, a living link between cowboys and the beats and all …

Read more