Hundred Mountain

“I Won’t Be Famous” was written in a Rome apartment as my son and his cousin discovered the pleasures of Italy after hours.

This is a rehearsal version of a gorgeous hymn that will be among the familiar and not-so-familiar songs from several centuries, featured at “Christmas with the RiffRaff” on Dec. 11-12 1nd 13 in Princeton, W.Va.

“Hear My Song” by the RiffRaff Players, March 2009 Here are two back-of-the-room videos of “Flying Home” and “Hear My Song” from the RiffRaff Players production of “Songs for a New World” at the Tamarack theater this March 2009. Ed Trotta of Summit Stage Theater II in Bluefield shot the subsequent show, at the Room [...]

CLICK IMAGE OR HERE TO VIEW SLIDESHOW In the midst of the economic gloom of Bluefield, W.Va., Gary Bowling’s House of Art is a trippy, eccentric, must-be-seen-to-be-believed, go-to place for art, music and culture. Here’s a four-minute audio slideshow story I did on the place for the Charleston Gazette, with more than 50 photos and [...]

CLICK FACES OR RIGHT HERE TO LISTEN Here’s a new multimedia piece, done this past week with a couple colleagues at the Charleston Gazette. We headed to a mall and a black community center and asked people a simple question: “What does it mean to you personally that the first African-American president is going to [...]

JOHN NELSON, 51, is an institution in Charleston, W.Va. He is manager and music buyer for Budget Tapes and Records, the go-to place for new music, concert tickets and gifts and goodies for three decades in the Kanawha City section of West Virginia’s capital city. John’s been a new music guru to several generations of [...]

NOTE ON LOADING TIMES: Try waiting a few seconds before starting the show, to give it a little time to load. With a fast connection (or mindful patience) you can watch the show full-screen by clicking on the ‘four-arrows’ icon at lower right of the viewing screen. VIEW FULL AUDIO SLIDESHOW …………………………… SO, BHANTE YOGAVACARA [...]

Here is a down-and-dirty YouTube video (my first, so be kind) showing my 18-year-old son, Lucas, voting for the first time in a presidential election, in Barboursville, W.Va., in the gym where he used to play dodgeball and eat pizza that tasted like cardboard. The music is a quickie instrumental I recorded onto my Boss [...]

A colleague and I from the newspaper where I work stood on a frigid corner of downtown Charleston, W.Va., last week, waiting for people who were early voting at the Kanawha County Courthouse. We button-holed ones willing to tell us who they had voted for or were going to vote for and why, along with [...]

My Soundslides show “A Time Ago: Church & Empire” in the post below showcases a couple jaw-dropping churches of Italy. Among them, Il Duomo in Milan, one of the three most impressive buildings I’ve seen in my travels, a place that took five centuries to make, has thousands of life-size sculptures populating its roof and [...]