Did y’all know that world’s biggest ukulele brand is headquartered in Richmond? Isn’t that wild?
Author: You Hear That?!?
Bob Dylan
Somewhere along the way, I developed a disinterest in gear that bordered on distaste.
CD Monday
For more than 20 years, with only a couple of interruptions, my family has done a summer beach week in the Outer Banks. We’ve rented houses all over the place down there (as I type I’m subconsciously rewriting the lyrics to “I’ve Been Everywhere” and swapping in names like Nags Head, Kitty Hawk, Southern Shores, Kill Devil…) but we’ve spent the last bunch of years in Corolla. It’s become my happy place — as much a soothing thought as a geographic location. My favorite pizza place and bar are there, and it’s hard to get to, which is good, because it keeps us from making plans that would require driving.
What I didn’t realize until this year is how much of that happy place feeling had to do with the luxury of being a kid.
brb
Took this at the turnaround point of yesterday’s run (back at the beach this week). This fence separates the rest of the Corolla beach from the northernmost 4WD-only part, which cracks me up because it makes me think of Jurassic Park, like the trucks and SUVs are going to break out and wreak havoc when they find out the fence isn’t electrified. Whenever I want to run a little further and need to wriggle through the cables, I half expect this to happen.
#wrircon5
The Commonwealth of Notions is a reaction to the idea that good music is dead in the city of Richmond.
So starts the description of Shannon Cleary’s radio show on WRIR’s site, and every time I see that sentence, its meaning changes a little.
CD Monday
Positive No
Daniel Clarke
I had the pleasure of shaking hands with Daniel Clarke on Sunday when I went to Hardywood to fill a growler.
CD Monday
At a wedding in Baltimore this weekend, I ended up in a conversation with one of the other guests about Ray LaMontagne — about how I’d been gifted a vinyl copy of Gossip in the Grain a few years back, and then about how much I love Till the Sun Turns Black.
Lianne La Havas
Happy release day to Lianne La Havas!
I spent about an hour of my Outer Banks vacation running on the beach while listening to NPR’s First Listen of Blood and was made deliriously happy. “Green & Gold” and “What You Don’t Do” jumped out as early favorites before “Wonderful” stole the title away for good with its masterful pacing and phrasing — the way languid recollections morph into staccato choruses with lyrics that toe the line between clever wordplay and emotional precision. I found myself thinking back on old relationships, trying to identify which parts of them were “kind of wonderful.” It was fitting for a beach trip I’ve been taking with my family for more than 20 years — decades in which I was trying to figure out what a wonderful relationship was.
You Hear That 