Schubert's Winter Journey -- Anatomy of an Obsession

I have been trying for months to write about this book. It is, without a doubt, the finest book of the year, maybe the decade. This will be rambling, because every page sets off an explosion of thought and emotion and understanding and wonder and question and what more could one ask for?

First off...screw that Dos Equis's guy, Ian Bostridge is the most fascinating man in the world. I have followed his career from his early days at Oxford.  In life, one can be extremely intelligent, extremely talented, or extremely attractive but rarely does on hit a trifecta.  Ian Bostridge began singing as a child.  He went on to write his dissertation at Oxford on the significance of witchcraft in England from 1650 to 1750.  He kept singing. He taught political theory and history. By the time he was thirty, he became a full time singer. He is regarded by many as the finest lieder singer to grace the side of a piano.

In 2011, his writings about music were compiled into the book, A Singer's Notebook.  It has a truly wonderful short essay on Bob Dylan. He chides classical singer to learn a thing or two from Dylan's colored singing style.

Generally, I couldn't care less about lieder. When I got this book I didn't immediately think, "Let's go put on some Schubert."  I bought the book because Bostridge's writing is always interesting, in fact, for me it is more interesting than his singing (again, only because I never thought much about lieder, but I do love his Noel Coward!).

At first glance, this is a book that makes bibliophiles drool. It is printed on heavy paper, beautifully bound, interspersed with photos,and set  in a lovely Fournier font. The book is five hundred pages of Bostridge's obsession with Schubert's song cycle, Winter Journey. He has been performing the songs for thirty years.  He writes,

"My own way to Winter Journey was eased by great teaching and by personal idiosyncrasy."

As a lover of the personal idiosyncratic, I was hooked. Bostridge admits that lieder is a niche calling in the niche of classical music, so why write it?

"In this book I want to use each song as a platform for exploring the origins; setting the piece in its historical context, but also finding new and unexpected connections, both contemporary and long dead -- literary, visual, psychological, scientific, and political.... By gathering such a disparate mass of material I hope to illuminate, to explain, to deepen our common response: to intensify their experience of those who already know the piece, and to reach out to those who have never heard it or heard of it."

While I don't love lieder, I do love art and poetry and music and history.  Bostridge's lyrical writing on what drives an artist is sublime. With all its beauty, this is an obsessive, intense, and often obtuse journey into the mind of an artist's obsession. Be forewarned, but do not be discouraged.

How to be a Movie Producer...

...without even trying.


Have you ever wanted to be a movie producer but life got in your way?

Maybe you don't live in New York City or L.A.  (Los Angeles, not Lower Alabama.)

Maybe you don't have 50 million or 50 hundred. (But you do have $5 tucked into your pocket.)

Well do not despair.  Add that movie producer credit to your bucket list and head over to Kickstarter.

As you know, Kickstarter is a place where small projects can get big funding from some rich folks and poor folks like you (or me).  The Winding Stream got the money for their initial filming from Kickstarter and now they are working on the post-production.  (Truth is, they have accomplished their goal and their fundraising technically ends today.)


The Winding Stream is Beth Harrington's detailed documentary about the Carter Family.  While most of the general population knows the Carter Family because of Johnny Cash.  If it hadn't been for the Carter Family, Johnny Cash might have slipped into obscurity and much of the music we hear every day would be sadly lacking without the original inspiration from Maybelle, Sara and A.P. Carter.    Please take look at the preview of MY film...

Now head over to Kickstarter and find a project that you can be a part of.

Musical Sundays

Here at Lucindaville, we have a soft spot for old timey roots music. And since we have a big space, some of the folks from the hills of West Virginia have been stopping in on Sundays to play and sing. Kerrville, eat your hear out.

Save The Music

For the first time since it started restoring instrumental music programs in public elementary and middle schools in 1997, VH1's Save the Music Foundation is helping an entire state, West Virginia.

The Save The Music program has a goal to help at least one school in all of West Virginia's 55 counties, then fully restore music education in other schools throughout the state.

Thanks from all of us music lovers in West Virginia and beyond.

Baby, How Can It Be?

With Valentine's Day looming, we would like to suggest the perfect gift for those y'alternative tune lovers that you love.

Baby, How Can It Be?

This is another great compilation by those cooler than cool folks over at Dust-to-Digital. You may remember a post we did on another Dust-to-Digital favorite, Take Me To The Water.

Well, now that we are out there looking for just the right gift for our loved ones (or even if we are just in the mood to love ourselves) give Baby, How Can It Be? a try.

No Depression said of the set:

"The three disc collection is culled from the record collection of John Heneghan and features everything from Appalachian folk and Dixieland jazz to Hawaiian ballads and cowboy songs. Virtually every form of roots music can be found here, from artists as well known as Uncle Dave Macon and Cab Calloway, to those such as Henry Thomas who should be familiar to devotees of the eras music, to complete unknowns like Hazel Scherf and Davey Miller... In short, the set provides hours of great, rarely heard music from the Golden Age of Recording and would be the perfect gift for the roots music fan in your life."

What more can I say. Come on, EVERYBODY gives flowers and candy -- Be original and give the gift of music.

Levi's Pioneer Sessions

I am kind of a cover geek. I really love old(ish) or should I say familiar songs covered by different people. Some people find covers to be a bit tedious. In fact, The A. V. Club published a very popular list of 23 songs that should never be covered again. The list included Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah(of which I possess at least 40 different covers).

Seeing the trend for cool covers, Levi's put together a web site featuring a group of artists who were asked to record a cover and explain why. The Levi's Pioneer Sessions features the music as free downloads.

Some are quite cool.

My favorites are:

The Dirty Projectors covering a less than famous Bob Dylan song, I Dreamed I saw St. Augustine (I only have 3 covers).

Colbie Caillat covering the Blondies, Maria.

But my favorite is Jason Mraz covering that one-hit-wonder Spirit In The Sky from Norman Greenbaum.

Click on the link and download some of your favorites.

Music's Modern Muse

It appears we had two bad picture here, so we tried to get it right.

I am quite fond of modern classical music from the early 20th century, so I have been quite taken by Sylvia Kahan's weighty and scholarly biography of Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac, entitled Music's Modern Muse. This book trumps the rather salacious Food of Love by Michael de Cossart which emphasized Singer's love life while giving short-shrift to her considerable contributions to music in the early 20th century.

Winnaretta Singer may have been number 20 of the 24 children of sewing machine entrepreneur and bigamist Issac Merritt Singer, though Singer didn't keep really great records of all of his children, nor of his "wives" for that matter. At 22, Winnaretta was sent to Europe for "good marriage" making her part of group of mockingly dubbed "Dollar Princesses", rich Americans who married for titles.

Winnaretta Singer's coat
from an exhibition Dollar Princesses at the American Museum in Britain

While such marriages worked for some of the American heiresses, Winnaretta was not happy with Prince de Scey-Montbeliard. When he entered the bedchamber on his wedding night he found his bride crouched on the large armoire brandishing an umbrella and shouting, "If you touch me, I will kill you." After five years of wedded chastity, the marriage was annulled. (At this point I should say that while her husband never touched her, she did manage to touch quite a few women in Paris and the surrounding areas.)


Her next Prince, Edmond de Polignac, had no desire to touch Winnaretta and they lived happily ever after, untill his death in 1901.

Winnaretta Singer put her wealth to good use funding many modern composers and artists. Composers aided by Singer are a virtual Who's Who of modern music: Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Darius Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, Kurt Weill, Germaine Tailleferre, Nadia Boulanger, and Ethel Smyth.

At her Salon in Paris she entertained not only composers, but writers and artists like Marcel Proust, Isadora Duncan, Jean Cocteau, Claude Monet, Serge Diaghilev and Colette.


Music's Modern Muse weighs in at over 500 pages full of musical nuance. It is the relationship with the music that is the key to this biography. My only regret is that there is no accompanying CD tucked in the back of the book!

Nina Hagen Finds Jesus...

... and I didn't even know he was lost. Seriously, I know, it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but the Mother of Punk, Nina Hagen, had a religious conversion. She told an interviewer:

"Both of my parents were atheists, and I found the way to God all alone on my own. You have to invite him, so that he shows up."

I do not want anyone out there proselytising, but I have no doubt Nina is serious. In fact, I know she is serious. Since Hagen is a singer, what better way to share her conversion than by releasing a gospel album. No, really. In August, Nina Hagen will release Personal Jesus, her first gospel album.

I got an advanced copy of Personal Jesus, and I was trepidatious about listening. I grew up in the South where gospel permeates the air we breath. Catholic, Protestant, Jew or atheist, if you grew up in Alabama, chances are you know the words to a dozen hymns whether you know it or not. I must confess, Personal Jesus is currently my favorite CD of year. It has officially moved my favorite purveyors of hick-hop, Gangstagrass, to Number 2. Hagen's voice sounds like a modern Mahalia Jackson. The CD is a mix of soulful blues and rocking pop, with a touch of folk. There are traditional hymns like Just a Little Talk With Jesus and I'll Live Again. Her cover of Woody Guthrie's' All You Fascists is great and her cover of Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus is second only to Johnny Cash. Even if you don't know a single hymn and you are a big old atheist, this CD is well worth a listen.



I don't give much thought to those people who invest a lot of time in predicting the end of the world. Since the beginning of time, some old crackpot has announced its end. The current eschatological darling is December 21, 2012. On this date the world will end -- because the Mayans said so. and, also, black holes will align or perhaps the Planet X will crash into earth. WE ARE DOOMED! But just to hedge their bets, some of these 2012 end-timers offer the hypothesis that if the world doesn't end in a gigantic cataclysm, there will be a consciousness shift. Given the choice of doomsday or a harmonic convergence, I'll choose the later.

HOWEVER....

In the last year Bob Dylan released a Christmas CD and Nina Hagen released a Gospel CD. Draw your own conclusions.

Take Me To The Water

I have a profound love of "B" things: baking, Jane Bowles, books, Balenciaga, bees, Cecil Beaton, Bunnys (both Mellon and Williams) and baptism. Growing up in the South, people often wear their religion on their sleeves, and being surrounded by it on a constant level tends to leave you either repulsed or fascinated. I have a profound fascination. I love street preachers, snake handlers, prophetic painters, church architecture, and baptism.

As a child, my family lived in a series of houses beside a lake. My great-uncle Knox, named for the theologian John Knox, would often allow the small country churches in the area to bring their congregations to the lake to preform immersion baptisms. I would stand in the window of my house and watch as preacher and congregants waded into the water and were pushed below the surface to be born again. I regret that I have no photographs of those baptisms.


If you read my blogs you may also realize that I love music. Recently, Dust-to -Digital produced a book/CD that was made for me. Take Me To The Water features a collection of immersion baptism photographs from the collection of Jim Linderman and a CD of rare folk and gospel recordings from 1924-1940, recorded from original 78 rpm records. Dust-to Digital is the recording label from the rabidly tenacious and encyclopedic mind of Lance Ledbetter.


Ledbetter spent 5 years searching for old gospel recordings before compiling his first collection, Goodbye Babylon, a six-CD set that became a must have for anyone interested in religion, early music or Southern heritage. The CD were packed in a wooden crate complete with a 200-page book and bit of raw cotton.



No only is Dust-to-Digital concerned with the preservation of music that may soon be lost to us, but their sense of design is impeccable. While the old-fashioned music of the Deep South might not be to your liking, check out the offering of Dust-to-Digital for their sheer brilliance of design.

If you want to feel a bit washed in the blood, listen to Reverend Nathan Smith's Burning Bush Sunday School Pupils sing Baptism At Burning Bush.

And please, please, purchase something, anything from the Dust-to-Digital. This is one small business that makes the world a better place. Since the holiday season is approaching, might I recommend Where Will You Be Christmas Day?