Leigh M. Johnson

As anyone who has ever played in a band knows, performing cover songs can be a very tricky business.  Most of the time, you want your performance of a cover song to stick close enough to the original that it remains recognizable to your audience– I mean, that’s why you chose to play it, presumably…

If you judged only by the tone of our public discourse, you’d have good reason to conclude that we’re a very angry country.  According to a recent study by The Aspen Institute and The Atlantic magazine, America is feeling much more pluribus than unum these days.  A different study (by The Pew Research Center for the People and the…

That painting to your left is probably my favorite piece of 20thC art.  It’s “Sugar Shack” by African-American painter (and former NFL defensive tackle) Ernie Barnes. Barnes once described this painting in an interview as illustrating how dance “utilizes rhythm as a way of resolving physical tension.”  I’ve always appreciated that description of dance, and…

I’m not married, I’ve never been married, and I have no plans to ever be married. That said, I am a female born and raised in the American South, so to pretend as if I’ve never imagined what song I’d like to dance to at my wedding would be thoroughly disingenuous. Girls in the South…

I promise that I copied today’s completely bizarro prompt word for word from the 30 Day Song Challenge list. Putting aside for the moment the absolutely horrendous grammar (“you are waiting for to come out”?), I still can’t make heads or tails of this prompt. I suppose I could name not-yet-released albums that I am…

Like a lot of people, I hardly ever actually “talk” on the phone, preferring text messages instead, and unless the incoming call is something I’m expecting or the person calling is a member of my family, I almost never answer my phone when it rings.  The way I figure it, most people who I want…

A few years ago, I had the very good fortune to see Lucinda Williams play a show at the New Daisy Theater here in Memphis.  She was on tour for her album Blessed and I had for the first (and only) time in my life actually won tickets to the show.  (I was Caller #10 in one of…

Hands down, today’s prompt is the hardest of the whole month.  I’ve written so much about music on this blog over the years that I really don’t know what people wouldn’t expect me to like anymore, except the things that I actually don’t like.  When I first did this Challenge back in 2011, I chose…

Today is the first day in the 30 Day Song Challenge that I think I’m going to register a semi-controversial pick.  I know a lot of people who would rather be dragged out behind the shed, rode hard and hung up wet than hear this song live or recorded. It’s cheesy, it’s corny, it encourages…