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Halsey took the stage Thursday (November 21) for an intimate audience of about 1,400 fans at San Francisco’s Regency Ballroom as part of the Wells Fargo Autograph Card Exclusives music series. Launched in November 2023, the series brings fans close to some of the biggest names in music in smaller venues to feel the sonic power up close and personal.

The global superstar Halsey talked via email to American Songwriter about the experience, how she prepares for smaller shows compared to larger arena concerts, and where she feels she is as an artist today. “I try to take the pressure off of myself, and just make things that speak to me and sit right with my soul,” she tells us.

There are two kinds of games—those with finite boundaries and those without. This is the subject of James P. Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games. It is also the reality former NFL All-Pro tight end Darren Waller is living today. Waller, who is also the great-grandson of the famed jazz pianist Fats Waller, excelled at the game of football. In 2020 with the Las Vegas Raiders, he finished with nearly 1,200 yards from scrimmage and nine touchdowns. And over his nine-year NFL career, he earned tens of millions of dollars. But he gave all of that up at 31 years old. Now, he is pursuing a new dream. He is following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps to become a musician.

Before they were a family trio, the group known now as Los Lonely Boys was a family quartet led by their father, Ringo Garza Sr. Today, the band, which features brothers Henry, Jojo, and Ringo Jr., is a Grammy Award-winning group famous for songs like “Heaven” and “Onda,” in the mid-1990s, before all the fame, they were backing up their dad in local clubs and learning the ropes. But as the brothers became more and more proficient as musicians and as a unit, their father realized something. He saw that it was time to let the birds out of the nest and watch them fly on their own. And soar they did, ever since their 2004 self-titled debut LP, all the way to today, some twenty years later, with their latest offering, Resurrection, which dropped this summer on August 2.

Micheal Ray Richardson was a brilliant player: a four-time NBA All-Star guard. He was also the first player banned for life by the league for drug use, something which was far more common during his playing days. Back in the 1980s, substances like cocaine were not only part of professional sports but also society and entertainment at large, and Richardson says talk about drugs was routine during what some still call the NBA’s cocaine era. “During warmups,” Richardson says, “guys on different teams would say, ‘Yo, man, I got what you’re looking for. Let’s get together when [the game] is over.’ And boom that’s how it got going.”

Amos Lee can’t quite think of the word. It’s something like obsessed. Maybe all-encompassing. It’s funny—for someone so verbal and acutely capable of communication, he has trouble locating the exact term for how he felt when he discovered the power of songwriting. 

As a teenager, he found himself listening to artists like the Beastie Boys and KRS-One. But it was a bit later in college, hanging out with “stoner kids” and playing guitar, when he realized the power he had in his hands the whole time. He learned a few chords, and he was subsumed. He began writing books and books and books of songs without any real end game, he says. He didn’t think it would be his job, let alone his vocation. “It was just a nice place for me to go with my emotions,” Lee tells American Songwriter, “because I didn’t have that before. I was locked away for many years.”

Our writers give their verdicts on the new season, which tips off Tuesday night. Can New York or Oklahoma City thwart a Boston repeat? And will Bronny James make it to the show?

When Arizona Sundogs rookie Joey Sides walked into the Wichita Thunder minor league hockey arena in 2009, he smelled manure. It was little wonder: the venue doubled as a home for the local rodeo. But that was nothing compared to the stands, which seemed to go almost straight up. Behind the bench, fans could practically reach out and grab players’ jerseys – they were that close. You could hear everything the wild crowd of about 10,000 said. “It felt like mayhem in there,” Sides says. The rabble threw beer at players and were dragged out of the stadium by security. “I could hear one of the fans yelling at my buddy on the ice, saying, ‘Hey, Jonesy! Mix in a salad, you fat fuck!’ as he chucked a beer at him. It was insane.”

Hubie Brown was the only coach I truly never got along with. Sure, throughout my career, other coaches and I had our spats. That’s normal. Professionals butt heads sometimes. But Hubie and I never got on the same page. I tried, but he was disrespectful to players and to me, especially. He talked to us like children. I remember reading something about him saying he was naïve at his past stop as the coach in Atlanta (from 1976–81). Prior to that, he was with the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA (as an assistant) and the Kentucky Colonels in the ABA (where he’d won a championship). His team had been full of drug users, and he just hadn’t known what to look for. Now, as he came to New York, he was set to exert control.

In the popular NBC comedy The Office, actor and musician Creed Bratton plays paper company employee Creed Bratton, a mysterious older man who’s lived many lives, has secret identities, and grows mung beans in his desk drawer. But as they say art imitates life and the real-life Creed Bratton indeed has seen a great many things in the world over his 80-year lifespan.

But for Bratton, whose latest album Tao Pop is out Friday (September 27), his creative journey started as a kid with brass instruments. First it was the French horn, then the tuba, and then the trumpet, which was his first love. He was first chair in high school, excelling in the blind auditions and beating out upperclassmen in the process. But it was on a summer visit to see his grandparents as a teenager when he discovered country and western music. At 13, Bratton got himself a Silvertone guitar and he was hooked for life.

Born in Lubbock, Texas, on April 11, 1955, Michael Ray Richardson grew up to be a star college basketball player at the University of Montana. From there, drafted by the New York Knicks’ Willis Reed in 1978 with the 4th overall pick, Richardson, known by many as “Sugar,” became a four-time NBA All-Star and one of the first players to lead the league in both steals and assists in a single season. Indeed, before Magic Johnson, Richardson was one of the first big point guards in the NBA.

When Paul Mokeski traveled to China several years ago to teach a month-long basketball clinic, he says he couldn’t help but feel like Godzilla. For the 7ft former NBA center, who played 12 years in the league, many of them on a Milwaukee Bucks team that battled Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals, it was a familiar feeling. People would come out of stores and point as if they were seeing a giant from a storybook. “That’s all part of the gig when you’re as tall as I am,” says Mokeski.

On August 20, wife and husband duo KEXP DJ Eva Walker and local journalist Jake Uitti released their new book, The Sound of Seattle. Published by Sasquatch Books it dives into the city’s music history from Bing Crosby to Ayron Jones (with grunge, rap, and jazz mixed in between), and includes decade-specific essays with local luminaries, from Nancy Wilson to Sir Mix-a-Lot. Below, Sir Mix-a-Lot talks about living in the city in the 1990s as the music landscape was exploding. 

In the Pacific Northwest, there’s a culture of vibrant creativity. Hopeful artists flock to cities like Seattle and Portland, congregating in ramshackle apartment buildings or old houses, splitting the rent, trading shifts in coffee houses, pubs, or restaurants, and, in their off hours, spending time manufacturing their dreams. 

Poets, sculptors, musicians, novelists, painters—they make homes in the region and cultivate their creativity. The Helena, Montana-born Colin Meloy is one of those industrious people. The frontman for the folk-rock band The Decemberists moved to Portland, Oregon, more than two decades ago and took up residence in a warehouse with friends. And from those beginnings, so much of his life today has been built. That includes his band’s newest album, As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again, which dropped on June 14.

One of the most wonderful things about being a musician is that it’s a lifelong journey. There is no endpoint or destination when learning an instrument. As writer James P. Carse says, some ambitions we encounter are “finite games,” and some are “infinite games.” The former includes sports or solitaire, while the latter comprises art and music.

Yet even decades of pursuing music can include significant ups and downs—challenges that can be difficult or dissuasive. Thank goodness others can help us through these pitfalls. These accomplished performers share insights about what it means to follow their love of music. From rock and roll frontwomen to Grammy-nominated artists to songwriters to the stars, these are the musicians putting time and effort into achieving their sonic dreams. Find out what they have to say about starting out and beyond.

Think of the quintessential Seattle band and you might, understandably, reach for the grunge icon of your choice, but from Hendrix to Heart, the city is steeped in guitar playing history.

Now KEXP DJ and frontwoman of the Black Tones, Eva Walker, alongside her music journalist husband, Jake Uitti, have penned a love letter to the music history of the Seattle-area, The Sound of Seattle.

From Thunderpussy to Ayron Jones, Kurt Cobain to Ben Gibbard and The Sonics to Sleater-Kinney, the book, which is out on August 20, chronicles some 80 years of songs and innovations in the Emerald City.

Included are also a number of interviews with Seattle luminaries, from Jack Endino to Sir Mix a Lot, alongside a healthy chunk of guitarist talent.

Below the authors have shared an excerpt from one of the city’s most iconic players – and a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer – Nancy Wilson, of Heart.

For the guitarist who co-wrote songs like Barracuda and Magic Man, her hometown of Seattle – and its place as one of rock ’n’ roll’s foundational cities – is reflected in another bastion of music, the UK...