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.
Read MoreBefore 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.
Read MoreMicheal 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.”
Read MoreAmos 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.”
Read MoreWhen 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.”
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreIn 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.
Read MoreCarly Pearce always knew she’d be here. The CMA-, ACM-, CMT-, and Grammy Award-winning artist was sure of it—as a kid, then as a teenager, and even when things weren’t going so well as a young adult. She knew she would be a country music star, and that truth has continued to be her driving force—through heartbreak, divorce, unglamorous working conditions, and all of life’s other ups and downs.
Read MoreFor almost the entire history of basketball, the No 1 thing that would help a person succeed was height. From Wilt Chamberlain to Shaquille O’Neal, the taller a player, the better. While size still matters, thanks to the talent of the 6ft 2in guard Stephen Curry, shooting is prized as much as any other attribute. The four-time NBA champion and two-time MVP is bringing his shooting ability to the Olympics.
Ever since Curry became a sensation thanks to his three-point marksmanship – he is the NBA’s all-time leader in three-pointers and attempts and a career 42.6% from beyond the arc despite myriad difficult shots – kids from New York City to Oakland have been taking their basketballs away from the rim and out behind the three-point line to shoot like Steph. But is it possible for anyone to emulate? If you ask Basketball Hall of Famer and former WNBA Coach of the Year Michael Cooper there are ways to try.
Read MoreFor Spike Slawson, frontman and lead singer of the San Francisco-born punk rock group Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a live show is akin to an obstacle course. Slawson and the group don’t much care for easy-breezy despite their stage prowess. Instead, they appreciate a degree of difficulty. A challenge. That’s where the fun, the reward, and even the humor reside, both for the musicians and the audience—whether they know it at first or not. In many ways, this is the basis for the band’s new live album, ¡Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Blow It… at Madison’s Quinceañera.
Read MoreWhen it comes to Gary Clark Jr.’s style as a musician, some have said the 40-year-old Austin, Texas-born guitar player is schizophrenic. But he thinks of his versatility in a less-dramatic and more generation-appropriate manner.
Clark Jr. released his latest LP, JPEG RAW, in March, and is on an extensive U.S. tour that will place his eclecticism on full display. Clark Jr. thinks of himself as “an iPod Shuffle.” The musical devices were all the rage in the Aughts, before the age of the do-it-all iPhone. They allowed the ear to be awash in sounds with the push of a button. Whereas listeners once had to rely on radio or individual vinyl records, the postage stamp-sized Shuffles offered space for hundreds of tracks of any type. Clark Jr. has built off a similar penchant for sonic diversity—indeed, he embodies it.
Read MoreBeginning in the 1980s, Mike Burkett—a.k.a. Fat Mike—has been pouring his energy into punk rock. He co-founded the beloved band NOFX in 1983 and the San Francisco-based record label Fat Wreck Chords in 1990. Ever since, he’s been signing bands, playing shows, writing books, creating documentaries, and he even started a company that makes panties for straight men. Most recently, in 2023, he co-created the Las Vegas-based Punk Rock Museum. Earlier this year, Vegas decreed April 1 to be Punk Rock Day (what Mike calls a “punk proc,” short for punk proclamation). It all comes together to mark the culmination of a life dedicated to the music he says saved his life.
Read MoreThunderpussy lead guitarist Whitney Petty prayed for this. A handful of years ago she was at rock bottom, depressed and creatively lost.
Her Seattle-born all-woman classic rock-inspired band left the major label it had signed to and her relationship with Molly Sides, the group’s Grace Slick-like lead singer, had frayed.
But Petty found solace in new surroundings. She moved to Guatemala, met local musicians and indulged in a new spiritual side. The result is the band’s exultant new sophomore album, West.
Read MoreNathaniel Rateliff is still curious after all these years. The singer/songwriter who made his bones in Denver and is now a globally famous artist, is still on the hunt for good songs—even if he is at something of a strange crossroads.
In one way, Rateliff has never been more successful. Ever since 2015 when “S.O.B.,” the single with his band The Night Sweats became a phenomenon, he’s been growing his footprint. He’s played Saturday Night Live, earned praise from Robert Plant and placed songs in major movies and HBO television shows. He’s played late-night TV and toured the world.
But at 45, Rateliff is still evolving. He’s dealing with his relationship to drinking, he’s coping with the realities of death and divorce, and confronting the pressures of stardom. And these are all the subjects of the new Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats LP South of Here, out Friday (June 28).
Read MoreParisalexa, co-writer of the newest K-Pop hit “Supernova” from the group aespa, doesn’t like to fly. But when the Los Angeles-via-Seattle songwriter/performer was invited on a trip to South Korea to collaborate on music, she took the chance. “A 15-hour flight across the world didn’t seem super exciting to me,” she says, “especially with people I didn’t necessarily know super well.”
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