Sisters of Rock: How Heart Defined a Legacy and Inspired Generations

It was December 2012, and Heart was on the road when they got the unexpected call. The offer? To perform as a surprise guest at the Kennedy Center to honor their rock and roll heroes, Led Zeppelin. No pressure, right? It would be a quick stopover—with giant ripple effects. “We didn’t have more than one rehearsal before the actual day when the show happened,” Heart’s vibrant lead guitarist, Nancy Wilson, tells American Songwriter. During that practice, the chill had set into her bones. Nancy remembers that it was “snow cold” in winter and that their sole rehearsal “didn’t go well for me because my hands were frozen.” The song the band was set to play was “Stairway to Heaven,” perhaps the most iconic rock song of all time for perhaps the most iconic rock band in history. What could go wrong?

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Too long, didn’t remember: NBA stars that time (and the internet) forgot

Have you ever opened up a social media page with a clear intention of what you’re doing and then instantly become distracted? You end up fiddling around and then closing the page and realizing you didn’t even do what you’d originally logged on for? Yes, the internet is a place full of distractions. TikTok, Instagram, whatever Twitter (X) is? It’s hard to remember what you had for breakfast some days. The same, of course, goes for NBA history.

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EssayJake UittiThe Guardian
After Bonding “Like Family,” Reggie Watts and CAPYAC Making Blissful Music Together on New EP

It’s funny—there are so many websites and devices and other efforts to bring people together these days. Yet, in some ways, it feels as if people are more divided than ever. It’s not connection to someone through a phone or email. Instead, it’s chance meetings. Face-to-face interaction. Spontaneous creative acts. Trust and empathy. You know, the tried-and-true things that have always bonded human beings. And an excellent example of that today is the collaboration between Reggie Watts and CAPYAC. Together, they are set to release a new EP, Songs From Celestial City, on February 28. And for the members of the collective, their bond feels like family.

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Is Bryce James good enough to follow his father and brother into the NBA?

When news broke earlier this month that Bryce James had signed on to play basketball at the University of Arizona in the fall, many wondered: Who is Bryce James? For a family that seemed to promote their eldest son Bronny early and often, to find out that parents LeBron and Savannah James also have another son who is a talented athlete may have surprised some of even the most ardent NBA followers. Let’s explore the young career of the budding star, whose high school regular season career winds down this week.

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EssayJake UittiThe Guardian
Cut load management and end the All-Star Game: how NBA veterans would tweak the league

When four-time champion Robert Parish played in the NBA, there was no such thing as load management. While the idea, which was born in San Antonio as the Spurs managed the twilight years of stars like Tim Duncan, has since become widespread, Parish, who played the most regular season games in NBA history, says he doesn’t like it. Indeed, ridding the NBA of load management is one of the many tweaks a chorus of fans and former players have been suggesting lately. As conversations continue about why early season ratings have been down, fixes galore have been suggested. Below, we wanted to share some more ideas from five distinguished NBA vets.

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EssayJake UittiThe Guardian
Breanna Stewart has won everything. What does she do next?

Whether you’re on Broadway, in the audience at Radio City or marveling at what you just witnessed in Carnegie Hall, New York is the home for encores. But when it comes to one of the Big Apple’s brightest stars, coming back out on the stage doesn’t just mean another big performance. For Breanna Stewart, it means co-creating an entirely new sports league. Indeed, this Friday, “Stewie” – whose New York Liberty team just won the 2024 WNBA title – and 35 more of the biggest names in the sport will kick off the inaugural season of Unrivaled, a new three-on-three basketball league based in Miami and broadcast on TNT.

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Exclusive: Superstar Halsey Talks Playing for an Intimate Live Audience—“The Show Can Change Directions at the Drop of a Hat”

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.

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Former Football Star Darren Waller on His New Journey Into Music and the “Courage” It Takes

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.

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Los Lonely Boys Open Up About Their First Album in 11 Years, ‘Resurrection’—“When It’s All Broken Down, It’s About Believing in Each Other and in One Another”

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.

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‘Drugs were everywhere’: the rise and fall of the NBA’s cocaine era

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.”

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Amos Lee’s Interest in Humanity and Language is Evident on ‘Transmissions’—”When You Get the Right Words and Say the Right Thing, There’s No Better Feeling”

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.”

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Fiery buses, beer showers and the smell of manure: life in ice hockey’s minor leagues

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.”

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EXCLUSIVE: Excerpt From Knicks Star's Upcoming Book

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.

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Creed Bratton Talks ‘The Office,’ the Cosmic Algorithm, and His New Solo Album ‘Tao Pop’

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.

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