The Deep Roots

This article originally appeared in Our Sunday Visitor sometime in 2006. I can't find it on the internet so I'm reposting it here. 

Aside from seeing Sonny Rollins, seeing Mac Martin and the Dixie Travelers was the most powerful music…

 An image borrowed from The Vulgar Boatmen Facebook Page. Not sure of the origin. It fits the theme of the post.

A word that I often hear people use to describe the Boatmen’s sound is “hypnotic.” I’ve also heard “trance”…

Vulgar Boatmen Awareness Month began as Vulgar Boatmen appreciation day, September 23rd, with an e-mail to some old bandmates as a funny excuse to stay in touch. With my “modernization” last year, my wife set-up a Facebook page for me…

Synchro fills a certain niche that you never knew there was a need for.

For years, Celeste and the kids would hear the songs and catch glimpses of synchro practice as they walked over to the tennis courts each morning…

It just goes to show you never can tell. 

It has been one year since my first blog post on The Deep Roots web-site. If I was using my project management skills, I would have set goals for myself with…

If I was the editor of a major music magazine, I’d put Kevin Robertson on the cover with the headline, “The Future of Rock and Roll.”

His debut solo album, Sundown’s End, is out today (May 28, 2021). 

I’d…

Picture of random setlist from the internet. Our setlist is as follows. Order and contents subject to change.

Baby what you want me to do (Jimmy Reed)

The Wanderer (Dion)

Folsom Prison (Johnny Cash)

California Stars (Wilco)

Neon Lights (Original)

…

I felt like I could be on vacation someplace far away. Is this neighborhood on VRBO?

Walking around Forest Hills the past two weekends as part of Scouting for Food gave me a whole new perspective. I went down a…

Grant McLennan:  February 12, 1958 – May 6, 2006

I’m highly susceptible to the phrase “The Greatest Band You’ve Never Heard Of.” What? A great band that I have never heard of. Who are they? 

Starting with my teenage infatuation…

2022 Update: I'm reposting this from last year because it got so many views. Also, the big news this year is that the Forest Hills Tennis Team is back also. 

A friend of mine compares The Forest Hills Pool to…

I'm a new convert to the Go-Betweens. I noticed that May 6th is the 15th anniversary of the passing of Grant McLennan, so I posted on the Go-Betweens fan page on Facebook if anyone was interested in writing a tribute…

“And the man in the suit has just bought a new car from the profit he's made on your dreams” Low Spark of High Heeled Boys 

I received this e-mail today and I couldn’t help but make some comments in…

Leisure is not the cessation of work, but work of another kind, work restored to its human meaning, as a celebration and a festival. -Roger Scruton

We watched Easter Parade last night, as has been our tradition on Easter. In…

Think small. Ubiquity is overrated. - David Lowery

For as long as we’ve lived in Forest Hills, during the summer and fall there has been a farmers market in the Presbyterian Church parking lot on Ardmore Blvd. on Friday afternoons…

Review by Walt Bibinger 

"1985: Some Good Stuff " Harry Leahey & Ron Naspo

This newly released CD from Bottom Line Music captures a 1985 "Musical Mansions" concert in Montclair, NJ. Bassist Ron Naspo recorded the performance and after coming…

The Purcells - Watercolor by Bill Goodwyn (It makes it look like a story in The New Yorker)

On Friday, February 19, 2021, The Purcells, released their latest EP, Landscape Listens. A few days later, I stumbled across it…

A few weeks ago, a high school friend posted a Bandcamp link to a release by a young artist from Clinton, New Jersey named Avery Stoker called Endersine/Sundance. I grew up only a few miles from Clinton, and some…

I thought this lent I’d work on the symptoms of my music-related obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (MR-OCPD). I planned to give up asking myself: 

• Am I succeeding? 
• Will I ever be more successful or is this as good as it gets? 
• …

The following review of Never Coming Back appeared in Dagger Zine on February 8, 2021.

Its always nice when you find out that an occasional contributor to this site, in this case guitarist Mark Sullivan, is also a musician and…

This is the way writing songs goes for me. I wake up in the morning and there is a song in my head. I can hear it like it is on the radio. Chords, lyrics, melody, structure, and even the…