Category: All Posts

Lori McKenna, five times nervous

Lori McKenna, now 40 with a son of 20, put on a great show Friday evening. She was dressed well, but was reassuringly not larger than life.

Lori shares something with Elvis Costello. Her singing voice is strong, distinctive, and immediately recognizable, and it’s very different from her speaking voice. She really cuts through the clutter of many sound-alike women singers.

I have a couple of video clips, and I intentionally didn’t record any of her songs. I want to highlight Lori’s charm as a storyteller, which of course relates to her skill as a songwriter.

This is her entrance…

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…and here’s a fun story that any mom or dad can relate to. You get to see Lori engaged in one of my favorite activities — untangling a cable.

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McKenna’s Gold

Lori McKenna

Lori McKenna is her name. A momma of five, married to a plumber, Lori McKenna is the stand-out best of the best, tipper-topper talent in Boston-based singing-songwriting. Carol and I will be seeing Lori perform this evening. I’ll try to sneak some photos and maybe even a snippet of video.

Here’s how Lori looked for a long time…

Lori McKenna

… and here she is now, all dolled up after going a bit more over to Country from Suburban Folkie. Personally, I prefer her rumpled “Mom-who-rushed-out-of-the-house” look.

Lori McKenna

In 2002, when Lori was first catching some national attention, a Boston TV station produced this profile of her.

He’s dead, Jim

Mr. D.F. Rogers wrote to ask…

Is DogRat Dead?

And this was my reply…

No, Denny, the blog is not dead, but putting the Storage Area Network back together at work has been the only thing on my mind for a week now. Today I went through one of the most stressful experiences of my career. The day started at 7am, and I’m totally wiped. I managed to get something working that was completely broken, that absolutely *had* to be working at 1pm, and I did it with only three minutes to spare. Talk about stress. I don’t have the spare brain cells to even think about blogging. It’s just not on my mind right now.

Michael J. Fox — Always Looking Up

Michael J. Fox — who I think lets his ‘Parkie’ friends call him Mike — says “screw you” to Rush Limbaugh, for ignorantly mocking him before the 2006 midterm elections. Limbaugh, an Oxycontin abuser who needs Viagra, is no stranger to the effects of prescription drugs, but he got it completely wrong when he said Fox must have gone off of his meds, or was acting, to exaggerate his condition. It’s actually exactly the opposite. Fox was showing the side effect of taking a certain Parkinson’s medication over a period of many years.

Thursday evening at 10, on ABC, M.J. has a special that’s a companion to his new book, “Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist.”

The Hunt for Gollum

NPR had an item that piqued my curiosity, about a fan film called The Hunt for Gollum.

This reminds me of the praiseworthy Star Trek fan project, New Voyages. I don’t know how much of an influence New Voyages had on getting the new Trek movie produced, but so far I haven’t seen anything in the trailers that has me dying to see it. For starters, the set for the bridge is a gaudy mess, reminiscent of the way that Batman looked as handled by Joel Schumacher.