Turns out there’s an app for that:
Must be something else… indeed…
Category - Digest
…sorta besides the point, don’t you think?
Sierra Hull first showed up on my radar about three years ago, when a friend who worked for her management company invited me to a CD release concert at the Belcourt Theater.
Since then, I have had the pleasure and privilege of working with Sierra on more than several occasions. She was a featured performer on The 1861 Project – Volume 2: From the Famine to The Front (Spotify), lending her charming vocals and dazzling mandolin lines to The Song of The Mystic (Spotify), a song about Father Joseph Ryan, “the poet laureate of the Confederacy” and the namesake of one of Nashville’s most prominent parochial schools.
More recently, I had an opportunity to photograph Sierra as she warmed up to perform with Irene Kelley at Irene’s CD release party at the Station Inn.
Sierra Hull on stage at the Station Inn
[tweetable alt=””]I’ve actually shot quite a few lovely photos of Sierra since she came on board with The 1861 Project, but this one has to be my favorite.[/tweetable] I could probably say more about it, but I think this is one of those instances when I’ll just let the picture speak its thousand words and leave it at that….
If that’s still not enough, have a listen to Sierra’s 2011 Rounder Records release, Daybreak:
A note to the Weekly Digest Readers:
I have no idea who the woman in this photo is. She just happened to be in the window seat on the side of the plane that was flying over Manhattan…
You’re going to see a lot more posts in my weekly digest this week…
It’s mostly photos that I posted from the week that Ann and I just spent in New York. Well, starting in New York but mostly in Connecticut, a bit of New Jersey for my niece’s wedding, and then a couple of days pounding around Manhattan.
I’m still sort of digesting the trip… a couple of big takeaways are:
1) The prevalence of mobile devices. I know this is nothing new to observe, but when you are in a city of like 10 million people and every one of them has their eyes fixed on a tiny screen regardless of what else they’re doing, it becomes that much more obvious that something fundamental about the way we live in the world has changed.
2) On a related note: when did it become OK to conduct an entire conversation with another person without even bothering to remove the ear-buds in your ears? I mean, who does that? Well, a lot of people in New York do that. We had dinner in one restaurant where we had a good view of the patrons at the bar, and we literally watched one guy conduct and entire conversation with the woman seated beside him, wired dangling from his ears the entire time. Like, for almost an hour. Sorry I didn’t get a photo of THAT.
3) Contemporary, popular music played on sound systems in public places like trendy restaurants is just fucking ghastly. I guess it’s just de riguer these days, the establishments have a sound system installed, put it on some channel, and then ignore what’s being played, it’s just part of the background noise. But for the the patrons (OK, this patron), the sonic assault detracts from the experience of the joint. It makes me want to leave (especially if it’s this godawful nothing-but-beats hip-hop stuff that is so popular these days, and yes, I know saying that makes me a very old man of the “get off my lawn” stripe…).
FWIW, the issue is not unique to New York. It’s a problem in Nashville, or anywhere else I’ve been lately. It just seems worse when you’re already well out of your comfort zone and trying desperately to find some – well, comfort in an otherwise hostile urban environment.
The only reading of consequence you will find in today’s Digest is the first post – which appears at the bottom of the Digest listings – which I posted last week. It’s the second installment of some reminiscences about my first year in Nashville, the year when I started “Songs.com” and a bit of what it it was like to explain the Internet to people who had often never heard of it. Hard to imagine a time like that now…
Other than that it’s just photos from the trip, and not even the good ones – just the ones I thought to send from my camera to my phone so that I could Instagram them. I’ll have to see what else I got when I get to the files…
As seen from 5th Avenue, just south of Bergdorf’s and the Apple Store:
Another #nyc #icon #newyork
After Bergdorf’s we went across the street to Apple’s flagship Manhattan store, the one with the entrance that’s just a big glass cubed access to a transparent stairwell that takes you into an underground cavern that is all things Apple. It’s a rather impressive place. I found this photo of me on a MacBook that was open to Photobooth:
This place I can relate to. #tech
Running out of things to do Monday afternoon, we started exploring the upper reaches of 5th Avenue, starting with Bergrdorf Goodman. Where we saw these $1,500 dollars shoes. At least the ones on the right look like you could walk in them, though probably not very far…
It was really weird to hang out even for a minute in a place where you could overhear patrons talking about “the season” like it really means something.
I guess, for them, it does…
#cultureshock in the form of $1,500 shoes. #fashion #style #justdonttrytowalkinthem
#NYC #icon #newyork
They made a big deal before the opening curtain about no photography, and I complied… right until the very end.
I can only hope that this one stolen photo conveys what a great show this is, in so many ways. I’d seen the movie years ago (would you believe on my iPhone, when that was a novel thing to do?), and so had forgotten the story altogether.
The music… the performances… the story… all outstanding.
And, best of all, unlike “The Book of Mormon,” you can actually get tickets for Kinky Boots…
Grand finale, everybody wearing their Kinky Boots. #broadway #newyork #GREATshow!
Whips me up a cup of Sumatra in the Clover at the Times Square Starbcks:
@csoza91 brewing at the Clover #newyork #nyc #timesquare #broadway