1: How do you develop style? That is, you play a particular kind of music, you have blues and country and other genres running through your musical veins, but how do you assimilate those and come out your own without seeming like you're just imitating?

I don't have a clue how style comes about. Some things just feel right…

Fifteen Books to Kick Off Your Summer:  As spring winds down and summer roars into being, here is a list of fifteen phenomenal books that would make for a great summer of reading:

1: Glenn Blake "Drowned Moon":  Blake's short stories, all set in Southeast Texas, are near perfect etchings…

Hartford, Illinois

In the one tattooed on my right forearm, your father's
father, my father, born 1930, rides a blue ox
and picks his teeth with railroad ties.  On the back

of my neck, I wear the union brand: leather boot,
a fist, and a company truck tipped over and burning
like a chip on my…

Beirut has as many bookstores as it does bullet holes in its concrete walls. There's an old saying around the Middle East that goes, "The Egyptians write, the Lebanese publish and the Iraqis read." Knowing this and seeing all of those bookstores scattered around the city, I knew my time in Beirut was also a time to stock up.

I went to Beirut…