Isn’t it time he faced the music and stepped the hell down?

No, not Joe-Joe. I’m talking about Bob Dylan. On July 6, we traveled from NYC up to Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, at the National Register Historic Site of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. On the ticket that evening: Celisse who rocked hard, Sister Rosetta Tharpe-style, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Bob Dylan, and Willie Nelson & The Family, all part of the Outlaw Music Festival Tour 2024.

First, a reality-check. This entire summer, and certainly contemplating my virgin voyage trip to Woodstock 55 years later, inescapably becomes a meditation on age. Quick, without Googling, who’s older: Bob Dylan, or the President? Gotta be Joe Biden, right?  Nope. Bob’s a year older! But we naturally think of Joe Biden as a grown-up, as a Dad (okay, maybe a grand-dad) with an actual job who rides the train to work and wears a suit and tie every day. And while you’re at it, chew on this: Donald Trump is five years younger than Bob Dylan, qualifying Trump as a Baby Boomer. Talkin’ ‘bout my generation!

Youth was at the center of the counterculture as it was once called, immortalized by those three muddy, muggy days on Yasgur’s Farm more than a half-century ago. And although he may have been the absolute nucleus of that center, Dylan didn’t make the scene back in 1969, although he lived nearby.  Some sources suggest that in fact the Prince of Protest was peeved by the idea of tie-dyed tripsters traipsing perilously close to his property line, a suggestion which now smacks of “Get offa my lawn, you kids! And I’m keepin’ the ball!”

I didn’t make the scene, either. In 1969, I was some cherce bridge-and-tunnel jailbait well under the age of consent, a New York Tendaberry in a tenuous tube-top and denim mini. My normally chill parents laid down the law, and although I had a clandestine ride secured, I lost my nerve at the last minute. The road not taken. (Jerry Minkoff, wherefore art thou?)

Although he declined the historic invitation, Bob Dylan undeniably lit the fuse of youth-music as activism, a title which will never be wrested from him. For some, any criticism of Dylan is heresy, blasphemy. So fight me. My opinion is that Leonard Cohen matched Bob as a poet and as an intellect, although not as a political prophet, and Cohen’s writing lacks the hallucinatory glow of Bob’s early songs, perhaps with the exception of Cohen’s dreamy “Suzanne.” And then there’s Mr. Alienation himself, Paul Simon, who frankly beats the cranky-pants off both Dylan and Cohen as a lyricist, melodist, composer, arranger, guitarist and vocalist (especially the latter two), in terms of both artistic genius and technical brilliance, virtuosity and versatility.

But Cohen and Simon might have been forced to get real jobs if Bob Dylan had not a-fancied himself the plain-spoken spawn of the Dustbowl instead of the precocious, temperamental son of the middle-class Zimmermans of the North Star State. He was even a frat boy at the University of Minnesota: Go, Sigma Alpha Mu! As our folkie roots spread to hybridize rock and roll, Mick Jagger pouted that he didn’t “want to be playing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 50″- but of course Jagger turned 50 way, way back in 1993, and following heart-valve surgery in 2019 is still touring to SRO houses around the world. In 1965, The Who recorded “My Generation,” exclaiming “Hope I die before I get old.”  Pete (born 1945), Roger (born 1944), luvs, that ship has sailed.

Dylan was not yet 20 when he dropped out of college at the end of his freshman year and made his way to New York City, and from there the die was cast. We enthroned him as our fearless, Forever Young David, our curly-locked shepherd-boy brazenly confronting the lumbering Goliath of the industrial-military complex. His slingshot was a guitar, and in place of his seven smooth stones were his fiery first songs, commanding :

“Come mothers and fathers throughout the land,
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command,
Your old road is rapidly agin’…”

First, let me cool your jets: I’m glad that Dylan didn’t join the 27 Club. That said, the incendiary troubadour of  our collective youth is not at all the Bob Dylan who took the stage in Bethel on July 6. Nor am I the same boroughs-born teeny-bopper, my tube top long ago gone to landfill. But given that the night’s ticket was heavy on the oldsters, with 30-year-old Celisse as the baby of the Bethel family, agedness is a given when we’re talking about an evening like July 6. The question becomes not if we’ve aged— we have – but how we’ve aged, the choices we’ve made and continue to make. And the more pressing question that arises out of that night is: why does Bob Dylan choose to tour at all? Read on.

The matter of how age factors into a celebrity’s viability is of course top of mind as we watch the daily news unfold regarding the upcoming Presidential race. Welcome to the official Summer of the Old Folks!

Presidential candidates, like all celebrities, navigate a highly visual metaverse. Looks count (see: JFK, who famously went hatless at his inauguration, cementing his sex-appeal with voters). This is of course true in the decades of folk, pop, rock, metal, grunge and punk that we’ve all traversed. Yes, among even the most earnest of folksingers too. Young Joan Baez, slender, long-legged and deeply tanned, with the face of a Mexican saint and a soprano range to match, her taut form clad in a simple sleeveless cotton shift, barefoot on the stage as the wind tossed her gleaming ebony mane, radiated erotic beauty at its most natural and exquisite. And Phil Ochs tragically donned a gold lamé suit, but that’s a story for another day.

In terms of public image, appearance is critical to success, and hair especially counts for the counterculture—after all, a year before Woodstock, the first tribal love-rock musical celebrated HAIR and its symbolic power. Across history and myth, from the Biblical tale of Samson to O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” hair equates to sexuality and vitality.

While ensconced at Bethel, I was consistently distracted by the skunk-stripe of the woman seated directly in front of me, who rocked a tattle-tale skunk-stripe. Yes, how we wear our hair is a matter of coded personal messaging.  Along these lines, I had the honor of interviewing the sublime graphic artist Milton Glaser shortly before his death in 2020 on his 91st birthday, and he shared with me something you may already know: he playfully embedded the name “Elvis” into his iconic rendering of Dylan’s Jew’Fro, used as the illustration for the album “Dylan’s Greatest Hits.” With a Talmudic shrug, Glaser said, “No Elvis, no Dylan.”

Tickets for the covered stadium seating run into quadruple digits, with camping and glamping options available on the grassy grounds. The compound features a museum and gift shop stocking Woodstock merch including  “peace of the stage” peace-sign pendants crafted from hunks of the original stages at the 1969 happening. It’s all very glossy.

Approaching the pricey, sold-out covered seating, the July 6 crowd inched by on walkers, tapped along with canes, and came freewheelin’ in wheelchairs past the brook where a few frisky elders waded to cool off. One stringy gent filled his vintage derby with creek-water and replaced it on his balding head, allowing the water to cascade down his scarecrow shoulders. He offered me the same treatment for $5; good to know that American entrepreneurism is not yet dead.

Recalling Chip Monck’s warnings about the bad “brown acid,” my first stop was Bethel’s First Aid center where I chatted with local EMT Ronald D. Pitcher about typical medical situations that might arise that evening. At the mention of my association with folk music, one of Pitcher’s co-workers shared that he had worked on The Clearwater with Pete Seeger and Don McLean lifetimes ago.

Pitcher said, “I was here for the first Woodstock. I was 3 years old, and whenever I see photos of naked little kids from that August, I look to see if it’s me!” Pitcher also shared that his 22-year-old-son was in attendance that evening for Dylan, Willie, and the rest.

“The potential problems we might encounter tonight have to do with the combination of direct sun, heat and alcohol,” said Pitcher as the mercury inched toward 100°F degrees with the dew-point close behind. Booze is a hugely profitable concession at Bethel Woods, of course, where the night-air stayed curiously devoid of the funk of burning herb. “The other possible problem can be cannabis edibles. People from other states attending the show find themselves here in New York, where they can purchase some forms of edibles legally. If they aren’t experienced with these, and especially if they partake of home-made edibles where the potency isn’t standardized, they may have an unpleasant reaction.” Sunburn and dehydration are also common concerns, especially when alcohol is consumed in abundance.

Age further contributes to health risks for seniors at an event. While Naloxone is kept on hand, Pitcher explained that prescribed-drug interactions—called polypharmacy by geriatricians—involving diabetes medications, blood-thinners, beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors and proton pump inhibitors are more likely to create issues for elderly party-animals than fentanyl, meth or opiates. “We are very much aware that any concertgoer may have a pre-existing medical condition. This is especially true of an older person, so we are always prepared for those scenarios.”

Celisse tore the house down, culminating her high-voltage set with a scalding cover of Bill Withers’ “Use Me,” strutting triumphantly through the grooving crowd as she played and sang. The Plant/Krauss pairing demonstrated that proceeding into one’s mid-70s—Plant was born in 1948—doesn’t automatically mean sacrificing one’s hippetude for hip replacement. And his hair looks great.  Zep was never my jam, but the duo blazed on Lucinda Williams’ “Can’t Let Go” with driving, flinty authority, and their duet on the folk classic Matty Groves with its Celtic tonal dissonance gave me shivers.

Then came Bob-a-lu. Sad to say, the Dylan set was more like sitting shiva than shivers. After Plant/Krauss, the stage crew adjusted the cameras so that the crowd only saw a static wide-shot of the stage on the Jumbotron screens, with no ability to zoom in for a closeup. But even from a distance, I noticed that The Master of Warfarin took the stage rocking suspiciously luxuriant hair dyed a deep brunette as he took his place behind the piano without a single word of greeting to the crowd. How soon until Dylan takes a page from the equally brilliant and contemptuous Miles Davis, who notoriously played with his back to the audience? He’s already our musical Salinger, secretive, reclusive, and strangely bitter.

I regrettably never saw Dylan live prior to his teaming with Tom Petty in the late 1980s, where Bob eschewed his guitar entirely, a choice rumored to be in response to arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome (although Keith Richards still manages to push through the pain at age 81). It is only fair to say that in those days, Petty made a Waffle House wedding out of Bob, leaving him scattered, covered, smothered and chunked.

Keepin’ it real: unless you know the Dylan catalog, his set will be unintelligible and unrecognizable. The artist barreled through his hour without a syllable of interaction with the audience as is now his standard modus operandi, mumbling and muttering cherished lyrics and truncating sacred melodies in the process. Legendary drummer Jim Keltner, having replaced Jerry Pentecost, was, to quote a Stones anthem, out of time. He missed anchoring fills and cues, making the set especially hard to take since Dylan’s piano style has become increasingly repetitive and metronome-like, especially on the talky, endlessly droning “Early Roman Kings.”

True, the songs were all there if you knew where to look, opening with “Highway 61 Revisited,” an absolute gem of songwriting that the author managed to bury in a lack of musicality. The same applies to just about the entire draggy set, including “Shooting Star,” “Love Sick,” “Stella Blue,” “Can’t Wait,” “Under a Red Sky,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Ballad of a Thin Man,” and a curious relic from Dylan’s high school years, “Mr. Blue.”  The band functioned as cautious accompanists versus partners, taking pains not to upstage, holding back so that the headliner’s negligible contribution could be coddled. Somehow, Dylan even managed to make his winking “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” into a dirge. Thanks, but I’ll take a raincheck on that trainwreck.

A few nice squalls on hand-held harp by the maestro suggested an energetic promise that simply never materialized. The crowd screamed in unison over the exhilarating opening riff of Chuck Berry’s  “Little Queenie”  blasted into hyperspace by guitarist Doug Lancio. Even in his prime, Dylan could never have summoned the pure, lascivious mirth of the original, but the signature Berry braggadocio was a much-needed tonic as the muggy evening wore on. And on.

Yes, I’m aware that Bob Dylan is not the irrepressible Chuck Berry, although I’d pay $100 cash American to see Bob do the splits and duck-walk. But going on tour, especially where a craft beer costs $16, suggests some sort of tacit agreement between whoever is onstage and whoever forked out the long green to be there. Let us recall that Steely Dan essentially refused to tour for decades, going live only very occasionally. The reasons given included Donald Fagen’s stage-fright and control-freak perfectionism, his insistence upon delivering an absolutely flawless musical product that’s impossible to achieve outside of the studio. Dylan brings none of this technical prissiness to his live performance. Quite the contrary, he seems quite willing to serve up a sloppy, absolutely joyless husk of a show, and then exit without even so much as the proverbial kiss on the cheek, pat on the ass, or perfunctory word of thanks.

There is no denying that Bob Dylan was a consummate artist in terms of writing, although not as a performer or entertainer. What’s so excruciating about a Bob Dylan concert these days is that we remember the songs, and how we felt the first time, or the hundredth time, we listened. “Something is happening, /  But you don’t know what it is, / Do ya, Mr. Jones?” Who else on earth could write that cryptic,  sneering line? In contemporary interviews, Dylan has said that he no longer knows the guy who channeled those hypnotic, apocalyptic early anthems (no duh, Bob). He was always far too cool for the damn room, and that scowling disdain was a huge part of his riddling mystique. His currency was his enigmatic,  high-handed aloofness.   But now his misanthropy has lost its charm. Although the cameras didn’t push in close enough for us to see it, we felt it.  The truest moment of the night came when he muttered:

“People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care but things have changed.”

There are distinctions to be made between artists, performers, and entertainers. Performers get something out of the experience of doing whatever it is that they do in front of other people. And entertainers are performers who shamelessly crave their interaction with the crowd, the applause, the hours of shrieking adulation (I’m looking at you, Boss).

Artists shouldn’t have to pander for pay. But out of respect to ticket-holders, they do need to sing for their supper. Does the evergreen Jackson Browne really, truly want to play “Running on Empty” ever again? Does the timelessly tender Graham Nash actually want to sing “Our House” again? But they are willing to indulge us, because they know that we loved them once long ago when they, ourselves, and the world we shared were all very different. And, although these artists are a far cry from being smarmy Catskills kibbitzers, they faithfully give the people what they want with genuine grace and superior craftsmanship.

Fan-reverence for the past approaches fetishism, never more clear than when swooning Dylanites kink out over his performances today. I am reminded of the clinical definition of a fetish, which is ersatz, a replacement, an obsession formed through transference. Suppose one has a formative (even naughty) sexual experience –restraint and punishment followed by pleasure, a sound spanking followed by a piece of candy– with a strict governess who always carried an umbrella. Long after the governess herself has left the household, proximity to an umbrella may still produce sneaky feelings of  arousal, sensation, expectation. In this sense, Bob Dylan now is no more than a fetishistic umbrella. So, if that hard rain’s ever a-gonna fall, at least Dylan fans will be ready.

The effigy of Bob Dylan stepped stiffly out from behind the piano to a torrent of adulation, then stalked away stage left without a fare-thee-well, much less an encore. In fairness, none of the Bethel artists gave encores; maybe a policy or contractual thing?

The lights went down, and against the odds, Willie Nelson, age 91 and plagued by bad health, took the stage minutes later escorted by several sons: his own son Lukas Nelson, as well as Waylon Payne (whose father was a long-time picker for Willie, and whose Grammy-winner mother Sammi Smith toured with Waylon Jennings), Billy English (son of Willie’s old friend Paul English) on drums, Kevin Smith on stand-up bass, Anthony LoGerfo on percussion, and Mickey Raphael on harmonica who also delivered an accordion narrative of haunting beauty on “The Border,” co-written by Rodney Crowell and Allen Shamblin for Crowell’s 2019 Texas-themed album.

Willie skipped the first eight performances of the Outlaw tour earlier this summer due to undisclosed health issues, presumably cardio-pulmonary-respiratory in nature. After all, this is the guy who still manages to gleefully croak (you should excuse the expression) the spritely “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.”

He smoked three packs a day for decades, then quit the butts and whiskey around 1978 and switched to herb. He suffered a collapsed lung in 1981, cancelled 2004 tour dates because of carpal tunnel surgery, and endured repeated bouts of emphysema/COPD and pneumonia until he quit smoking (anything) altogether in 2019, leading to his founding of Willie’s Remedy, his signature brand of CBD edibles, coffees and teas, oil tinctures and soothing balm. He’s been upfront about years of self-destructive drinking (hello, Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge), punctuated by unsuccessful suicide attempts–sadly, his son Billy managed to do what his father couldn’t, ending his own life by hanging, Christmas Day, 1991 at age 33. Willie now identifies as California Sober.

This year’s cancellations led to the inevitable wondering: is Willie going, going, gone? Not yet. Drummer Paul English, Townes van Zandt, most recently Kinky Friedman who wrote the astonishing Ride ‘Em Jew-Boy, along with The Man in Black, Waylon, Merle and so many more of his old runnin’ buddies, not to mention youngsters like the remarkable Justin Townes Earle, have gone off to the sweet bye-and-bye.  We shouldn’t be surprised if Willie joins them soon. But as of July 6, he, like another staunch elder in the news, is intent on staying a little longer.

The (once)-Red-Headed Stranger surveyed the crowd from end to end and called out, “How ya’ll doin’? Ya’ll doin’ alright?” before taking a seat and slipping a very worn-out (he would call it “wore-out”) red, white and blue macrame guitar strap over his slight frame. A massive digital American flag was projected as the backdrop, and the house cameras swooped in tight to explore every mountain and molehill, crepey crevice, teardrop- and sun-carved crack and craggy hill and holler of that face deeply etched by hard times, hard liquor, hard travellin’, hard luck, some hard feelings too, no doubt.  This is not a guy who needs to wear artfully pre-distressed jeans. But as with the equally wizened and weathered visage of Keith Richards, the unforgiving eye of the camera reveals nothing ugly at its source.

That resolved face is a map of grief and loss, to be sure. This is Ground Zero, the wastelands and badlands that time forgot, a Texas-bred topography of sin, skin, sorrow and soul that even an ocean of Botox and Restylane could never make smooth again. His face mirrors the surface of Trigger, the trusty nylon-string, classical style acoustic Martin N-20, serial number 242830, purchased for $750 (worth about $5,600 in today’s money) he rescued from a house-fire along with a pound of weed back in 1969.

Trigger, named for Roy Rogers’ horse, shares this sort of legacy with Lucille, the $30 acoustic Gibson rescued by the great B.B. King under similar circumstances. When King was performing at an Arkansas joint called Twist in the 1950s, two men beefing over a chick named Lucille knocked over a kerosene lantern and just about burned the hall down. King ran outside to safety, then remembered that he’d left his axe in the club and braved the flames to save her. He named that specific guitar and all his others Lucille as a reminder to never act the fool over a woman.

To understand Trigger is to understand Willie. Willie took Trigger’s survival as a sign from above to leave Nashville, the town that had given them both a cool reception, back to his native Texas where his success began to flower like the Lone Star’s yellow rose herself.

This Brazilin rosewood guitar was not intended to be played with a pick, having no pick-guard, a caveat to which Willie obviously pays no never-mind. The frets, all original, are worn down, meaning that some notes thump or buzz. No never-mind. Not even a little. Trigger’s Sitka spruce top is scarred with cuts and autographs. And then there’s that big ol’ chunk missing from the front, between the sound-hole and the bridge, a hole caused purely by years of wear.

The bridge, incidentally, belonged to Willie’s previous guitar, a Baldwin 800C, that got stepped on and crushed by a drunk at a club one night. The bridge of the deceased Baldwin had already been drilled with mounting holes, making it relatively simple for a luthier named Shot Jackson to retrieve and install the Baldwin’s PrismaTone and preamp into the new Martin.

Willie hid Trigger from the IRS in the early 1990s, fearing that it would be seized as auction collateral against his looming $16.7 million debt. In the midnight hour, he slipped into the studio with Trigger and recorded some solos, using proceeds from the resulting album (“The IRS Tapes: Who Will Buy My Memories?”) to get right with The Man.

Today, Mark Erlewine of Erlewine Guitars in Austin reconditions Trigger once or twice a year. Although a pick-guard could easily cover the hole, Willie feels that the hole gives Trigger part of the instrument’s unique sound, and Erlewine complies. Today, an ongoing threat to Trigger’s structural integrity has to do with the fact that Willie sweats when he plays. The combination of sweat and pressure occasionally leads to separation of the guitar’s face from the body, calling for re-gluing. While Trigger’s glue is curing for the millionth time, Willie might have another guitar or two to play, but maintains that when Trigger goes for good, he will follow.

And can we talk about the hair? His braids, once vibrant red, are now silver and graze his gaunt waist. And the cameras pick up the shaggy rippling of thatches of glinting silver hair on the singer’s forearms, as long as a Palomino’s mane.

Without hesitation, in spite of it all, The Family ripped into his monumental “Whiskey River,” and even though Willie’s been dry for decades, the rollicking prayer of the nightlife still persuades.

Hs narrow chest rises and falls rapidly, and his breathing labors. His shoulders almost seem too frail to support his loose black tee shirt, and his voice now has a quaver to offset that most-nasal of East Texas twangs. While Willie’s voice started off a little on the shaky side, his fingers were still supple, and began to flow like Tupelo honey one or to songs into the set.

Willie hasn’t gone entirely soft. His terse version of “I Never Cared For You” still stings. Throughout the night, father silently, almost telepathically communicated with son via eye movements, as one would cue an attack dog, and attack Lukas did. Lukas had filled in for his father for the first weeks of the tour while the eminence grise recovered from his most recent setback, and was justifiably feeling his oats as he ripped into “Texas Flood” on his electric axe. Willie and Lukas, who describes his genre as “country soul funk” as created by his band Promise of the Real, duetted poignantly on Pearl Jam’s “Just Breathe,” ironic, perhaps, in light of Willie’s lung troubles, creating a palpable vibrational exchange of intimacy that’s rare between dudes, much less father and son.

Willie’s bonding with fellow male artists offers a window into the man he is. He’s written and sung about the price of skirt-chasing as much as the next guy, but now in the testosterone twilight – he frequently tells reporters “I’ve finally outlived my dick” – lifelong friendships with men seem equally important.  His old pal and original Highwayman Kris Kristofferson, five years younger than Willie, is now the subject of dire media predictions regarding his health as he copes with the fallout of Lyme disease, the aftermath of COVID 19, and, well, decades of relentless drinkin’ and druggin’ and ramblin’ with bad company, the stuff of a million country songs minus the train. All of this felt present as Waylon Payne, a true scion of country music royalty, took the spotlight on his soul-searing version of Kristofferson’s “Help Me Make It Through The Night,” with Lukas busting out a solo that spread an aw-shucks-now-I-jest-cain’t-help-my-damn-self-no-more,-darlin’ grin of paternal pride to Willie’s face, displacing his usual Mount Rushmore reserve.

Ed Bruce and his wife Patsy Bruce wrote “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” but Willie owns it. He sings it better than anyone alive, but that night in Bethel, he let the crowd take the reins, who chanted the refrain as though it were a Tabernacle hymn at a tent revival somewhere east of Eden. This song shared Willie’s set with “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” written by largely-unsung songwriter Sharon Vaughn of Orlando, enough of an authentic country classic to endure abuse by rhinestone cowboys, drugstore cowboys, midnight cowboys, and electric horsemen who thank thet they can sang, and by the time he reached the killer line “Jest take what you need from the ladies and leave ‘’em, / With the words of a sad country song,” his voice was once again steady, as sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines. He finished strong on songs like Hoagy Carmichael’s masterpiece “Georgia,” “On the Road Again” and other crowd-pleasers which seemed to visibly please the artist, too. That’s one giant plus of the Jumbotron: the audience gets to see emotions cross the artist’s eyes and face in real time, on a colossal scale.

From “The Border” released earlier this year, Willie sang :

“From the shacks and the shanties
Come the hungry and the poor
Some to drown at the crossing
Some to suffer no more…
I come home to Maria
(Where else would I go?)
In a bulletproof vest
(Cross the river to die by myself)
With the weight of the whole wide world
Bearing down on my chest|
It’s just a border, I guess…”

Mickey Raphael’s poignant squeeze-box trills added a nearly unbearable sweetness to the frontera lament, a song which confronts political controversy, especially when one calls Tejas home.

The night ended with a foot-stomping, anointing come-ta-Jesus mash-up of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” and “I Saw The Light.” The band was joined onstage by a l’il gal young- ‘un– grand-baby?—as Willie hurled a straw cowboy hat and a red souvenir bandana out to the feverish crowd, a ritual at these events. Willie crooned  “Hold me ‘til I die…Meet you on the other side.” And then he was gone, followed by love in the form of whoops, hoots, hollers, redneck yee-haws and rebel yells from the crowd, by the sons of departed brothers, and by his own “kid” as Willie calls him guiding the nonagenarian offstage into the waiting summer night.

To read more of Victoria’s writing, click https://folkworks.org/blog-category/blog/notes-from-a-honky-tonk-woman/

---

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bronxite Victoria Thomas is a folklorist and culture-arts journalist always in search of stories that amaze. Will yours be next? victoria@hyperfire.com