I photographed a great new country singer this week. Her name is Kacey Musgraves, and she was the opening act on a three act bill headlined by Lady Antebellum. Because of her Grammy win for Country Music song of the year, she should have been second on the bill! During her 9 song set, she had the audience singing along, and reacting way more than any opening act I have recently seen.

She is a great showman, including having her band wear suits that lit up during the last song of the set.

As good as she is on stage, she is even nicer offstage, (and very musically literate) citing John Prine as an influence for his literate writing skills. All in all a great night with a great new singer.

And, I got to leave early and didn’t have to listen to Lady Antebellum!!!

I just watched a great movie this week. It is called “20 Feet From Stardom.” The film details the currant lives of some of the greatest backup singers the music business has ever known. The film centers on several people; Lisa Fischer, Merry Clayton and Darlene Love.

Lisa has been the #1 backup singer for the Rolling Stones since 1989. I first met her on the Steel Wheels tour, and we became friends. (I proposed marriage to he almost every day- she always just laughed). Several years later, she won a Grammy for best Female Soul performance. She started out as a backup singer for Luther Vandross and went on to work with the Stones, Sting and many others.

Merry Clayton is best known as the female voice on the Rolling Stones song “Gimme Shelter.” She got the call to sing one night and rushed to the studio in her pajamas and her hair in curlers and blew the band away with her voice and intensity.

I recently photographed Darlene Love at the City of Chicago Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony, and it was worth standing in freezing cold for an hour to hear her sing one song! Her story is amazing. From Phil Spector recording  her band “The Blossoms” doing “She’s a Rebel” and then having it released under the name “The Crystals” and having them perform it on tour, although it wasn’t recorded by them.

She performs “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on the Letterman show every year at Christmas. She remembers, while trying to support her family, hearing that song on the radio, when she was cleaning a bathroom at some rich people’s house.

There are many other singers interviewed in the film, including:

Cindy Mizelle             Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen

Mabel John                Original Raylette

The Waters Family    Jacksons, Whitney Houston, Thriller.

Claudia Lennear        Ikette, Rolling Stones

Judith Hill                   Michael Jackson, The Voice

It is interesting how many singers have crossed paths with the Rolling Stones. I remember Cindy from the 1989 tour, and from seeing her backstage at a Boys to Men show.

Claudia Lennear (the inspiration for “Brown Sugar”) is an amazing story. One of the greatest singers on the planet, she is now a Spanish Teacher at a high school in New Jersey.

Next time someone tells me about a “great” singer recording today, I am going to suggest that they watch this film, to see what a real singer sounds like!!!

I wish the Olympics were on 52 weeks a year!! Best stories (and backstories) on television. I just finished putting in about 30 hours on the couch watching skaters and skiers jump around on TV this week. ONE MORE WEEK TO GO!!

There are some great human interest stories, along with the athletic stories that go with them. My favorites:

Alex Bilodeau, the Canadian freestyle mogul skier, who raced in honor of his older brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy. He won the gold medal for the second Olympics in a row, with his brother cheering him on from the bottom of the hill. He has translated this success into a charity in Canada which raises money for medical research.

Noelle Pikus-Pace, the mother of two from Utah, who throws herself face first down an icy mountain at 90 miles an hour on what looks like a lunch tray with runners (called a skeleton). She retired with a fourth place finish at the last Olympics, but came out of retirement only under the condition that she could bring her family along for the journey. She won a silver medal and went charging into the stands to hug her family as the crowd went crazy

Then there is Katie Uhlaender, the daughter of former major league baseball player Ted Uhlaender. Her father died before the last Olympics, and she finished 11th. This year, after running her father’s farm in Kansas, she raced in the skeleton competition and finished 4th, losing a medal by 4/100th of a second! Hopefully she will be back in 4 years to get a medal.

These stories are great for many reasons, but especially because for the most part, these people are spending four years of their lives to perfect a skill that they probably can’t make any money from when they are done. They do it for the love of the game.

Went to two sold out shows this weekend. Never heard of either band till the day before! I need to start reading more!!!

Friday night- Amon Amarth, a Swedish Death Metal band. A bunch of very large Vikings screaming their lungs out and playing very loud and fast guitars. They were very nice. Been around for years and have 9 albums out. Most of their songs had very mythicle lyrics, hard to understand, but they were fun to shoot.

Saturday night- DR. Dog, a jam band from Philadelphia. Six laid back guys. Had a nice conversation before the show, and went up to shoot a very well lit and melodic show. These guys know exactly what their audience (college students) wants. Very good musicians, they kept on trading off instruments during the show- everyone pretty much playing everything. The audience sang along with every song.

Farm Aid 2013.

As the day was winding to a conclusion, and John Mellencamp was on stage, he invited Pete Seeger to take over the stage. Pete walked out and immediately took over the day. He had total control of the crowd from the first note till the last.

At 93 years old, he was pretty frail, but in good voice. After one song, he invited the four Farm Aid headliners up to sing “This Land is Your Land”. That moment will not soon be forgotten.

Pete died this week. His voice will be missed.

There have been several new chicken places opened in Chicago. They all serve chicken in little metal trays with really bad sides (a major problem). In one case (Honey Butter Chicken) the chicken was so dry I wished that I had brought some power tools to cut it with. The other one (Parson’s Chicken and Fish) served chicken that was so overcooked that water was coming out of it. Both of them have lines around the block every day.

Last week, I was on a road trip through the south working on a book about Soul Food. Found myself in Memphis on a very moving trip on Martin Luther King day to the Civil Rights Museum. I stood in the window that James Earl Ray used to shoot MLK. Very sobering moment.

We then went down the street to Gus’s World Famous Hot and Spicy Fried Chicken. What a revelation!!!! Two pieces of chicken on a plate with baked beans, slaw and white bread AND a choice of another side for $6.35. About 40% cheaper than either Chicago place. And man that chicken was good!!!!!! Maybe the owners of the Chicago places should make a road trip and find out what chicken is supposed to be served as!!!

I just read an interview with Kevin Bacon where he calls this period of time the golden age of television. I have to agree!!

Justified (the best show on television right now- my opinion) just started a fourth season. And a new show on HBO started this week called True Detective, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as two homicide detectives in modern day Louisiana AND as the same two detectives investigating a serial killer in 1999. Both brilliant actors play (superbly) themselves 17 years apart.  I wouldn’t want to be the continuity person on that set with their hairstyles and clothing changing from minute to minute!

The cinematography is amazing, the dialog even better and the characters are written so beautifully you don’t want it to end. I seriously considering recording all 8 episodes and watching them as an 8 hour movie, but couldn’t wait and watched the first one last week. Getting ready to keep on being amazed!!

It also seems like the dumbing down of the American pallet seems to be reversing. This show is shot in almost all pastel tones, a lot of it through car windows with people in shadow. Maybe more people have hi-def TV’s, making this  a more visual decade, but whatever they are doing- it is working perfectly!

Phil Everly passed away this week. One half of one of the most successful singing duos of the last 50 years, they recorded some of the most beautiful songs of the rock era. They include:

“All I Have to Do Is Dream”

“Wake Up Little Susie

“Bye Bye Love

“Cathy’s Clown

“(‘Til) I Kissed You

“Let it Be Me”

They were an influence on many groups, most notably The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel. You can also hear influences in every vocal group of our time, up to Mumford and Sons.

I first photographed them in 1985 in Chicago. After years of fighting they got together for a tour, and they were fabulous!

Then in 2003, they popped up in the middle of the Simon and Garfunkel reunion tour, reminding everyone of where S&G came from.

In both cases their harmonies were lustrous and the crowds went crazy.

He will be missed.

From a book written by Anita Elberse, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, titled  Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment :

iTunes sales statistics:

33% of all singles sold only sold one copy

94% of all singles sold sold less than 100 copies

So I guess all that talk about the internet making it a level playing field were wrong! Guess Beyonce has nothing to worry about.

From the strange promotions department:

The Admiral Theater in Chicago (Chicago’s only fully nude strip club) made a great offer this holiday season- a free lap dance anytime a customer brings in a new wrapped toy  for the local toy drive!! That is the Christmas spirit.

Interesting film to watch:

My friend Kevin Mazur is a filmmaker now! Who would have thought?

He made a film this year called $ellebrity. It is showing on cable. I watched it this week. It is an interesting take on the Paparazzi business- makes you want to run all those guys over with a truck! Most telling stories are by JLo and Marc Anthony about their wedding where they tried very hard to have the wedding be private, including telling the guests that they were being invited over for a bar-b-que in the backyard, Marc building all the props by himself by going to Home Depot and buying lumber so a contractor couldn’t sell them out to the tabloids, and then seeing helicopters descend on them and hover overhead, so loud that they couldn’t here their own vows! Also, Sarah Jessica Parker describing being chased down the street by a pack of “Photographers” as she begged them to let her walk to a store in piece, afraid that she would fall and harm her pregnancy. Finally she begged a doorman at a building she was passing to let her inside. He then escorted her to the basement garage to go out the back way, where she met a couple on a motorcycle. The woman offered to exchange clothes with her and walk out the front door as she got on the back of the motorcycle with a total stranger and was driven to her destination. Man, a picture of her must be worth a lot!!! Sure makes me glad that I call myself a photographer as we enter 2014!