Evergreen State College graduate with a BA in creative writing and international studies. Recipient of an editing certificate from UW as of early 2021. Published music reviewer for WorldStar PR. Now works at Museum of Pop Culture.
Looking for work with a writing/editing focus!
Quinn Lemley has a love of the classic jazz and lounge sound that dominated the forties and fifties, having put out multiple albums in that style. Along with running a clothing line, she also stars in a play right now about screen idol Rita Hayworth. I spoke to her about her creative exploits.
Jackie DeShannon is the legend who wrote such era-defining songs as Put a Little Love In Your Heart, and Bette Davis Eyes and recorded What The World Needs Now Is Love written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. Other hits written by Ms. DeShannon included Brenda Lee's Dum Dum and Heart in Hand.
You have probably heard his scores for Dragonheart, The Last of the Mohicans, and Kindergarten Cop before, but Randy Edelman didn't always set out to compose for Hollywood.
Entertainment For A Cultured Mind
John Robb is fixture of Manchester's idiosyncratic culture, being a part of the band The Membranes amidst the seventies Northern English punk scene that birthed Joy Division. By the late eighties he had gone into rock journalism and was the first reporter to interview nascent indie bands called My Bloody Valentine and Nirvana.
As a luminary with a decades-long career in music promotion, science, and visual arts, Howard Bloom likely doesn't mind being called a Renaissance Man-and not just because one of his personal heroes is Galileo.
"I don't know what you do with your free time, but I think about you," sings crooner Ian Guerin in the chorus of "Free Time," the new single from Irreplaceable. The swooning, bombastic sound of the section is a hint as to the sort of sixties lounge act cool Guerin goes for here-a reference to...
Some bands have a style have that plays fast and loose with inspiration from various eras, and The Pondhawks is one such example.
As an avid director, writer, and actor going back to his youth in New York, Thomas J. Churchill has a lot of experience in the indie and b-movie worlds that makes for great stories. I talked with him about his new thriller Nation's Fire, the simple joys of monster makeup, and a possible ghost encounter on set.
While listening to Hidden Gems - Chapter 2 - Circus of Morality, the new release by Yorkshire-based entertainer and modern-day troubadour Captain of the Lost Waves, I was pleasantly reminded of Thomas Dolby. The maverick behind "She Blinded Me With Science" became known for an aesthetic style somewhere between David Bowie and Jules Verne, and...
To this day, the most iconic women's empowerment-themed country song might still be Dolly Parton's classic "9 to 5", from the seminal 1980 workplace comedy of the same name. "9 to 5" is the sort of toe-tapping retro pop perfection that was calling out to be used for a montage in one of the quirkier...
Karyn White, the muti-platinum, two time Grammy Nominee and R&B songstress behind new jack swing era hits like "Secret Rendezvous," is back with a new sound and a new movie. Gale and the Storm is a story of showbusiness that takes elements from Karyn's own personal experience.
I make comparisons to New Order quite a bit when talking about indie rock, and there are multiple reasons for that. For one, New Order (and Joy Division before them) helped lay the foundations of alt rock as we know it, ensuring that reminders of their sound stick around in pop culture more than three decades later.
To quote Paul McCartney, "you'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs, but I look around and see it isn't so." The venerable tradition of the love song is one that transcends language and culture, enduring in many different forms and genres.
If you look up interviews and articles talking about Thadeus Gonzalez, you'll likely see him described as something of an outsider in the Bay Area's indie rock scene. They'll say he goes against the grain of the city's dominant "hipster rock"-a nebulous sorta-genre that includes new wave nostalgia, neo-psychedelia, and a penchant for xylophones (which ...
The history of LGBT involvement in country music and its fandom is a compelling topic, and one which goes back decades. Consider Vernon Dalhart's 1938 cover of the song Lavender Cowboy, about a gunslinger with "only two hairs on his chest," which was banned from radio on the pretext of gay undertones.
When rock music first came to Ireland, it did so in the form of showbands, travelling cover acts who alternated between different hits. Out of the showbands came artists like Van Morrison and Wings guitarist Henry McCullough, as Celtic rock grew into its own entity in the 1960s and '70s.
The cover of Firebug's new album is a cool-blue image of a gnarled tree with the singer's face hovering above. It made me want to compare it to U2's Joshua Tree album cover, which led to the eventual amusing discovery that Firebug is currently based in Joshua Tree, CA.
2017, Inkwell Magazine, Evergreen
An examination of themes of conservation in Chekhov's writings.
Early sample of a paranormal mystery I'm writing set in the San Juan Islands.