Otis Brown's Podcast

In the opening lines of Moby-Dick, Melville describes the wharves of Manhattan, where "posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries." Why do people take vacations just to stare at the empty sea? What do they see when they see the sea? In this week's episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I share some thoughts on the subject based on my experience as a long-time sea gazer and sailor.
Thank you!
And enjoy! 

Most of us have shaped objects with our hands. I want to explore how objects have shaped us through our hands. Though scientists who study haptic or tactile memory are reluctant to make assertions about touch memory and personal identity, I'm more than ready to make that leap! 

In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I tell the story of the first great guitar I ever played and think about how that moment may have shaped my life as a guitar maker and as an individual. 

Hey! Help me complete the map: I need some U.S. states! I would be eternally grateful if you would like, follow, subscribe and spread the word of Otis Brown Podcast.

And, too, I'm already eternally grateful that you continue listening to my rambling improvised lectures.

Thanks!

In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I explore the Thomas Cole painting "The Oxbow"(1836) and muse on its use of the signs and symbols of his life in freemasonry. Are they a secrete code? Do they get us closer to the heart of the painting? Are we all looking at the same world here? Through a reading of the painting, I hope to take us to a conversation about our subjectivity and our deep need to control our understanding of the world. 

I hope you enjoy. 

The Western is the most enduring American genre. In a perpetual state of revival, the western vanquishes all comers as the most important genre of American film. It has profoundly shaped who we are and how we are perceived as a people and I have a few thoughts on the subject. In this week's podcast, I discuss the Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly film High Noon, the Clint Eastwood films Unforgiven and Pale Rider, and the John Wayne films True Grit and The Shootist. I explore the push/pull of the genre and the complicated relationship we have to it. 

I hope you enjoy!

We all lose stuff, but where does it go? Is somebody finding it somewhere? In this episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I interrogate the lost and found game. Along with a reading of the Tom Waits song "Take It With Me," a Robert Earl Keen song, and novels by Frank Norris and Joseph Conrad, I offer some thoughts on what it means to possess an object. 

Thanks friends!
Be well. 

In this week's episode of Otis Brown Podcast, I offer some thoughts on the work of another great Mississippi native, the saxophone genius, template for all hipsters from then until now, the king of cool, Lester Willis Young, "Prez," born in Woodville Mississippi, August 27, 1909.
I explore Lester's musical relationships with Mary Lou Williams, Count Basie, Billie Holiday and Marie Bryant and mention his proficiency with profanity--a thing I admire, even while I refrain for the sake of the podcast.

Enjoy!

Keywords:
Lester Young
Milt Hinton
William "Count" Basie
Mary Lou Williams
Billie Holiday
Coleman Hawkins
Nat "King" Cole
Buddy Rich 
Gjon Mili
"Jammin the Blues" (1944)
To Have and Have Not (1944)
Ernest Hemingway
William Falkner
Humphrey Bogart 

I this week's podcast, I tell the story of Marty Stuart taking inspiration from the  The Dean of American Bassists, the great Milt Hinton. Marty discovered the photographs of the jazz great in the late 1970's and began his quest to do for country music what Milt was doing for jazz through his photography. 

Eudora Welty
Milt Hinton
Marty Stuart 
Lester Flatt
Earl Scruggs
Bill Monroe
Ella Fitzgerald
George Jones
Loretta Lynn
Steve Earle