Soul Meets Blog

This woman's got a mochaccino in her voice and lightning in her hands. Letters from the Jalopy is a self-produced studio album from Medford, MA guitar-teacher and folk-singer, Ksenia Mack. Mack's voice has at times the lilt of Joni Mitchell, the warm low tones of kd Lang, and the blues of old Bonnie Raitt, her style blends such disparate influences with old-fashioned songwriting and scorching guitar-work. She's more incredible in her live performances than on this album, but Jalopy's well worth a listen.

So, I turn ABC's Good Morning, America on every weekday morning first thing. It's the right balance of fluffiness to keep me from starting the day as a coach potato, but enough serious journalism, snippets of local news (plenty of time for that,) and weather to start my mind moving toward the upcoming day. This week, I caught a segment about an online test that predicts the solidity of your relationship. Oh god, I thought to myself, it's one of those stupid Cosmo quizzes a lot of women like.

The following lyrics were adapted from Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Haunted Oak." When I first read this, I thought to myself "this is a Blues song." So, I've monkeyed with the original. Dunbar gets the credit, though.

"Ballad of a Haunted Oak" by S. Donovan Mullaney

CHORUS:
So bare, so bare, is the old oak tree;
so bare is the old oak tree.
It's dried and dead; it's burned with dread
where a guiltless man swung free.
A guiltless man swung free.
And when I go through the shade it throws,
a shudder runs over me.

The journey of Kevin Bowen, poet, veteran, and director of UMB’s William Joiner Center.

Shea Mullaney: How’d you get started writing poetry?
Kevin Bowen: Well, I wrote a bit when I was younger, then I went into army and went to Vietnam. I didn’t write when I came back; I didn’t have to words to capture that experience and writing about anything else didn’t seem to have any meaning.
Actually, both my parents were writers. My father wrote plays and wrote for the Catholic Worker and my mom directed for the Blackfriars, a local theatre company.