Hammer Mill Days

It's here, it's here! Great gob in Heflin, it's here! What's that? No, of course I'm not talking about the royal offspring, recently delivered of the Duke and Duchess of whatever-the-hell. Something far more important. What is it? My wristwatch of course. I thought I left it in the local watering hole, but it's here, in my sock drawer - it's here! Now if I could just find my socks. (Note to self: check the watch drawer.) Oh, right... and a box came. Not by itself, you understand. A truck dropped it off. It was a biggish box, but not too big. A box full of discs. Not chock full, exactly - what I mean to say is that there were discs in the box. Discs called Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick . Yes, that's right - it's Big Green's third studio album, released after a hiatus of no less than five years (we released International House in 2008). It's certainly the longest album we've ever made - fully twenty-one tracks, 78 minutes of mu...

Full disclosure: I'm a white person. No big surprise there. (Just listen to my music.) And while I don't consider myself a racist, I know that a traditional American racist world view is woven into my consciousness as a white person. I grew up around racist white people throughout my entire youth, spending a good portion of that in a virtually entirely white school system (in New York state). My third grade teacher said openly racist things in class; chastised me for taking exception to them. My grandfather said racist things, my dad occasionally said things that were borderline racist (as deeply opposed to racism as he was). That is the murky water in which I was steeped, as were so many other white people. And like most honest white people of a certain age, I admit to the fact that sometimes, when there are only white people within earshot, other white people will sometimes say racist things. For most of us, there are a lot of opportunities for this to happen, since many of...