Virtually Home

"This is one of the best places in the world to play music," Oberst said pretty early in the show. I have always believed it's one of the best places in the world to hear music, so I jumped at the chance to see this show. Jonathan Wilson and his band have replaced Dawes as Conor's opening act/backup band combination on this leg of the tour. Nate Walcott has joined the lineup on keyboards and horns, and I think that's really exciting. Walcott and Mike Mogis, the other two long-time members of Bright Eyes, have started working on movie scores, most famously for The Fault in Our Stars (2014). I thought maybe their days of working with Oberst were done, but I'm pretty psyched to be proven wrong. Jonathan Wilson appears to be an insufferable hipster, and Jonathan Wilson and his band during their opening act. I'm not a huge fan of his recorded work. However. Wilson and his band put on a pretty wonderful performance to start the show. It was engaging, an...

Yesterday, my grandmother died. She loved chocolate, card games, and iced tea in Styrofoam cups. She liked tennis on TV in the summer, and float trips down the creek. She liked fifty-cent mysteries from the used bookstore and John Wayne movies whenever they were on. She liked email, and digital photos, and being able to print family pictures in her kitchen. She liked fruit salad and fried chicken and creamed corn. She liked saving money, and paying cash for things. She was born on the last day of 1928, and lived through the stock market crash, the Great Depression, World War II, and other things that seem to me unimaginably long ago. She started college at Oklahoma A&M (now OSU) but dropped out to get married. Much later, she would tell me never to change my plans for a man. For years, she volunteered one or two days a week to run a thrift store that benefited Domestic Violence Intervention Services. She liked collecting old coins, and she sent me a two-dollar bill with ev...