Posts by Steve Wildsmith
On heartrending new song, David Haerle ponders a life lost to addiction
When alcoholism darkened the doorways of his family home, it spared singer-songwriter David Haerle. It found his father, who got sober in 1967. It claimed his mother, who would find recovery later in her life. And it wrapped its thorny tendrils around his brother, Christian, a brilliant man who died suddenly in 2019. A Los…
Read MoreAlt-country songwriter Kenny Roby dynamites ‘The Reservoir’ of reservations
When singer-songwriter Kenny Roby first got sober back in 2004, it was a 12 Step self-help group that put him on a path of personal and artistic renewal. Two years later, he released the most critically acclaimed album of his solo career, “The Mercy Filter,” a record that detailed his sober journey in cryptic ponderings…
Read MoreOne of the best ‘Choices’ singer-songwriter Lucy Spraggan ever made: getting ‘Sober’
One minute in, you see it: her lip starts to quiver, and Lucy Spraggan fights to hold back a flood of tears. By minute 2, she struggles to get through the chorus — “I’ve had all the time I need to think it over, I’ve gotta be sober” — chest heaving, her face a rictus…
Read MoreGrant Glad of Soo Line Loons embraces lost dreams and new possibilities
Soo Line Loons is, from left, Erik Loftsgaarden, Kristi Hatterschide, Grant Glad, Matthew Fox and Robin Hatterschide. Back in 1994, bluesman and music critic Tony Glover wrote a set of liner notes for “Tomorrow the Green Grass” by The Jayhawks that included a line that could just as easily be cut-and-pasted to describe the new…
Read MoreThe CHECK YOUR HEAD Podcast: Mari Fong shines a light on recovery
Music, Mari Fong knows well, is an escape pod. During our journeys through the spiritual cosmos of human existence, we all hit pockets of turbulence. The detritus from collapsing planets and exploding stars shower us with emotional debris that damages us, sometimes to the point of near-total destruction. But always, there is music. It was…
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