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Rubber Souldiers at the Iron Springs Pub 3/12/08: Chris Rowan, 12 string guitar; Paul Knight, bass; Lorin Rowan, guitar; David Gans, guitar. Photo by Rita Hurault We had us a great time at the Iron Springs Pub! It was a Beatle jam all the way, until big brother Peter Rowan showed up late in the second set. It was thrill for me to sing with all three Rowans at once! We did “Midnight Moonlight,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Stir It Up,” and I forget what-al else. We had a great crowd, and the management was delighted, so we’ll be back in April or May for sure!

I’m quoted in today’s New York Times, in an article by Miguel Helft titled “Tech’s Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True.”

“Every other online conversational space has a toolbar where you can plug in your favorite winking face,” said David Gans, a musician and radio host, who has been a member of the Well for 22 years. Mr. Gans says he uses the Well’s text interface, in part, because it helps to keep the quality of conversations high.

“Just because you can have a nuclear-powered thing that can dry your clothes in five minutes doesn’t mean there isn’t value to hanging your clothes in the backyard and talking to your neighbor while doing it,” Mr. Gans said.

I’m talking about the WELL, the small but still thriving online community that has been my home in cyberspace for more than two decades. I was part of a group that started a Grateful Dead community in the WELL on March 1, 1986, but there is way more to the WELL than that. I get help with Macintosh problems there, engage in deep and almost entirely idiocy-free discussions on a wide range of cultural and political topics, learn about new restaurants in my town, meet online scrabble partners, etc. It’s not for everybody, but it’s a great hangout for those who like this sort of thing. Check it out, why don’t you.

Roy Schneider’s comic strip The Humble Stumble ended yesterday. He had his characters deal with it in the strip, and he had some visitors from other comics, too. Fun stuff! Start here.

The Humble Stumble page at comics.com says: “Roy Schneider is ending The Humble Stumble on March 9 so that he can focus his creative energy on other comics-related projects and his music career. You can still see Joe and Molly in The Humble Stumble Classics, which will remain on Comics.com.”

I met Roy at the Suwannee SpringFest a few years ago – he won the Songwriting Contest there one year. I like his CD The Humble Sessions, and I am looking forward to hearing his next one, in the works as we speak.

And I guess Roy liked my music, too, because he put me into the strip once. I wasn’t actually seen, but I was the (more or less desirable) object of a case of mistaken identity.

Best of luck to you in your future endeavors, Roy. I look forward to pickin’ with you at Suwannee again soon.

Opinion piece in TIME magazine by Ed Burns, Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, and David Simon – all writers and producers of the amazing HBO series The Wire, which wraps up its five-season run tonight. If you haven’t seen The Wire, get the DVDs and watch them in order from the first one.

The Wire’s War on the Drug War

An excerpt:

What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.

Our leaders? There aren’t any politicians — Democrat or Republican — willing to speak truth on this. Instead, politicians compete to prove themselves more draconian than thou, to embrace America’s most profound and enduring policy failure.

Julie Hauserman writes in the St. Petersburg Times about one of my favorite gigs: the Suwannee SpringFest. I’ve been fortunate enough to play almost every Suwannee SpringFest, and all but one of its fall counterpart, MagnoliaFest.

I am among the thousands who flock to Springfest each year to hear an outstanding, eclectic lineup of musicians – not just bluegrass. Musicians travel from all over the world to play in the tiny town of Live Oak, along the Suwannee River.

The music is so good, and such a value, you almost don’t want to tell anybody about it.

I’ve seen a 14-year-old Tampa Bay area mandolin prodigy kick out a tune by funk legend Prince; a young Canadian band segue improbably from an Afro-Cuban-French-Canadian pop tune into a smoking rendition of Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love; a North Florida string band play acoustic arrangements of Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I’ve danced myself sweaty while a Miami House of God steel guitar band whips the crowd into a gospel frenzy at 1 a.m.