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Hats off to the Americana Music Foundation for a sublime moment at the end of this year’s awards show. Instead of the usual all-acts-on-stage sing-along, they paid tribute to the song and songwriter who must certainly be considered among the founders of this nebulous genre.   Gram Parsons’ “Return of the Grievous Angel” was released 50 years ago, four months after his untimely death at the age of 26. It was a jangly homage to old time country music at a time when the rest of the world was listening to anything but, and it featured a young singer Parsons had discovered in New York a few years earlier, Emmylou Harris.   It also features as good a country music lyric as you’ll ever hear:   “Twenty thousand roads, I went down, down, down And they all lead me straight back home to you”   Harris herself reprised her role in the duet, this time joined by Rodney Crowell.   They were introduced by Margo Price, herself wearing a stage costume inspired by Parson’s legendary marijuana-themed, Nudie Cohn-designed suit from his days with the Flying Burrito Brothers.   The moment almost overshadowed the news of the night, which was the coronation of Sierra Ferrell, who took home – in an antebellum gown worthy of Scarlett O’Hara – both Artist of the Year and Album of the Year (“Trail of Flowers” produced by Eddie Spear and Gary Paczosa), three years after winning “Emerging Artist of the Year.”   The Milk Carton Kids’ Kenneth Pattengale, as he introduced Ferrell, admitted that he named her was the most underrated artist on the stage that evening. He defended that choice, noting that “everyone in the world knows who Dolly Parton is. Once she gets a few more years under her belt, everyone in the world will know who Sierra Ferrell is.”   Other winners included Larkin Poe for Duo/Group of the Year, the Red Clay Strays for Emerging Act of the Year, Brandy Clark and Brandy Carlisle’s “Dear Insecurity” for Song of the Year, and 18-year-old Grace Bowers for Instrumentalist of the Year.   Lifetime Achievement honorees were presented to The Blind Boys of Alabama, former Blasters frontman Dave Alvin, the late Rev. Gary Davis, Shelby Lynne, Don Was, and Dwight Yoakim.   T Bone Burnett, introducing a performance by Larkin Poe, offered inspiration for the Ryman Auditorium crowd.   “If you want to know what’s good about the United States, listen to our music,” he said. “People with different dreams and experiences listen to each other, and make harmony.”   Honoree Shelby Lynne also offered as good a definition of Americana as any in accepting her lifetime achievement award.   “I am proud to be part of Americana,” she said. “If I was ever to fit anywhere, it was with the misfits, storytellers, outlaws and truth-tellers.”   Among the highlight performances were breakout stadium-filler Noah Kahan, Waxahatchee, the War and Treaty, the Milk Carton Kids, and Sarah Jarosz. Duane Betts kicked off the show with the Allman Brothers’ “Blue Sky,” a tribute to Dickey Betts, his late father.   Emerging artists Kaitlin Butts, Wyatt Flores, Charles Wesley Godwin, and Jobi Riccio also planted their flags with stand-out performances.

The list of cultural seats for the Irish-American diaspora usually starts and ends with New York or Boston. Chicago maybe. But Tulsa? Not so much. Yet here is where you’ll find the only scheduled U.S. showing - fresh from its debut in Dublin - of a critically acclaimed exhibit on Shane MacGowan and the Pogues, the Irish hooligans who somehow channeled the fury of late-70s British punk rock through a mesh of Celtic lyricism and the slightly violent joy of communal Irish pub singing. It turns out Tulsa is the perfect home for “They Gave the Walls a Talking: The Extraordinary Story of the Pogues and Shane MacGowan,” according to exhibit curator Niall Stokes, also the founder of the Irish popular music journal Hot Press. The reason is simple, Stokes told me in a brief interview at the exhibit: Tulsa is home to the Bob Dylan Center. “Dylan had a lot of influence on a guy who was influenced by punk rock, but was also looking for a way to connect it to his Irish roots and his Irish identity,” Stokes said. “There is no better home for an exhibit about the work of the Pogues and Shane MacGowan than the Bob Dylan Center.” Dylan and MacGowan, who died late last year, were unapologetic outsiders who followed “The Muse” where she led them – Dylan through his whole career, but especially when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965; MacGowan and the Pogues when they layered do-it-yourself punk rock swagger over traditional Irish music. One of the more interesting Dylan-MacGowan connections is the late Irish folk balladeer Tommy Makem. He and the Clancy Brothers were close friends and mentors to a young Bob Dylan in the early 1960s in Greenwich Village, where they often shared the stage together in places like Gerde’s Folk City. And it was Makem, only 20 years later, who famously declared the Pogues to be “the greatest disaster ever to hit Irish music.” Not that they cared. The original name of the band, Pogue Mahone, comes from an anglicization by James Joyce of the Irish phrase “pog mo thoin,” which means “kiss my ass.” Stokes’ exhibit, augmented in Oklahoma by items donated by Victoria Mary Clark, MacGowan’s wife, does an excellent job of exploring both MacGowan’s early aspirations at literature and poetry, as well as the band’s brawling appeal. One display case shows MacGowan’s precocious childhood composition books. Another contains the battered drinks tray that Pogues’ tin whistler and ‘percussionist’ Spider Stacy used to bang on his head in time with the music. The DIY ethos embodied by Stacy may have set the Pogues apart from traditional Irish groups. But they fit right in among their heroes, the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Indeed, just as Clash bassist Paul Simonon famously learned his instrument to join the band, the Pogues’ James Fearnley was handed an accordion – either in a box or a laundry bag, depending on who’s telling the story - and told to learn it if he wanted to join. Jem Finer told Stokes that the “great liberation” of being in the Pogues was that “you were given permission to play and learn as you went along. You didn’t have to be a musician to get involved and make the noise,” Stokes said. Despite the early criticism from some corners of this “noise,” the Pogues wound up taking well-deserved credit for reviving interest in traditional Irish music, and paving the way for bands like Flogging Molly, the Young Dubliners, and the Dropkick Murphys. And they were eventually embraced enough by the establishment that a joint performance of the “The Irish Rover” with the Dubliners became a hit on the British charts in 1987. Certainly the band’s biggest hit and most memorable song is “Fairytale of New York,” in which MacGowan was joined on vocals by Kristy MacColl. The song was co-written by MacGowan and Finer, and the exhibit contains several loose-leaf pages of hand-written lyrics with chord changes. Just as in the Dylan museum one floor below, artifacts like these are a great reminder that songs like this did not exist in the world until someone thought them up and wrote them down. The exhibit also features an excellent playlist of Pogues performances on video, including of this song. MacColl’s performance is lovely. MacGowan’s, with its gentle slur and almost-on-key swoon – “It was Christmas Eve, babe/In the drunk tank” - is perfect. The exhibit also illuminates one of the most important aspects of MacGowan’s background – that he was an Irishman who grew up in London. His happiest childhood memories were of his grandparents farm in Tipperary, but he was an urban punk. The place where he was raised was not his home. One of my favorite moments in Martin Scorcese’s excellent Dylan documentary “No Direction Home” is Dylan himself talking about this same feeling. “I was born very far from where I’m supposed to be,” Dylan said. “So I’m on my way there.” Irish-born actor Liam Neeson also captured MacGowan’s Dylanesque artistic fearlessness, observing that he “took aspects of the Irish culture and Irish music, kicked it up the arse with a great sense of pride and joy and rebelliousness, and sent it out into the world. And it was feckin’ great.” Unlike the staggeringly prolific Dylan, MacGowan and the Pogues gave us just a handful of albums. But they were great albums, with a singular style. It was worth a trip to Tulsa to remember them. Pro tip: A short walk from the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa is McNellie’s, a fine Irish pub and the perfect spot to raise a glass to Shane and the Pogues.

A hectic day of travel and a long, stressful night retrieving a lost suitcase had me in a fitful sleep. My mind raced from one thought to the next, none stronger than the caffeine and adrenaline still working its way out of my system. I looked up at the slightly open hotel window and heard something I'd never heard before, though I recognized it instantly. The Adhan is the Muslim call to prayer, sung five times each day from minarets around the world. I was hearing the call for Salat al-fajr - the prayer at dawn. The words were Arabic. The delivery, over loudspeakers, was slightly operatic, with a strong tenor voice and a religious sense of urgency. I found it soothing, and fell asleep, if only for a few hours. Every American who fancies themself a world traveler just because they've been to several European countries – I sheepishly count myself in this group – must visit Istanbul, the largest city in Europe with more than 15 million residents. It was our first visit to a Muslim city, a fact that was driven home when the hotel concierge showed us to our room and concluded with: “We are a dry hotel.” Drinking alcohol is considered haram, or forbidden, in Islam. Most hotels and restaurants serve it, for travelers and non-Muslims. But our hotel, which also restricts the use of the spa to women in the first half of the day, men in the second, did not. I’m somewhat relieved to say that neither Mary nor I found this disappointing after three weeks in France, Ireland, Portugal, and Italy. Perhaps the universe was suggesting we’d had juuuuust enough wine (and Guinness) for now. Not that we were completely dry for our entire stay here. We tried Turkish wine at one restaurant - my glass of cabernet seemed much better than the chardonnay Mary sampled. I even ordered a cocktail before dinner at another spot, which was a mistake. Turkey, like most European countries, is stingy with ice. My Moscow Mule, topped with soggy mint, had none. I took two sips to be polite – people here are very polite – then ordered a beer. Speaking of the people, the overall personality of the Turks we encountered was a departure after two weeks of highly expressive Italians and Portuguese – not to mention the Irish and French before that. The locals in Istanbul seemed more stern. It didn’t help that neither of us speaks Turkish and fewer of them spoke English than in other countries we’d been to. But in direct conversation, a polite friendliness emerged. An example: We’d successfully avoided acquiring too many things on this trip, but we were in the market for a small rug for just inside our front door. Turkey seemed like the place to get it, but it’s also one of the many places where buyers are expected to haggle, and we were nervous. We found a rug in one store, and I asked: “How much?” Before quoting a price of 1,500 Lira – about 80 bucks – he told me it was a “beautiful antique” and a “good choice.” The rug seemed to have some age, but I took this to be part of the haggling, and came back with 1,200. He looked at a hand-written tag on the rug, then consulted a worn-out spiral notebook. He was either checking the price he paid for it, or pretending to check the price he paid for it. I expected a counter-offer. “Yes,” he replied curtly. “I can do that.” Then a man who appeared to be a co-propietor of the shop asked: “Would you like some tea?” I have no idea whether I overpaid. But at about $60, we felt fine about the purchase, and said yes to the tea. Meanwhile, the man we’d bargained with took took the rug down from the wall and examined it closely. “One moment,” he said, holding a finger up. He walked over to a chair, sat down, and began to repair – by hand, with a needle and thread - a minor flaw we hadn’t noticed. The tea emerged and, we sat for 15 minutes, talking about Turkish rugs, and the region where ours came from, while a few more knots were fixed. Then he folded it neatly, placed it in a bag, and we said good bye. Don't even get me started on the very friendly Turkish barman who taught us how to smoke a hookah pipe. Our hotel was in the Sultanahmet neighborhood, the oldest in the city. Its narrow, hilly, cobblestone streets reminded us of the Alfama in Lisbon. There were fewer sidewalk cafes, but most restaurants blended between inside and out. It is also home to two very important buildings – the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia. The Blue Mosque – officially known as the Sultan Ahmed Mosque – is the larger and more beautiful of the two. But we chose to visit the Hagia Sophia for its historic significance. Originally built 1,500 years ago as an Orthodox Christian Cathedral, it became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1483. It was turned into a museum in 1934. In 2020, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan annulled its status as a Unesco World Heritage Site and turned it back into a mosque. You can still visit, but tourists are shuttled out during prayers, women must wear head scarves, and everyone must remove their shoes. We also waited in quite a long line, presumably because of security concerns over a recent terrorist attack in another part of the city. The first thing you notice about the Hagia Sophia is that is something of an architectural hodgepodge. This is because it was expanded over the years, in particular when it was converted to a mosque and four minarets were added. Inside it has all the grandeur of the great Christian cathedrals, with one major exception – there are almost no pictures or statues. Some Christian frescos that predate 1493 remain, but you can see curtains that allow them to be covered up. Most people know that depictions of the prophet Mohammad are strictly prohibited in Islam. What I didn’t know until my visit was that all pictures and statues of people are also forbidden, to fight the tendency to worship idols. Not that there isn’t beautiful artwork. It simply exists in the form of detailed ornamentation, both on walls and brilliant stained-glass windows, as well as Arabic calligraphy. It’s easy to start to compare this to other religious buildings, especially the cathedrals we'd just visited. But it’s also easy to leave that to the theologians and the art historians. Having just struggled for months to build a wooden shed, I stood in awe that such a grand building was constructed 1,500 years ago. The hills of Istanbul also make for some powerful views of the Bosphorus, the waterway boundary between Europe and Asia, connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and the world beyond. At first I thought the dozens of cargo ships anchored near the entrance to the strait might be a consequence of the war in Ukraine, where vital grain shipments have been held up. But our waiter explained that it was a normal day in the “parking lot,” as ships waited their turn to enter the strait one at a time. Sure enough, when I had breakfast the next day, I noticed that the ships closest to the shore were not the same as the day before. We enjoyed several excellent Turkish meals, all of them featuring fresh tomato, green peppers, and red onion, often paired with grilled lamb, beef, or fresh fish. The highlight meal of this stay, however, was Azerbaijani cuisine at Zeferan, in our hotel. The Ajwa Sultanahmet is owned by a businessman from Azerbaijan, and it features the restaurant, as well as beautiful Azerbaijani art. Our meal started with Piti, a soup made with lamb meat, lamb fat, chestnuts, chickpeas, dried plums and saffron. Simply put, it was the best soup I’ve ever tasted – rich broth, and a perfect blend of salty and sweet. Our entrée was a Shah Pilaff, which resembles a layer cake made of baked dough. The dish, which serves two, was cut and opened tableside, revealing a filling of lamb, dried apricot, prunes, raisins, chestnuts, and rice seasoned with saffron and butter. We couldn’t eat it all, but it was delicious, and probably would have been even better as leftovers, if we could have taken it home. It would have been nice to spend more time in Istanbul, and there were more places I would have liked to see, especially the inside of the Blue Mosque. But this was a brief stopover on the way to the “destination” of this journey – India and the wedding of our friend’s daughter. On to Mumbai! Check out our other travel stories here.