Elvis Ate Dynamite

Good-Bye Elvis

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Lawyer, legal editor, mediocre guitar player, aging punk rocker.

  • Fresh Strings

    The news has been bad lately. Really bad. From Washington, D.C., to Minneapolis, to Venezuela, it’s chaos, violence, and more chaos. Turning the TV on or looking at social media these days feels hearing Simon & Garfunkel’s 1966 version of “Silent Night,” played over the backdrop of the Seven O’Clock News, for the first time. 

    Maybe it’s good that we’ve been through nightmares like this before?

    But sometimes it’s just too much. 

    So, instead of tuning in and losing my mind, I spent some time over the past few days doing something that’s oddly relaxing. I restrung my guitars. 

    Not that I have a huge collection. I have exactly three: an Ibanez Art Wood acoustic, a Fender Telecaster, and a Fender Joe Strummer edition Campfire acoustic.

    Anyway, I’m no luthier, but there’s something about the process of restringing a guitar that’s kind of therapeutic. It’s not complicated work, but it requires some concentration and some patience. I prefer to remove all of the strings and then put the new ones on, from the sixth string (low E) to the first string (high E). Some more experienced guitar players prefer to replace each string individually, but there’s no magic to the process. It’s just removing the old string, replacing it with the new, stretching it a bit, and winding it around the tuner until it’s in tune. And then the most satisfying part of all: snipping the excess string off the end, so the newly installed string is nice and tightly wound around the tuning peg. 

    If you allow just enough slack to begin with, then wind the peg till the string is in tune, it’s likely to stay in tune for a while. 

    It’s such a satisfying process — just the right balance of work between your hands and your brain — and nothing sounds better than a freshly restrung guitar.

    As long as it’s in tune.

    Once I restring my guitars, I check the tuning against the app on my phone, and then I try them out. My song of choice lately is “The Promised Land” from Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. And maybe “Youngstown.” And “Racing in the Street.” And, aw, what the heck, let’s throw a little Clash in there, too. “London Calling” or “Death or Glory.” They all sound great on fresh strings.

    Which is not to say that I won’t waste some time doom-scrolling tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day. It’s just that, sometimes, all you can do is put some fresh strings on your guitar and play a little rock ’n roll. The bad news’ll wait.

  • Happy New Year!

    Aaaand we’re back.

    I took some much needed time off during the holidays, the unintended consequence of which was that I didn’t post on my blog for about two weeks. But I’m back to working a normal schedule now, so fired up the laptop and I’m getting back into writing, too.

    The holiday break was great. Our youngest came up from downstate, where she’s lived since graduating from college, and spent a week with us over Christmas. So, we hung out, ate a lot, got together with family, watched football, and did all that holiday stuff. (Professional writing tip: always use hung as the past tense of hang, unless you’re talking about an execution. Then it’s hanged.)

    And, speaking of football, my and my daughter’s alma mater, the University of Illinois, beat Tennessee in the Music City Bowl on December 30 and the game was actually fun to watch. And then Indiana (the bandwagon I jumped on this season) won the Rose Bowl, which was fun too. I’m not going to pretend I understand how these college football playoffs work, but the Hoosiers winning a national title would really be something. 

    On top of all that, we’ve been dealing with these feral cats who’ve more or less taken over our home, which has been … a little challenging. Between corralling, or attempting to corral, three new cats for vet appointments, we’ve had to negotiate an uneasy peace between them and our two older cats, Gordy and Waffle, who are still a bit confused by all of this. And, because no good deed goes unpunished, the mom cat is now in heat (thankfully, she’s going to be spayed next week — not a moment too soon). It’s not her fault, of course, but the wailing and gnashing of teeth is something to behold. Especially at three o’clock in the morning.

    Nonetheless, I found the time to play guitar over the past few weeks (much to the new and old cats’ chagrin), aided by two Christmas gifts. One was a present to myself: a proper guitar stool (see the picture above). The other, thanks to my wonderful and long-suffering wife, was an acoustic guitar cleaning kit, as a result of which my Ibanez Art Wood is looking pretty spiffy (again, see picture above). 

    So, I may or may not torture you with more guitar playing videos in the new year, but, hey, practice makes perfect.

    I’m also working on a piece that I’ve been struggling with for the past month or so, but I hope to get it up soon. It’s my take on everybody’s favorite Christmas song, the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York.” It’s … complicated.

    Anyway, I hope you had a chance to rest and relax over the past couple of weeks. Let’s hope 2026 is less challenging and more uplifting than 2025. I think we all deserve that.

  • Missing Joe Strummer

    Yesterday marked the 23rd anniversary of Joe Strummer’s passing and I think we could use him now more than ever.

  • Joe Ely, the Clash, and I Fought the Law

    Happy Friday, everybody. Well, we lost another legend (as I mentioned the other day) — the great Joe Ely has gone to that roadhouse in the sky. Ely, as you may know, was a great friend and admirer of Joe Strummer and the Clash, having toured with them and sung background vocals on “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” one of their biggest, if not the biggest, hits. Shortly after Ely passed away, the official Joe Strummer IG page posted a short video of him playing and signing “I Fought the Law,” originally written by Sonny Curtis and recorded by the Bobby Fuller Four. Clash fans, of course, know that they covered it, too, on the US version of their debut album. As I mention in the video, that was the first Clash song I heard on the radio, and that got me thinking about how musical innovators — punks, hip-hop artists, roots musicians — often go back in time to find that vital thing that makes music great, and they bring it forward into the future. 

  • Spider Stacy, NA Beer, and Personal Vindication

    I promise, dear reader, that this is a nonjudgmental post. Nobody hates a buzzkill more than I do. This is just a post about … not getting buzzed.

    Earlier this week, the Pogues’ Spider Stacy turned 67 (a wee bit older than I am) and posted a celebratory photo on Instagram. In it, Stacy’s smoking a cigarette and holding a can of Guinness Zero, the Dublin brewery’s entry into the non-alcoholic beer trend. And that photo made me feel vindicated.

    Let me explain. This all goes back to late last June when some old high school friends invited my wife and me to a cookout on a Saturday afternoon. When we asked them what we could bring, they suggested NA beer. Now, I had not done any serious drinking for decades, but I still enjoyed an occasional beer on a Friday or Saturday night.

    Nevertheless, being good party guests, Jennifer and I agreed to bring NA beer to their function.

    Of course, this being the internet age, we went online to research the best NA beers available, and we came across Athletic Brewing, a company that sells only NA products. So, we bought a couple of different Athletic varieties (if memory serves, the Upside Dawn Golden and the Free Wave Hazy IPA) to the get-together. 

    As it turns out, on this particular Saturday, we were driving into Chicago after the cookout to see a screening of Garland Jeffreys: The King of In Between, which our friend Claire Jeffreys produced, and then staying downtown overnight to march in the Chicago Pride Parade with our friends from Lambda Legal the next day. So, being asked to bring NA beer to the cookout was serendipitous: we didn’t want to drink the real thing and then hop in the car and drive a good 50 minutes into the city on a Saturday evening.

    Anyway, we both tried the Athletic and we thought it was pretty good. And here’s what really caught my attention: It’s much lower in calories than comparable alcoholic beers. For example, the Upside Dawn Golden is 45 calories, which is considerably less than a standard light beer. Honestly, seeing that on the label really changed my perspective on drinking beer.

    Since that fateful afternoon, we’ve tried a wide range of NA beers, including Krombacher o.0, Heineken Zero, Clausthaler, Stella Artois Zero, Guinness Zero, Blue Moon NA, and several other Athletic varieties. So far, the only one I have not particularly cared for is Budweiser 0.0, but, with apologies to Harry Caray, I’ve never been much of a Bud fan. 

    And there’s an added bonus:  a lot of bars and restaurants serve NA beers these days, which means that when you go out for dinner or drinks, you don’t really have to worry about having a second or third (or, whatever — as I said, no judgment). Not only are you okay to drive despite indulging in a few beers, you haven’t ingested very many calories either. So, it’s a big win, as far as I’m concerned.

    But, as I often boast, I’m half Irish and all lawyer. So, should I really drink NA beer? I mean, what if we traveled to Ireland again — for the fourth time in a few years — and we’re at Murray’s Bar or Bruxelles and I ordered a … Guinness Zero. Would my Sainted Irish Mother (who didn’t really drink that much, as it happens) turn in her grave? Would the statue of the late, great Phil Lynott lurch off its base, march into the bar, and smack the pint out of my hand? 

    No, of course not. Because Irish culture is not, in fact, about drinking in a pub in Grafton Street. 

    And even if that’s a small part of it, I’ve got Spider Stacy in my corner. Sure, he’s from the UK, but so was Shane MacGowan. The important point is that he’s a Pogue. A real, live, actual Pogue. Drinking Guinness Zero.

    If he can do it, anyone can.

    Not saying you should, mind you. But you can.

  • Happy Birthday, Paul Simonon; Feral — or Not So Feral — Cat Update

    Cover of the Clash’s London Calling LP featuring Pennie Smith’s legendary photo of Paul Simonon smashing his bass.

    After two major losses in the span of a week — Raul Malo of the Mavericks and Joe Ely, the Texas troubadour — I almost overlooked a happy occasion: the 70th birthday of Paul Simonon, bass player for the Clash and Gorillaz.

    Paul’s story is a wild one. He was not a musician when first he met Mick Jones in the mid-1970s. He was an art student whose girlfriend dragged him to see Mick play at a club against his will. But when they met, Mick saw something in Paul, and it wasn’t long before Mick started telling people, “This is my bass player but he can’t play.”

    Paul Simonon did, in fact, learn to play bass, using one that Mick borrowed from another musician, and, by the time the Clash recorded their self-titled debut album in 1977, he was quite good at it. But perhaps just as importantly, Paul came up with the band’s name and its signature look.

    And I’m not sure how I missed this bit of synchronicity until just this week: Paul Simonon was born in 1955, the same year as my brother John, who first turned me on to the Clash decades ago.

    Here’s another little quirk about Paul: he did not like to play bass and sing at the same time, so when the Clash played “Guns of Brixton” live, he played rhythm guitar and Joe Strummer played bass. Still, not bad for a bass player who couldn’t play.

    If you’re interested in his recent work, he and Galen Ayers put out a great album in 2023 called “Can We Do Tomorrow Another Day?” It’s not just an excellent title, it’s an excellent record.

    One more thing: I haven’t been writing as much as I’d like to because I’ve been spending a lot of time navigating between our two cats, Gordy and Waffle, and the three feral cats I mentioned a couple of weeks back. As I predicted at the time, the temperatures got significantly colder and, being the sucker for cats and dogs that I am, I let them in the house. Of course, it was far more complicated than that — it took several attempts and a lot of coaxing to get them inside. Well, to get the kittens inside; the mom was eager to escape the cold.

    But, anyway, now their all safe and warm inside — Boots, the mom, Pankcake, and his or her sibling, Fluffy. (We can’t get close enough to the kittens to tell their sex just yet.)

    They spend most of their time in the basement, but they’re slowly adjusting to indoor life. 

    Next step: the veterinarian for all three.

    In any event, we’re making progress with the new and old cats, so I should be able to get back to posting more regularly. We shall see.

  • RIP Raul Malo

    I’ve seen a lot of wonderful tributes to the Maverick’s Raul Malo since he passed on Monday evening, but I wanted to share one thing that might get overlooked. It’s a story about a t-shirt, but also about his goodheartedness and genuine decency. I’m so sad that we won’t ever be able to see him play live again, but really grateful that we were able to see him so many times.

  • Dancing the Night(s) Away with the Mavericks and Friends

    Steve Earle performs at Dance The Night Away: A 35-Year Musical Legacy Celebrating the Mavericks & Honoring Raul Malo

    To follow up on Friday’s post about Mavericks’ singer/songwriter Raul Malo, who’s facing a particularly aggressive type of brain cancer, I spent a good part of the weekend watching the livestream of the two tribute concerts at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium that marked the band’s 35 years in the business and Malo’s incredible contributions to country, roots, Latin music, and more. The shows had so many highlights, I really don’t know where to begin.

    Well, yes I do. The place to begin is the incredible show of love and support from a fantastic group of artists, including Steve Earle, Marty Stuart, Maggie Rose, Jim Lauderdale, Hector Tellez, Jr., JD McPherson, Rodney Crowell, Jimmie Vaughn, and Jamie Hanna. They, along with CBS News’ Anthony Mason and music executive Scott Borchetta, echoed what many of us have been saying for a long time: The Mavericks are one of the best bands in the world. Their catalogue is unrivaled and their live performances are among the most life-affirming experiences you will ever have. 

    When dozens of their peers take the stage and tell you that the Mavericks are that good, you should believe them.

    It was also great to see the return of two alumni — original bassist Robert Reynolds, who told a very emotional story about meeting Raul in Miami in the late 1980s, and accordion player Michael Guerra, who dueled Percy Cardona, the Mavericks’ current master of everybody’s favorite polka instrument. (It’s a Chicago thing. You wouldn’t understand.)

    Sadly, Raul could not be at the Ryman for these shows. His wife, Betty Malo, posted on social media Friday morning that he was in the hospital, which is not uncommon with stage 4 cancer. Watching the livestream, I sensed that Raul’s absence affected everyone involved, but they still put on two amazing tribute concerts, each about three hours long. 

    It’s hard to name the best performances over those two nights. The Mavericks put out so many great songs and so many great artists were on stage cranking them out, every song was the best song. Among my favorites: “Come Unto Me,” a Latin scorcher that’s easily my favorite Mavericks song; “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down,” originally recorded with Flaco Jimenez on accordion; “Live Close By (Visit Often),” a song Raul co-wrote with K.T. Oslin in 2001 which appears on the Maverick’s latest release, Moon and Stars; “What a Crying Shame”; “O What a Thrill”; “Here Comes the Rain”; “Back in Your Arms Again”; “As Long as There’s Loving Tonight” … see what I mean? Too many to name.

    But, if I had to pick one performance that I found particularly moving, it would be this: Hector Tellez, Jr., singing “From Hell to Paradise,” a song Raul wrote about his family escaping tyranny in Cuba. It’s an amazing song with an important message about why so many people come to this country, and it resonates today more than ever.

    When Jennifer and I saw the Mavericks in Milwaukee last spring, we wondered how many more times we would get to see them play. Though I don’t want to say this out loud, we both knew that show could have been the last. I will hold out hope that that’s not the case, but life is tenuous and the future is always uncertain.

    If that was, in fact, our last Mavericks show, I will never forget how they closed it: with a revved-up cover of the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR.” Sung by a Cuban-American whose family fled Castro.

    I think he was trying to tell us something.

    Anyway, let’s send all the love and peace and prayers to Raul Malo and his family.

    Vaya con Dios, amigo.

  • Raul Malo of the Mavericks Is Facing a Health Crisis, But You Can Help

    Happy Friday, everyone. In today’s video, I play a snippet of the Maverick’s “What a Crying Crying Shame,” the title song from their 1994 album — my first introduction to this fantastic band — and I share some sad news about the health of their lead singer, Raul Malo.

    Raul is one of the greatest singers of all time, and a pretty good songwriter and guitar player to! The Mavericks have been one of Jennifer’s and my favorite bands since we first saw them at a small club called FitzGerald’s in Berwyn, Illinois, touring in support of that album. As I’ve explained before, not long after that show, their career exploded.

    But now Raul is facing the fight of his life, a rare brain cancer. And you can help defray the costs by live-streaming their concerts tonight and tomorrow night at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville through nugs.net. Raul will not be performing with the band, but they will have a host of friends and guest artists sitting in, including Hector Tellez Jr., JD McPherson, Jimmie Vaughan, Maggie Rose, Marty Stuart, Patty Griffin, Steve Earle, and Sweet Lizzy Project. 

    Tune in for a great show and help out Raul and his family!

  • Important Feral Cat Update

    I will, in fact, return to our regularly scheduled program of punk rock and loud guitars, but, in light of the rather heavy content I’ve posted lately — and anticipate posting anon — I thought we could all use a break. So, without further ado, I give you this important feral cat update.

    About five weeks ago, much to the chagrin of our resident cats, Gordy and Waffle, we discovered a feral cat family living under our deck. Or, more accurately, they discovered us. Anyway, they just showed up in our backyard without warning: a mom who’s mostly black with white paws and a small white patch on her chest, and two gray-brown tabby kittens, one with short hair and one who’s quite … fluffy. (Jennifer named them Boots, Pancake, and Fluffy, respectively.)

    So, naturally, we put food and water out for them and tried to figure out our next steps. We contacted our local police, as we were instructed to do, and they told us that they have a civilian employee who can trap the cats, scan them (specifically, the mom) for microchips, and, assuming they don’t belong to a family, bring them to a shelter for veterinary care and adoption. 

    Perfect, right?

    Except that the cat-catcher never showed up, even after we left several messages. So, we contacted a local shelter, and they told us that (a) they don’t capture feral cats; we would have to do that (in and of itself, not a major problem); and (b) they don’t take in feral cats for adoption; instead, they will have their vet check them out, fix them, and then they will return the cats to us.

    In other words, in this part of the world, what you do with feral cats is get them fixed and let them live out their lives as feral cats.

    Okay, but it’s winter now, for all intents and purposes. And let’s just say that, even though I was raised a dog person, I’m now a full-fledged cat person. (Hey, I was raised Catholic too …)

    Anyway, given the lack of local support, we did what any rational person would do in these circumstances. We made it our life’s mission to feed and care for these cats (along with Gordy and Waffle, of course, who are more than a little confused).

    For now, they remain outside … but we got them a pretty deluxe heated shelter and we put food and fresh water out twice a day. 

    The plan is to build up trust, get them in our cat carrier, bring them to the vet for a checkup (and fixing!), and then figure out what to do.

    The trust building is going well. Over the course of the past few weeks, we got the mom to approach us, cautiously, and sniff an outstretched hand. Then she let us pat her gently on the head. Eventually we could pet her while she ate. 

    And over the past couple of days — STOP THE PRESSES! — I have been able to pick her up on a few occasions. In fact, she doesn’t really fuss when I do, as long as I don’t try to hold her too long.

    Her babies (we estimate them to be at least a couple of months old) are less sure of us. They tend to run away when they see us, but lately they only run a short distance and stop to see what we’re up to. They seem to react positively, albeit cautiously, to the kinds of things you say to small animals, like “hey, buddy.” 

    So, it’s a work in progress, and we’re not really sure where it will lead. All I can say is that when a friend recently asked us how many cats we have, we said … “it’s complicated.”

    Do we have two cats, two indoor cats and three outdoor cats, or five cats? Who’s to say, but if it gets much colder, I might just open the sliders on the back deck and let all hell break loose.

    This has been an important feral cat update. Thank you for your attention to this matter.