American Rambler with Colin Woodward: Recent Episodes
Colin Woodward
Robert Mann returns to the podcast to talk about his latest book, Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU. Long--known as "The Kingfish" after a character from the popular radio show Amos 'n' Andy--was the governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and then senator until his death in 1935 (a fact that did not stop him from effectively being governor while serving as senator). In the seven years in which he had a virtual dictatorship, he accomplished a lot, perhaps no more so than he did at LSU.
Long brought LSU into the ranks of modern southern colleges. For better or worse, it was Huey Long that made LSU what it is now: a football powerhouse with good academic departments. He also added to the state's odd and colorful history with his antics. As he did with everything, Long bent the law to his will so long as a pet project benefited. During Long's tenure, LSU grew considerably.
LSU has changed quite a bit from the 1930s. But in other ways, it has not. Bob and Colin talk about what Long did, how it created a distinct LSU culture, and why Long might be saddened by what the university has become today.
Dewar MacLeod is a Californian by way of Canada. He teaches in New Jersey now, but he grew up in L.A. in the 60s and 70s. And it was a 1969 album--the Who's rock opera Tommy--that blew his mind. In his latest book, Tommy, Trauma, and Postwar Youth Culture, he looks at what Tommy meant for the 60s, composer Pete Townshend, and the legions of Who fans who continue to love it to this day.
A double album that put the Who into the ranks of premier rock bands, Tommy is a story of a "deaf, dumb, and blind boy" who goes on a spiritual journey. Along the way, he meets unsavory characters such as Cousin Kevin, Uncle Ernie, and the Acid Queen before achieving enlightenment and starting his own religion full of rebellious followers.
Tommy was not only a smash record, it became transcendent when the Who played it live. It also inspired a memorable, albeit over-the-top 1975 Ken Russell film and a Broadway and London musical. Pete Townshend has talked about the album often since it came out. But why did he not want to talk to Dewar about it? And how consistent are Pete's takes on is own songs? Should we trust what Pete has had to say? And what does the album tell us about his own trauma and that of his generation?
Dewar takes on many complex themes in his book. But then again, Tommy is a complex album. While bands don't often do double album rock operas anymore, Tommy addresses issues that are still relevant in the 21st century. In a world facing existential threats (as always?), aren't we all a little traumatized by now? So, put on your headphones and prepare for a true Amazing Journey!
J. P. Miller is an Atlanta-based writer of numerous books for young readers. As she tells Colin, she served in the military for many years before joining the forest service. Eventually, she decided she wanted to write fulltime. She hasn't regretted that decision. And she's been prolific, penning titles in the Leaders Like Us and Black Lives Matters series. Her latest book is about Juneteenth, and she has another one coming out soon on HBCUs. She and Colin talk about her path to writing, her discipline, and some hard lessons she's learned about publishing along the way.
Order her book on Juneteenth!
https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Pogo-Books-Holiday-History/dp/B0BY17HFCG/ref=sr_1_3?crid=2BVULRJGAHOHD&keywords=juneteenth+j.+p.+miller&qid=1688928220&sprefix=juneteenth+j.+p.+miller%2Caps%2C89&sr=8-3
Chris Graham returns to the podcast to talk about his new (and first) book, Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause: Confessions of a Southern Church. His book looks at the history of St. Paul's in Richmond. The church became famous for being where two prominent Confederates--Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis--worshipped during the Civil War. In the latter years of the 19th century, the church became a centerpiece of the Lost Cause in Richmond.
Before the civil rights movement swept the South in the post-WWII era, St. Paul's was a conservative place that believed--as did most of the South--in paternalism and the wisdom of Jim Crow society. Even more progressive movements, like the Social Gospel of the 1920s, failed to make a dent in the church's racial attitudes.
By the late-60s, though, Richmond's politics and racial demographics had changed significantly. St. Paul's finally began to break down barriers between the races, though the struggle continues to this day. Dr. Graham's book is a result of the church reckoning with its past, and Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause is a timely book that addresses issues made only more important in the wake of the Black Lives Matter and the removal of Civil War monuments in Richmond.
John C. Rodrigue returns!
John is a professor of history at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, where he has been since 2007. He was one of Colin's professors at LSU when they were both in Baton Rouge in the early 2000s. John's new book is Freedom's Crescent: The Civil War and the Destruction of Slavery in the Lower Mississippi Valley (Cambridge University Press). It's John's third book.
Influenced by everything from Eugene Genovese to Timothy Snyder's book on Eastern Europe, Bloodlands, Freedom's Crescent looks at the process whereby the Union went from freeing (some) slaves via the Emancipation Proclamation to the eradication of slavery through the 13th Amendment. AsJohn makes clear, it was a complicated and frustrating process.
Building on work of Armstead Robinson, James Oakes, and Michael Vorenberg, John provides a detailed look at how Union commanders and politicians grappled with thorny military, political, and constitutional issues in the western theater of operations. Historians have written many books about slaves fleeing to Union lines and thus "emancipating themselves." But what happened when the Union army came to them, and how did this affect the North's ability to maintain the loyalty of former slaveholders?
Colin and John also talk about the state of the history profession generally, wondering whether it makes sense for undergraduates to pursue a Ph.D. in history these days.
Buy John's book here!
https://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-Crescent-Cambridge-Studies-American/dp/1108439349/ref=sr_1_1?crid=W5WEZTCUCD03&keywords=freedom%27s+crescent&qid=1679492796&sprefix=freedom%27s+crescent%2Caps%2C110&sr=8-1
Greg Wells is a hustler. The owner of Records and Relics in the Church Hill nieghborhood of Richmond, he's been buying and selling vinyl for a long time. As he tells Colin, he sold sold records at antique stores, vinyl shows, and on Ebay before he decided to get his own place.
Greg has been in Richmond for over 25 years, and he's seen the city change quite a bit. But he's always been devoted to vinyl. Now he's the owner of a thriving business in a neighborhood humming with coffee shops, bars, and restaurants.
An in-store podcast, Greg walks Colin through the process of setting up a small buisness, dealing with Covid, and not becoming a "record store guy" cliche.
So, stop by the shop! Records and Relics is open Friday-Sunday, 12-5. Used vinyl only, but Greg is open to buying and trades. You can follow the store here:
https://www.facebook.com/recordsandrelicsrva
https://www.instagram.com/recordsandrelicsrva/?hl=en
A professor at Texas A & M since the late-90s, David Vaught is a longtime baseball fan. A native of the Bay Area, he visited ever-chilly Candlestick Park as a kid and remembered seeing Perry pitch. But while he has loved the Giants, Spitter: Baseball's Notorious Gaylord Perry grew out of a previous book on baseball.
San Francisco was just one of many teams Perry played for, including the Indians, Rangers, Yankees, Braves, Royals, and Mariners. As he shows in his terrific biography, Gaylord Perry wasn't just notorious for his use of the spitter, he was also a fierce competitor and difficult teammate to get along with. Perry was a terror to batters as well as the men in the field behind him, management, and owners. Much of his competitive fire was rooted in his hard upbringing in rural eastern North Carolina, where he was the son of tobacco sharecroppers. He was also the younger brother of Jim Perry, who excelled as a major league pitcher.
What are we to make of Perry? Did he deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? A known cheater who lied about his cheating, Perry nevertheless compiled impressive career stats, including more than 300 wins, two Cy Youngs (one in each league), and more than 3,500 strikeouts. He was admired for hiding his "hard slider" from the prying eyes of umpires for many years. But how do we evaluate him in the context of baseball ethics, where rules are often abused and ever changing? Perry was controversial, but should we condemn him? Whatever we make of Perry, Davud Vaught has written a compelling and well researched book.
Buy David' book here: https://www.amazon.com/Spitter-Baseballs-Notorious-Swaim-Paup-sponsored/dp/1648430643/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3100EF75O41XU&keywords=david+vaught&qid=1674659757&sprefix=david+vaught%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1
Play All Night!: Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East is Bob Beatty's most recent book. Bob, however, has been an Allman Brothers fan for a long time. Like the Allmans, Bob has Florida roots. He now lives and works in Tennessee, where he got his Ph.D. and is a history and museum consultant.
Bob's fast-reading book looks at the breakout album for the Allmans. Released in 1971, Live at Fillmore East is one of the best live albums ever, and it brought the band to a mass audience. It features the classic Allmans lineup, with Duane Allman and Dickey Betts on guitar, Gregg Allman on vocals and organ, Berry Oakley on bass, and Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johanson on drums.
Unfortunately, though Duane started the Allman Brothers Band, his time with the group was relatively brief. He died in a motorcycle accident only a few months after At Fillmore East came out. Duane was just 24, and there seemed no limit to what he could do as a guitarist.
As Bob makes clear, with Duane at the helm, the Allmans were closer to blues and acid rock than the more laid back band they became later. The radio friendly mid-70s sound of the ABB was the result of Dickey Betts writing more country-flavored tunes. Nothing wrong with that. But the Duane period has a tougher quality.
Bob and Colin talk about how the Allmans formed, why the Fillmore album took off with listeners, and how the band continued to evolve amid lineup changes and inner-tensions.
John Kirk is English, but he has lived in Arkansas for more than ten years. Raised in the Manchester area, his fascination with the US began as a graduate student, where he studied the civil rights movement. He is the author and editor of ten books, and his newest is on soldier, philanthropist, and governor Winthrop Rockefeller (yes, that Rockefeller family). It is the first fullscale scholarly treatment of WR's early life.
In Arkansas, the legacy of Winthrop Rockefeller is a palpable one. Elected in 1966, WR was the first Republican Arkansas governor since Reconstruction. The fact that it took 90 years for that to happen says a lot about the political culture in which he lived. His journey from New York City to Little Rock may seem odd for someone of his stature, but in many ways it was an old American story of someone starting fresh by going west.
WR was a reformer, but as John shows, the governor was always progressive when it came to civil rights. A flawed man, to be sure, WR nevertheless used his money and family name for good. While he struggled as a student at Yale, he felt comfortable in the oil fields of the 1930s and as an officer during World War II, where he was wounded in the Pacific during a kamikaze attack.
John's book stops in 1956 when WR arrives in Arkansas. The book provides a detailed and penetrating look at Rockefeller, and it sets the stage for what will no doubt be an engaging and well-researched second volume.
Bradley J. Sommer is a native of Ohio who received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 2021. In Pittsburgh, he studied under labor historian Joe William Trotter. His dissertation was “Tomorrow Never Came: Race, Class, Reform, Conflict, and the Decline of an Industrial City, Toledo, Ohio, 1930-1980,” which he is now revising into a book.
Ohio is one of the country’s most populous states, a “purple” place that has usually determined the outcome of the presidential elections (though not in 2020, when Ohio went overwhelmingly for Trump). Brad talks about the difference between being a “de-industrial” and “post-industrial” city. And though Ohio has had its problems, none of its cities have been in crisis the way Detroit or Baltimore have.
Brad is also on the vicious and unforgiving job market, so if you’re looking for a good historian, let him know. You can read more about him at https://bradleyjsommer.com. You can also follow him at @DrHistoryBrad on Twitter.
Edward T. O'Donnell is a professor of history at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. A native of the Bay State, Ed completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University. For years, he was the host of the history podcast In the Past Lane, whose guests included Ken Burns.
Ed has stayed focused throughout his career. At Columbia, he gave history tours around lower Manhattan, while studying the labor movement in America. He also started a family. This type of focus has allowed helped him publish several books: 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about Irish- American History; Ship Ablaze: The Tragedy of the Steamboat General Slocum; Henry George and the Crisis of Inequality; and Visions of America. He is on sabbatical now, where he hopes to fisnish a new writing project. Unfortunately, he is no longer podcasting. But he has some interesting things to say about the process and the guests he talked with.
Dr. Ruth Hawkins didn't get her Ph.D. in history, but she has proven one of the most important preservationists in the history of Arkansas. As the head of Heritage Sites Program at Arkansas State University for thirty years, she oversaw the restoration of the Johnny Cash Boyhood Home in Dyess, the Pfeiffer-Hemingway House in Piggott, and Lakeport plantation in southeastern Arkansas along the Mississipi River. For her preservation and other work, Ruth was elected to the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame.
Ruth is the author of Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage, a book that took many years to finish. She says she's in no hurry to write another book. But for those interested in history, the houses ASU and Ruth helped preserve are treasures. They are as close to a time machine as we can get.
Guy Lancaster is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture in Little Rock. He is also one of the foremost historians of lynching in America. American Atrocity is his most recent book.
American Atrocity focuses on Arkansas, but it tells a larger story of lynching and race relations in America. Dr. Lancaster, a native of Arkansas, also gets to the heart of the matter by asking: what is a lynching? And how do we know actually happened in many of these instances? The short answer is: we don't. And what we know or don't know has a lot to do with the history of race in this country, where white people were believed without question when they accused an African American person of a crime.
Mixing traditional primary source research with theory about race, Guy has written an important book. But as he and Colin discuss, lynching hasn't disappeared, it has instead only changed. What can events like the killing of Trayvon Martin and the attacks of January 6 tell us about the legacy of lynching and the continued problem of systematic racism in this country? Lynching is a heavy topic, but these are heavy times.
Michael Stewart Foley has been writing about music and Johnny Cash for a long time. His new book, Citizen Cash: The Political Life and Times of Johnny Cash, looks at the politics of the Man in Black, who had the unique ability to appeal to Democrats and Republicans even when the country was hideously divided. What was the source of his appeal? Cash was by no measure an ideologue, but he became an internationally known figure who championed causes such as Native American rights, prisoners, and men in uniform. Cash practiced what Dr. Foley calls the "politics of empathy." And while Cash was more political than many artists of his day, some didn't think he was political enough.
Colin and Michael talk not just about Cash but his musical and political times, discussing everything from Cash and Vietnam to his competitors Merle Haggard and Bobby Bare, artists with a distinctly blue collar bent. Cash grew up in the cotton fields of rural Arkansas, and he never lost his love for his country or the salt of the earth people who were a part of his history and fan base.
It's been nearly two years, but historian and music expert Court Carney, a professor at Stephen F. Austin State University, returns to talk about the recent Beatles documentary Get Back.
Director Peter Jackson's long-awaited film attempts to put the Beatles' Get Back/Let It Be sessions in the best possible light. Does he succeed? And how do we judge the film based on what we have known about the Beatles for fifty years?
The Beatles began recording what would become the band's last album, Let It Be, in January 1969. It was a few months after the release of the White Album, the product of fruitful but contentious sessions in the summer of 1968. Let It Be wouldn't be released until the spring of 1970, by which time the Beatles had broken up.
The film and album Let It Be--initially to be called Get Back--featured the Beatles trying to get back to a more live and rock and roll sound. The sessions culminated in the famous rooftop concert in London. The Fab Four got in trouble with the cops, but not before recording tracks that made it to the final album.
However difficult the process might have been, in roughly a month, the Beatles had written and recorded an album and rehearsed enough material to begin another (what became Abbey Road). So, what are we to make of Peter Jackson's revisionism? Has be presented a happier band than we knew? Or is he merely documenting the inevitable breakup of the bestselling and most prolific band of all time? Court and Colin have some thoughts.
Amanda Frost is a Harvard-educated lawyer who teaches in Washington, D.C. at American University. You are Not American is her first book. It looks at various moments in United States history where citizenship was debated and legislated in lasting ways. Some of the cases she examines are well known, such as the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which ruled that African Americans had "no rights" that a "white man was bound to respect." Other cases--such as the Wong Kim Ark and Ruth Bryan Owen cases--ended better for those seeking citizenship. But You are Not American shows how often citizenship rights have come under attack and how often immigration and citizenship laws are tainted by overt racism, sexism, and xenophobia.
Christina Proenza-Coles' book, American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World, is now available in paperback. Christina grew up in Miami (which she calls an "apartheid city"), the daughter of a Savannah mom and Cuban dad who fled not Castro but Batista. As a kid in Miami in the 80s, she saw Hispanic culture become dominant in her hometown, and it instilled in her a lifelong interest in America's racial history and makeup.
Christina went to Swathmore for undergrad as a Psych major. She then attended the progressive and interdisciplinary New School for Social Research in New York City, where she studied with Eli Zaretsky and completed a dissertation comparing white settlers in colonial Virginia and Cuba.
Christina's discussion of race and American history goes beyond the United States into places like Haiti, which has a unique and tragic history. Her book explores evergreen topics. But she and Colin talk about how has Trumpism has made historians reassess things they have taken for granted, such as the triumph of democracy over authoritarianism.
Regardless, historians try to stay productive and engaged amid the insanity. And toward the end of their discussion, Christina talks about a famous fan of hers. We won't say who, but we'll give you a hint: he's a big jazz fan.
Ben Beard is a writer based in Chicago. He also loves film. He has written about civil rights and Muhammad Ali in the past, but his most recent book is The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buff's Journey through the South on Screen.
Born and raised in the Deep South, Ben has been writing about movies for years. The South Never Plays Itself covers such well-known titles as Birth of a Nation and Cool Hand Luke, but also examines lesser known films such as God's Little Acre and the William Shatner vehicle, The Intruder. And it looks closely at pictures that are perhaps unappreciated, such as Driving Miss Daisy.
Ben also talks about his affinity for film critics Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael and how he manages to get writing done while holding down a full-time job.
LaQuita Scaife is the daughter of Cecil Scaife, who worked at Sun Records with Sam Phillips. Born in Arkansas, and a man who initially wanted to act, Cecil worked at a radio station in the Mississippi River town of Helena before somehow meeting Phillips. As the Sun promotions man, Cecil traveled to radio stations to get them to play the latest hits by Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis. And he was the man who handed Johnny Cash his gold record for "I Walk the Line."
A colorful, innovative, and driven businessman, Cecil later moved to Nashville, where he continued his work with Cash at Columbia Records. But he eventually went his own way, producing gospel and budget compilation albums in the 1970s and beyond. LaQuita remembers that she never knew who was going to be at the breakfast table on any given day (or what her dad would be dressed like either).
Enjoy this tour of the early rock and roll and Nashville scene, with everybody from Elvis and Cash to Conway Twitty, Billy Ray Cyrus, Brenda Lee, and Amy Grant making an appearance. And have a merry country Christmas, ya'll!
James Horn is a native of England who now resides in Virginia and works in Williamsburg, which makes sense if you know his scholarship. He has a new book out, A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America. His book examines the crucial early years of the English colonies, which involved starvation, warfare, disease, and even cannibalism. While Jamestown is the first permanent English colony in America, it came close to annihilation in the early 1600s.
Opechancanough waged war against the English for decades, but he had a long relationship with European settlers. Born in the mid-16th century, his life spanned over 90s years. He was abducted and traveled to Mexico and Europe as a young man. He remained loyal to the native people of Virginia, however, and proved a fierce adversary of the English.
Colin also asks about Jim's upbringing in England, his early travels in America (involving a semester in Wisconsin and a memorable trip across country via Greyhound bus), and his eventual move to Richmond.
The Alabama rock band Drive-By Truckers have long been one of the hardest working and most thoughtful outfits working today. Now, they have a worthy biographer.
Music writer Stephen Deusner is a native of McNairy County, Tennessee, a place immortalized on the Truckers' 2004 album The Dirty South. Stephen first encountered the Truckers through the band's 2003 album Decoration Day. Since then, he has been hooked. Where the Devil Don't Stay (which takes its name from a Mike Cooley song about a backwoods Alabama bootlegger), is his first book. DBT will be pleased.
Where the Devil Don't Stay tracks the Truckers from their beginnings in north Alabama to their disastrous Memphis move, eventual breakthrough in Athens, Georgia, and making their mark via the two-disc, Skynyrd-inspired opus Southern Rock Opera. Since then, the music has kept coming, most recently on the band's 2020 offering, The New OK.
So, fellow Lot Lizards, drop your Buford stick and grab your Betamax guillotine, it's time to talk some Truckers!
Music used in this episode: "Where the Devil Don't Stay," "Zip City," "Santa Fe," and "Goddamn Lonely Love."
Keith Ryan Cartwright returns to the podcast to talk about his new (and first) book, Black Cowboys of Rodeo: Unsung Heroes from Harlem to Hollywood and the American West. Keith admits he didn't know much about the subject when he started, but he approached his work as another mission to "write about people." Over the course of his years covering rodeos, he was moved by his subject matter and fascinated by the men whose stories have gone untold for far too long.
Keith gives us a tour of the rodeo world, one far more dangerous than most sports. How dangerous is it? And how much money do these cowboys make for such work? Also, what does Mohammad Ali and blaxploitation flicks have to do with rodeo history? Keith lets us know.
Keith and Colin also spend some time discussing the strange world of prison rodeos, the most notorious one being at Angola in southern Louisiana, a place previously run by the imposing Warden Burl Cain.
Robert Mann has dedicated his life to politics. A professor at LSU in the Manship School of Mass Communication, he is the author of numerous books about American history and politics. He now has a memoir out, Backrooms and Bayous: My Life in Louisiana Politics.
Born in west Texas, Bob moved to Louisiana as a young man. A conservative at first who had politically minded parents, he developed his writing chops as a reporter and journalism student. He learned many lessons about politics along the way and eventually got his first major job working for Senator Russell Long. Long was a Democrat and son of the notorious senator and governor Huey Long, the "Kingfish," whose shadow falls long over the state's history. Senator Long made an impression on Bob, and he is still grappling with the Long legacy in Louisiana.
Louisiana has a colorful political history, from "Uncle" Earl Long to Edwin Edwards. Some figures have been sinister, such as Klansman and neo-Nazi David Duke, and Bob was on the ground floor of making sure Duke did not win a prominent seat in Louisiana government. He also worked with Kathleen Blanco, who had the misfortune of being governor during Hurricane Katrina.
While a unique state in many ways, Louisiana is also reflective of American politics generally. Bob has seen many politicians come and go, which is why it's worrying that he fears for this country's political future more than ever.
Music used: "Every Man a King," originally by Huey Long, performed by Randy Newman; "Louisiana, 1927," by Randy Newman; Professor Longhair, "Go to the Mardi Gras"; and in the outro, "Iko Iko" by Dr. John.
In the second half of Colin's two-part conversation with actor and director Lou Antonio, Lou talks about playing Koko in the film Cool Hand Luke and what it was like being on the set with such a storied cast.
Lou also talks about how he was almost chosen to play one of the Corleones in The Godfather, the joys of filming on location, his work on the ill-fated but popular show Dog and Cat (which he did with a young Kim Basinger) and his encounters with such legends as George Peppard, George C. Scott, Don Ameche, and Heath Ledger.
Lou Antonio is an actor and director perhaps best known for playing Koko in the 1967 classic Cool Hand Luke. But his part in that film was just one role in a long career dedicated to the stage, screen, and working behind the camera. Over the years, he met and worked with everyone from George C. Scott and Liz Taylor to Laurence Olivier, William Shatner, and Burt Reynolds.
The son of a Greek immigrant father, Lou grew up in Oklahoma, where he played baseball and football. A bad shoulder injury, however, killed his dreams of being a ballplayer. In New York, Lou studied with Curt Conway and Lee Strasberg before landing roles on TV and in film. In the 1950s and 60s, he was working with acclaimed directors such as Elia Kazan and Otto Preminger. He also met and worked with an impressive array of actors on such films as Splendor in the Grass and Hawaii.
Lou takes the title of his book from Cool Hand Luke, the Paul Newman film about Lucas Jackson, a prisoner on a chain gang who will not conform to the rules. In addition to Newman, Lou played scenes with the legendary Dennis Hopper, Harry Dean Stanton, Strother Martin, George Kennedy, and Joe Don Baker.
In part one of this two-part conversation, Lou discusses how he got from Oklahoma to Hollywood and all the interesting people he met along the way.
Colin continues his conversation with Emory Thomas, Civil War historian and former professor at the University of Georgia, Athens. They discuss his biographies of Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart. Emory also talks about the Civil War sesquicentennial and the tragedy of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston in 2015.
And speaking of Athens, in the intro, Colin talks about attending his first concert since the pandemic began, where he saw the Drive-By Truckers, an alt-country band formerly based in Athens.
Civil War historian Emory Thomas is a native of Richmond, Virginia. It's no coincidence, then, that he is known for his work on the Confederacy, including his biographies of Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stuart. However, he has made Athens, Georgia, his home since the late 1960s.
As a football player at UVA, Emory got the history bug after reading C. Vann Woodward. His interest in the southern past took him to graduate school at Rice, where he studied under the prodigious Frank Vandiver. The University of Georgia was his first and only teaching job, and he stayed there for many years.
In part one of this two-part conversation, Dr. Thomas talks about growing up on the Northside of Richmond, grad school, his military service in Ohio, and his landing in Athens.
It's not often that historians make the leap from interplanetary geology to the study of antebellum Virginia. But Dr. Miller is one such person. And maybe it makes sense that someone from southwestern Pennsylvania who did part of his education in West Virginia, would want to study the inner workings of planets (it's coal country, after all). Now, he is a professor at Drexel University. He's on the podcast to discuss his book on VMI.
VMI was a creature of the Jacksonian era--not because it was populated by Jacksonians necessarily, but because it reflected the struggle or political power between the upper and lower classes, Whigs and Democrats in antebellum America. The hope was that VMI would be a place where men could compete equally with one another, regardless of class, an equality predicated upon their superiority to women and African Americans. While it was and is a military school, VMI cadets did not have to join the military necessarily, and many of them went on to become teachers and engineers.
Founded in the 1830s, VMI was intended to give an education to men of western Virginia, a region that had trouble competing with the politically and economically powerful eastern regions, where planters and slaves were more numerous. As VMI's founders framed it, Virginia would be transformed by providing a military education to instill virtue in men of the emerging urban and middle classes. Today, VMI boasts 1,600 students in what has become the attractive college town of Lexington, just west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Some writers start young. Keith Ryan Cartwright is one of those. An early gift of a typewriter kept Keith busy while growing up in Wisconsin. And he hasn't stopped writing since.
In part one of this conversation (part two will appear when his book comes out this fall), Keith talks about his brief stint in college in Florida, writing on the Madison music scene, and moving to Los Angeles to become a writer. In L..A, he spent a lot of time around bands such as Poison, Tuff, and Ratt and has had the opportunity to interview everyone from The Cult and Quiet Riot to David Lee Roth.
Based in the Nashville area now, Keith's chops as a journalist have served him well over the years. He made the transition to television, where he worked at CMT and had an interesting run-in with football commentator Terry Bradshaw. He has a book coming out later this year, Black Rodeo Cowboys. In the fall, he'll return to the podcast to talk about it.
Sam Wilson, Jr., is the son of the late General Samuel Vaughan Wilson, a member of the World War II unit "Merrill's Marauders," Cold War spy, and commander in Vietnam. His father's shadow falls long over his family, but Sam, Jr., had his own accomplished career in the military. He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, which included a year in Vietnam in the early 70s, where he completed 25 dangerous helicopter missions to locate and pick up wounded soldiers. His experiences in the rice paddies of the Mekong Delta gave him a grudging respect for his North Vietnamese adversaries and led him to doubt the U.S. could win the war in in southeast Asia.
Sam's later career included being an instructor in special forces, an intelligence officer, teacher, and manager at the Sailor's Creek battlefield near his childhood home. He is retired now, living in New Jersey and studying religion and theology. Sam talks with Colin about his military career and how it was shaped by his father, whose hectic schedule put pressure on the family. What was it like to be the son of a spy during the Cold War? Sam gives us an inside look.
In the intro, Colin talks about a recent trip to the beach in North Carolina and visits to Fort Fisher, an impressive Civil War site and the last source of supply for Robert E. Lee's army.
Writer and podcaster David Hill is the author of The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Spring's, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice. Originally from Arkansas, he moved to New York to work as a union organizer but moved back to his hometown for a year to write the book.
One of the notches in the Bible Belt, Arkansas has a colorful history that does not always conform to its 21st century conservative reputation. Hot Springs is the wildest of Arkansas cities and was once where celebrities such as Al Capone and Babe Ruth spent their free time. Even though gambling was technically illegal in Arkansas, it was tolerated in Hot Springs for decades. By the early 1960s, the city was in its heyday and could boast of five million visitors a year. For a time, it looked like Hot Springs might eclipse Las Vegas as the gambling capital of America.
But it didn't happen. Fate might have played a part, but the city also suffered a series of bad decisions and had to bend to outside political forces that rendered Hot Springs a shell of its former self by the 1980s. But as David tells Colin, the city is making a comeback. And Hot Springs, while unique, is an American story about the decline and rise of historic places across the country.
David talks not just about his book, but also his days as a philosophy student at UT-Austin, his desire to write on the NBA, and why it's sometimes better to pursue unusual topics in order to get an agent's attention. David also has a podcast, Gamblers, available on Spotify.
A native of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Blake Ball originally wanted to be a musician. Then he got the history bug. He has a new book out and it's his first, Charlie Brown's America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts. He's also the head of the history department at Huntingdon College in Alabama.
When you think of Peanuts, you probably don't think of politics. But given the enormous popularity of the comic and TV shows, Charles Schulz felt obligated to address some of the major issues of the day, from civil rights to the women's movement and the Vietnam War. Schulz, however, often approached these subjects with ambivalence and ambiguity. One thing he was not "wishy washy" about, though, was his Christianity. And Schulz had to fight to have the Charlie Brown Christmas show contain an overtly Christian message at the end to remind people of the "reason for the season."
Schulz wrote Peanuts for fifty years, producing 17,000 comics. At its height, the strip reached 100 million people per day. That's a big readership, and it meant Schulz had to take on some big topics. He also had to do it in a way that wouldn't alienate his audience. In his well-written and engaging book, Blake Ball explores how Schulz did this.
Josh Rothman has gone native. Originally from New York, he has lived in Alabama for a while, where he is the head of the history department at the University of Alabama. He has a new book, The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America.
Josh began his career as a historian at Cornell University, where he completed a B.A. under the guidance of political historian Joel Silbey. He then went on to the University of Virginia, where he studied under (previous podcast guest) Ed Ayers. The Ledger and the Chain builds upon a career dedicated to southern racial and social history.
The Ledger and the Chain focuses on three figures in the slave trade: Issac Franklin, John Armfield, and Rice Ballard, who became wealthy dealing in human beings in the slave pens of Virginia, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The book uses extensive archival research to tell a rich, detailed, and altogether disturbing story of human exploitation. As Josh shows, the slave trade was capitalism at its most extreme. And despite the cruelty, callousness, and sexual exploitation embedded in the system, slave traders were respected members of their communities. They might have seem ruthless, "no nonsense" individuals, but they were providing a service that was both legal and lucrative.
Before delving into such dark subjects, Josh and Colin talk about the joys of being ABD in grad school and, of course, Bama and SEC football. They also discuss the unfortunate loss a few years ago of historian and journalist Tony Horwtiz.
Is it better to "Geaux Tigers!" or "Roll Tide!?" Only Ole Miss fans can now for sure.
Edward Packard knows about choices. He went to Columbia Law School, but he never really wanted to be an attorney. He admits he was often "sleepwalking" through life before landing on an innovative idea for young readers. He eventually began writing full time, and many 80s kids (like Colin) can thank him for that.
Edward created and wrote for the popular "Choose Your Own Adventure" series of paperbacks. Edward's idea was so successful that it inspired spin-offs (including his own Space Hawks series) and imitators. The series began in 1969 as a book called Sugarcane Island that Edward wrote for his children. A few years later, two books in the iconic CYOA series had appeared. One was a western, the other a sci-fi story. Edward wrote for the CYOA series for twenty years. While he has not been involved with the brand for a long time, CYOA is still generating new stories.
Edward just turned 90, but he shows no signs of slowing down. He recently wrote a memoir and is trying his hand at a novel for adults. Colin talks with him about his "Essay the View from 90" as well as why Colorado has proven far more hospitable than southern Florida.
You can check out Edward's work at www.edwardpackard.com
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Colin often gets confused with Colin. And by that, we mean the author of Marching Masters is often thought of as an author of books about Maine and pirates. To clear things up, Colin Woodard is the Maine author and historian behind Republic of Pirates, The Lobster Coast, American Nations, and the recent book, Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood (2020).
A writer his whole life, Colin came into journalism "accidentally." He studied history as an undergraduate at Tufts and began as a correspondent in post-communist Europe, spending long stretches in Hungary. In the 90s, he also got a masters degree at the University of Chicago in International Relations.
A New York Times bestselling author, Colin is the state and national affairs writer at the Portland Press Herald, where he received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. His writing has taken him from Antarctic to Greenland to Micronesia. And despite the trouble state of newspapers today, he has managed to stay in the game. So, get your Colins straight in this fascinating talk, covering everything from Maine to Malkovich!
Recorded on St. Patrick's Day, Colin talks with historian Michael Bellesiles about our country reckoning with major issues such as gun violence, citizenship, and equality.
Michael is best known for his controversial book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture, published in 2000. The book was the subject of an intense and prolonged campaign by NRA members and other right wing individuals to demolish its thesis and discredit Dr. Bellesiles's scholarship and integrity. The publicity surrounding the book was intense, and the fallout for Michael's career was severe.
But he has made a comeback. His most recent book, Inventing Equality: Reconstructing the Constitution in the Aftermath of the Civil War, provides an honest assessment of key figures in American history and how they have perceived individual rights. It shows how vague the Founding Fathers left the concept of something so seemingly basic as citizenship and how the idea has changed over time.
Michael originally was a scholar of religion before turning his attention to American violence--not just in Arming America, but in his book 1877 (2010) and A People's History of the U.S. Military (2012). His scholarship has covered a wide swath of U.S. history. Whatever one thinks of Arming America and the debate surrounding it, Michael did not let it stop him from writing and teaching. And his story is one that deserves a prominent place in American historiography.
In part two of Colin's talk with journalist Frank Smyth, Frank talks about his 2020 book, The NRA: The Unauthorized History. The history of the National Rifle Association begins in New York City in 1871 as a group made up of Union veterans and those interested in target shooting. Founded on the model of the British National Rifle Association, the American NRA was a pro-government, pro-military organization seeking to train men for the next major war.
As Frank's book shows, the NRA started to take a hard turn to the Right in the late 1970s at what has been called the "Cincinnati Revolt." Today, there is no doubt that the NRA has remade the country in its image. Despite its early history, the present-day NRA is wholly devoted to a liberal (but not Liberal) interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and protecting personal gun rights. Given the NRA's influence and five million member power base, it has been difficult for centrist and left-wing politicians and citizens to enact meaningful and sensible gun reform and regulation.
But is that changing? The NRA has been suffering from internal leadership squabbles and financial problems that are threatening its very existence. Grassroots groups, furthermore, such as the Parkland students, have gained success rallying support for common sense gun reform in the wake of countless mass shootings.
In Frank's well-written and fast-paced book, he gives an illuminating overview of the organization, which has not had the best track record when it comes to transparency and telling the truth about its origins.
Frank Smyth is a journalist with a long and impressive career covering war-torn places such as Central America and the Mid-East. His resume includes articles and stories for The Village Voice, The Nation, and The Washington Post. He is also the author of The NRA: The Unauthorized History (2020), the subject of the next American Rambler podcast. You can find Frank's writings at The Progressive and Frank's website.
In part one of Frank and Colin's conversation, Frank talks about how he went from a student at Boston College and Johns Hopkins to covering the complicated and often brutal war in El Salvador in the mid-1980s, where leftist forces battled with the U.S.-backed regime of President José Napoleón Duarte. In late 1989, six Jesuits were murdered at Central American University, and the international outcry led to an eventual ceasefire.
As if that weren't dangerous enough, Frank left Central America to write about the Gulf War and subsequent unrest in Iraq. Not long after the end of American ground war ended, Frank was captured in northern Iraq while reporting on the Kurdish uprising. He was imprisoned for eighteen days. Frank wrote a great piece on his grueling experiences while imprisoned. You can read it here:
https://www.franksmyth.com/united-nations/the-chance-to-cry/
Dan Gullotta is the host of the popular Age of Jackson history podcast. A relatively recent arrival in the U.S. by way of Australia, Dan is a Ph.D. student of religious studies at Stanford University, though he is currently residing in Kansas. Dan is working on a dissertation that focuses on 19th century religion and how it influenced the development of the second party system in America.
Dan talks with Colin about why he wanted to do a podcast, his love of his new homeland, and where America stands in terms of its historical consciousness. He also discusses what he doesn't like about Twitter, his friendship with Jacksonian scholar Sean Wilentz, and what it's like to address tricky and controversial topics on his podcast, such as the 2001 book Arming America.
Movie detectives are as old as movies themselves. So what could a 2020 film add to the genre? Michael Scott, co-host of cinema podcast The Dana Buckler Show and his own film podcast Adkins Undisputed returns to American Rambler to discuss the recent crime noir/comedy/thriller The Kid Detective. It's a detective movie, but in addition to having a subtle comedic sense, it packs an emotional punch.
The Kid Detective stars Adam Brody (of TV's The O.C. and Smallville) as Abe Applebaum, an early-30s, down-on-his-luck private investigator who gets his biggest case in years involving the murder of a high schooler. His snooping and probing lands him in a number of compromising and dangerous situations, ultimately leading him into the dark and evil recesses of small town life. It sounds like a million other movies, but The Kid Detective manages to do something clever and new.
This is the first feature directed by Canadian Evan Morgan, who also wrote the film. It co-stars Canadian actor Sophie Nelisse as Abe's sidekick Caroline and Peter MacNeill, another Canadian, as the principal.
The Kid Detective should make ten best lists for 2020 films. It would also be a great first movie on a kid detective double feature with the impressive and dark 2005 film Brick, which launched the directing career of Rian Johnson.
WARNING! THIS CONTAINS MANY SPOILERS. If you've seen the movie, though (and you should), enjoy this deep dive courtesy of Colin and Mike.
Music: "Abe's Theme," "School," and "Outro" from The Kid Detective soundtrack by Jay McCarroll.
James Oakes is a two time winner of the Lincoln Prize for Civil War studies. But as he tells Colin, he initially went to college for business. An English teacher at Baruch College wisely turned him away from the world of international finance. Since then, he has made a name for himself as a scholar of 19th century history.
Jim ended up attending Berkeley for graduate school during an astounding period in the department's history. He studied with Kenneth Stampp, whose book The Peculiar Institution Jim had read when he was still in high school. Also there at the time was Winthrop Jordan, Lawrence Levine, Charles Sellers, Charles Royster, William Gienapp, Albert Raboteau, and Leon Litwack.
Before his dissertation was even done, Jim had a contract with Knopf for a book that was based on years of archival research at Duke and Chapel Hill. That book, The Ruling Race, took on the paternalism thesis put forth by Eugene Genovese in his landmark Roll, Jordan, Roll.
Jim talks with Colin about his moves from New York to California and back again. And back again. Also, he discusses his time at Princeton and Northwestern as well as his new book, The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, which you can purchase here:
https://www.amazon.com/Crooked-Path-Abolition-Antislavery-Constitution/dp/1324005858
Michael Gorra is a native of Connecticut who has taught at Smith College since the 1970s. A professor of English, his most recent book is The Saddest Words: William Faulkner's Civil War. This book builds on a career dedicated to examining writers such as Henry James and V. S. Naipaul. In Faulkner, Professor Gorra has tackled one of our most brilliant and baffling novelists.
Raised on a steady diet of sci-fi, Michael entered college thinking he wanted to write novels. Or at least, he knew he didn't want to work in his father's fruit business. He ended up pursuing an English degree, though he he only came to the idea of being an academic later. As an undergrad at Amherst, he encountered the no-nonsense novelist Robert Stone and decided writing fiction wasn't for him.
After decades of teaching, a prolonged stay in Germany in the late-90s helped open Michael's mind about the importance of place and history in writing. It certainly helped him when examining Faulkner. As The Saddest Words shows, few American writers have done as well as Faulkner has in exploring the intersection of history and geography in his "postage stamp" in Mississippi.
Colin gives a sneak peak at his January 6 "Legacies and Lunch" talk for the Central Arkansas Public Library in Little Rock. His talk will be on his upcoming book Country Boy: The Roots of Johnny Cash, coming out in the fall of 2021 from the University of Arkansas Press.
Country Boy seeks to reclaim Cash for Arkansas. In the book, Colin examines Cash's upbringing in rural Arkansas, his rise to stardom, and the memorable concerts he gave in his home state. These included the concerts for Winthrop Rockefeller in 1968, at Cummins prison farm in 1969, his 1976 show in Rison, and his final Arkansas performance in Kingsland in 1994. Wherever he was in his life, Arkansas kept Cash grounded. No one has quite sounded like Johnny Cash, and his music came from a unique place: Arkansas.
It's not often that Colin has a poet warrior on the podcast.
It's been twenty years since Dr. Farrell taught at Hampden-Sydney College, where he was a professor of modern languages. He spent 27 years at HSC before moving on to VMI, where he was fired from being a dean after he said the wrong thing to a "fat guy in an expensive suit." Nevertheless, he enjoyed a long tenure as a teacher at VMI before his retirement to Unlucky Mountain near Lexington, where he lives and rides motorcycles.
Alan grew up in New Hampshire, went to prep school in Connecticut, graduated with a bachelor's from Trinity College (where Colin went, too) before earning his Ph.D. from Tufts. But perhaps his most formative experience was serving in the Special Forces during the Vietnam War, where he stomped through the jungle with a copy of The Iliad in his trouser pocket. In Vietnam, he employed his knowledge of French with the local Hmong, who were engaged in counterinsurgency operations.
America's counterinsurgency strategy in Vietnam was formulated earlier in the decade in large part by General Sam Wilson, with whom Alan worked at Hampden-Sydney. The two were friends and fellow combat veterans. Alan still speaks highly of "General Sam."
Alan also talks with Colin about parachuting at 30,000 feet, his love of poetry, the hell that is college administrative work, and the pleasures of reading Greek epics in the original.
Historian Jean Baker is a lifelong resident of Baltimore, so it makes sense that her most recent book is Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Her book on Latrobe is only the latest in a long and productive career that began as a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University.
At Hopkins, she worked under the late, great, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David Donald, whose students include Michael Holt, Robert Kenzer, and Bill Cooper (who have previously been on the podcast). True to her mentor's example, Dr. Baker's scholarship has combined political history and biography. Her subjects have included Mary Todd Lincoln, Margaret Sanger, the suffragettes, the Know-Nothings, and less-than-stellar 15th president, James Buchanan.
Jean's days as a historian have included everything from teaching at Harvard and at a Maryland prison, to carpooling with nuns. She also reflects on what it's like being a female historian in a traditionally male-dominated industry. What has she learned from Mary Todd Lincoln? And how does President Buchanan show us that lifelong experience doesn't always translate into success in the nation's highest office?
In the intro, Colin celebrates the end of the Trump era by playing some secret audio footage.
David Dixon is the author of Radical Warrior: August Willich's Journey from German Revolutionary to Union General. Surprisingly, it is the first major biography of General Willich, whose life was the stuff of Hollywood movies. Willich was an aristocrat, born into a prominent family in Prussia. After growing up in the household of the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher, Willich pursued a military education before joining the army. Thus began his interesting and unconventional military career.
Willich took part in a rebellion in Germany amid the revolutions running through Europe in the late 1840s. He could have been executed for treason, but he managed to escape to England. There, he continued fighting with others, including Karl Marx.
In the 1850s, Willich moved to the U.S. and later joined the Union army. He proved a reliable and creative general, one of the best the North had in the western theater. He survived most of the major battles until a sharpshooter ended his military career in May of 1864. Willich survived and moved back home to Ohio after the war. However, his postwar career was not as exalted as his campaigns in Tennessee and Kentucky had been.
David's previous book was The Lost Gettysburg Address, about Charles Anderson, a Civil War colonel and the governor of Ohio after the war. David talks about the challenges of working on a German subject as well his journey from a long career in marketing to becoming a full-time historian.
Happy Halloween! Movie guru Michael Scott returns to the podcast to talk about his love for the Friday the 13th films. How did a low-budget 1980 horror movie spawn a franchise and draw in millions of fans? Is it all about the hockey mask?
As it turns out, Michael's first foray into the series was Friday the 13th, Part VI: Jason Lives, which led him to devour the rest of the "Jason Movies." Michael has also read a few books on our friend Mr. Vorhees, including Crystal Lake Memories, written by author Peter M. Bracke.
As Michael notes, Jason not only inspired numerous splatter flicks, the Friday the 13th films influenced non-horror movies, too, such as the Terminator and Rambo series. And yet, it's been more than ten years since the last Jason movie. Has Hollywood given up, or does Tinseltown just need a few good ideas? Have no fear, Colin and Michael have some thoughts. And it turns out Danny McBride may be the man to revive the series.
You can check out Michael at the popular Dana Buckler Show movie podcast: https://linktr.ee/DanaBucklerShow. Michael also has his own podcast, Adkins Undisputed, available at https://anchor.fm/adkinsundisputedpodcast.
A native of Maryland, John Lingan's first book is Homeplace: A Southern Town, a Country Legend, and the Last Days of Mountain-Top Honky Tonk, which examines the northern Virginia town of Winchester.
Winchester is known largely for two things: the Civil War and being the birthplace of Patsy Cline. But as John's book shows, just as compelling are the stories of more recent inhabitants, including chefs, writers, and store owners. Homeplace shows how people in 21st century South are trying to make a living in a region undergoing severe political and economic change.
Homeplace builds upon John's other writings, which often explore music. Jeff Tweedy, NRBQ, Buddy Bolden, and Margo Price are just some of the subjects he has previously written about. Perhaps not surprisingly, his current book project centers on the classic rock staple Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Once again, Colin plays "Six Degrees of Court Carney," this time with fellow LSU veteran and historian James MacDonald. As is the case with Colin, James is a Damn Yankee who moved to the South as an adult and has never looked back. Oh, and like Colin, he married a southerner.
James teaches at Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches (pronounced "Nackadish"), a town so southern that it was the setting for the film Steel Magnolias. James talks about the teaching life, including how to cope with educating during the pandemic, wrestling with technology, what it's like to handle a 6-5 course load, and the lessons learned and not learned in graduate school. Also, James talks about growing up in New Jersey, visiting battlefields as a kid, his natural love of teaching, first-year grad school monasticism, and the unbearable heaviness of Phil Morgan's Slave Counterpoint.
American Rambler talks about some new albums he got at Plan 9 Records in in Carytown in Richmond. Carytown seems to be losing businesses steadily, but Plan 9, thankfully, is still open. Yesterday, Colin picked up music from Margo Price, Blaze Foley, King Curtis, and King Biscuit Boy. The band County Kitchen takes us out with the song "Devil Dog," set in the old blues town of Helena, Arkansas.
Wayne Edmondson is a high school teacher living in northern Louisiana. He and Colin are old friends and survivors of the LSU grad program in history. Colin stayed to finish his dissertation, but Wayne took a different path. In addition to studying at LSU, he's played in a rock band, been a sonar technician on a nuclear sub, surveyor in the Gulf of Mexico, funeral home assistant, disaster relief worker after Hurricane Katrina, and sweated out desert days as a contractor working on military bases in Iraq.
Wayne talks about growing up in Louisiana, grad school, and seeing one of his professors nearly die at the podium. Wayne also discusses teaching, the benefits of being a morning person, and some strategies for motivating students (which sometimes involves doing lots of pushups).
It's fitting that Colin and Tim talked on the anniversary of the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. That's because Tim's recent documentary Monumental Crossroads (link below) examines the debate over Confederate memorials and the meaning of the Civil War in the South.
Taking his camera to locations in Louisiana, Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama, Tim's film interviews white and black people to understand their feelings about some of the most divisive symbols in the American landscape. Monumental Crossroads shows us a cross-section of the South, from a black artists and politicians to white members of Confederate groups as well as an African American "Confederate" in Asheville and Tennessee Civil War interpreters.
Tim, a native of the Netherlands, makes clear that no society is free of racism (as in the case of the Netherlands' "Black Pete"), though some are better than others at confronting their troubled past. Colin and Tim discuss the difficulties surrounding racial healing amid a summer that has shown how deadly and divisive race continues to be.
You can watch Monumental Crossroads here:
https://www.amazon.com/Monumental-Crossroads-Tim-van-Hoff/dp/B07VGB3MT9/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=monumental+crossroads&qid=1598893742&sr=8-1
John Jay Osborn, Jr., is perhaps best known for his 1971 novel The Paper Chase, which was made into an Oscar-winning movie starring John Houseman (with whom John became friends). The book was based on John's experiences at Harvard Law School and centers on James T. Hart, a bright, ambitious, first-year student trying to balance his studies and tumultuous personal life. The book sold well and the film was a success, but John never abandoned the law.
The Papers Chase, nevertheless, led to John spending 15 years in Hollywood as a scriptwriter and advisor. He worked on the TV adaptation of The Paper Chase as well as shows such as L.A. Law and Spencer for Hire. He also was the creator of the show The Associates, based on his second novel. In 2018, after a long hiatus, John published a novel about a troubled relationship called Listen to the Marriage. That book, too, is being made into a movie.
John talks with Colin about his roots in New York, the Osborn family's flight to California, writing The Paper Chase, and his adventures in (and frustrations with) Hollywood.
Chris Leahy was a fellow traveler with Colin in his days at LSU. Since 2007, he's been a professor a Keuka College in upstate New York. He has a new book out, President without a Party: A Life of John Tyler (LSU Press, 2020). His biography began as a dissertation in Baton Rouge, where Chris studied under the imposing William J. Cooper (a previous podcast guest on American Rambler). Chris talks with Colin about his days at LSU as well as growing up in Baltimore and his time at Virginia Tech.
Chris has been working on his biography for more than 20 years. Born in the first years of the American republic into a Tidewater planter family, Virginia's John Tyler isn't one of the better known presidents. But his career in politics serves as an example of how a man can find himself accidentally put into a position of power and then find he doesn't really belong in any political camp.
Tyler might have been U.S. president, but he ended his life loyal to the Confederacy. He died in early 1862, just before taking his place in the Rebel Congress. Ultimately, what kind of a man was Tyler? And what can he tell us about the time in which he lived?
Barclay Key is a history professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He's a native of north Alabama, who was born into a working class family of farmers and textile workers. His father picked cotton before going to college and becoming a teacher. Barclay's Alabama roots help explain why he's a huge fan of Muscle Shoals area rockers Drive-By Truckers, whose music he has used in his history classes.
Since graduating from the University of Florida, Dr. Key has traveled the world courtesy of Fulbright Scholarships that allowed him to teach in Poland and Mexico. He is back in Little Rock now, and earlier this year, Barclay published his first book, Race and Restoration: Churches of Christ and the Black Freedom Struggle. He talks about what it was like to grow up in that faith, and how the Churches of Christ confronted the problem of race in the mid-20th century.
Barclay also talks with Colin about a new research project of his that examines a bombing in Little Rock during the civil rights era, and the investigation that wrongly put a black teenager in prison for the crime.
Robert Gudmestad is a native of Minnesota who teaches history at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. He knows Colin from his days as a grad student at LSU, where they both worked with the imposing figure of Charles Royster, the late scholar of the Early Republic, the Civil War, and colonial Vietnam.
Bob is the author of two books, A Troublesome Commerce (2003), about the domestic slave trade, and Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom (2011). As he tells Colin, he never approached his career with much of a plan. He had a good job before he attended grad school. Even so, he decided doing history was a better fit for him. That journey took him to Richmond and then Baton Rouge, where he enjoyed good food, football, and the pleasures of a monastic academic existence.
Recorded in early June, Colin and Rob talk about the then growing Black Lives Matter protests and the fate of Confederate monuments. They reflect on he eccentric side of professional historians, and discuss at length Bob's new research project, which looks at the role Union gunboats played in the western theater of the Civil War.
Mark Doyle is a professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University. A native of Oklahoma who now resides in Nashville, he has lived for extended periods in New Orleans, Boston, and Ireland. His latest book is The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached.
Mark and Colin talk about the historical and sociological background of the Kinks' golden period in the late 1960s and early 1970s. More specifically, they discuss how the brilliant and multi-faceted Ray Davies, the Kinks' main songwriter and singer, commented on the profound changes going on around him. In the process, he and the Kinks made classic albums such as Something Else, Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur, Lola, and Muswell Hillbillies.
Mark and Colin also examine the challenges of doing a different kind of writing, namely, how historians trained in a doctoral program examine a pop culture subject. As Mark sees it, he didn't want to write a typical history of the band. And while interviewing someone in the Kinks would have been fun and exciting, talking to a famous musician won't necessarily add much to your story.
The Kinks were a distinctly British band, but the subjects Ray Davies analyzed--urban renewal, alienation and economic anxiety, the rise of the suburbs, the expansion of the welfare state--were relatable to Americans, too. Ray's songs did not emerge in a vacuum. His art was born amid the changes going on in the postwar world all around him.
Manisha Sinha was born in India, but she moved to the U.S. to finish her education. Since graduating with a Ph.D. from Columbia--where she studied under Eric Foner--she has made an impact on the history world.
Her first book, The Counterrevolution of Slavery (2000), based on her dissertation, was nominated for the Bancroft Prize. A few years ago, Politico named it as one of the ten books on slavery "you need to read." Her most recent book, The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition (2016) won the coveted Frederick Douglass Prize.
Dr. Sinha stays busy. She lives in Massachusetts, but commutes to the University of Connecticut, where she is the Draper Chair in American History. She is hard at work on her next book, which examines the Reconstruction era.
Manisha talks with Colin about the publishing field, what it's like to cut 1/4 million words form a manuscript, and her appearance on The Daily Show during the Obama years.
Joseph L. Galloway is the author of the 1992 bestselling book We Were Soldiers Once and Young, which was made into a hit 2002 movie starring Mel Gibson. The book was inspired, oddly, by a scene from the sequel to American Graffiti.
Joe wrote We Were Soldiers with the help of Hal Moore (played by Gibson in the film), who was then a colonel. The book and movie examined the battle of Ia Drang, fought in November of 1965. It was the bloodiest battle of the war, and Joe Galloway saw it unfold. Joe has a new book out, They Were Soldiers: The Sacrifices and Contributions of Our Vietnam Veterans, which he co-wrote with Marvin J. Wolf.
Joe spent many years as a reporter, who traveled the globe, including time covering the Iraq War. In 2008, We Were Soldiers was named one of the 10 best war books of all time by History.Net. Joe has also been played by not one, but two Hollywood actors. And though Joe has experience with Hollywood, as he makes clear, he'll not be working with Oliver Stone any time soon.
In the intro, Colin talks about the recent unrest, which happened in many cities this last weekend, including his home town of Richmond, Virginia.
Heath Carpenter, a professor of English at Harding University in Arkansas, is the author of The Philosopher King: T. Bone Burnett and the Ethic of a Southern Cultural Renaissance (2019). He is also a native Arkansan, who is friends with previous podcast guest Bonnie Montgomery (featured in his book). Heath has traveled widely, but his globe-hopping has only emphasized the importance of having strong roots in his home state.
Musician and producer T. Bone Burnett has worked on such landmark soundtracks as Crazy Heart, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, and Cold Mountain and produced acts such as the Secret Sisters and Gregg Allman. His studio wizardry has changed the way Americans think about roots music.
Colin talks with Heath about how his book combines elements of history, film, literature, and music in its exploration of southern identity. In doing so, they examine how much the South has and hasn't changed and how people's perceptions of it are often at odds with reality--sometimes, as in the case of Deliverance, horrifyingly so.
Whatever you think of it, the South remains distinct and likes it that way. Arkansas has produced everyone from Johnny Cash and Al Green to Charlie Rich and Levon Helm as well as more recent acts such as The Gossip. Music remains one of its greatest exports. The state's unique blending of Delta blues, gospel, country, and rock and roll keeps musicians and fans interested. Also, it still has cotton fields, if that's your thing.
Dr. Court Carney returns to the podcast to talk about Bob Dylan. Court is not only a fan, he has taught a class on Dylan at Stephen F. Austin State University, where he is a professor of history.
Court's interest in Dylan began when he listened to his dad's copy of Nashville Skyline thirty years ago. In grad school, he took a deeper dive into the Zimmerman catalog by absorbing such classics as Blonde on Blonde, Blood on the Tracks, and John Wesley Harding.
Court has also been fascinated by the Dylan-Guthrie connection, which has taken him to archives in Tulsa to examine Guthrie's personal papers. Guthrie died in 1967, by which time Dylan had retreated to Woodstock, NY, to recover and reconceptualize his art and music. While in Woodstock, Dylan began recording with The Band. What emerged was a new kind of American roots music.
In a country founded on legends and self-made men, Court and Colin examine the myth vs. reality of Dylan. They also tackle such questions as: how political was he? Is his Christmas album worth listening to? Was he really seriously injured in a motorcycle crash? And is "Rainy Day Women 12 & 35" a drug song? Dr. Carney explains all!
Not many undergraduates publish a book, but Drew Prehmus did. Drew grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, where he now lives. In 2004, he enrolled at Hampden-Sydney College, where he majored in English. In his sophomore year, he started work on a book with Sam. The project took seven years to complete. The result was General Sam: A Biography of Lieutenant General Samuel Vaughan Wilson.
Colin chats with Drew about his background, work at Hampden-Sydney, and the seven years he spent on Sam’s biography. He also provides an inside look at being a student at Hampden-Sydney as well as reminiscences about certain professors, such as the late Victor Cabas.
Michael Foley lives in France, where he is a professor of history at University Grenoble Alpes. He might be far from home, but Mike is used to moving around. The son of a blue collar dad, his father's work took the family around New England and, briefly, into Pennsylvania. He grew up in the culture of Democratic politics and small town meetings, which has informed his later work. Yet, as an undergrad, he went to Florida to pursue a business degree.
After "five miserable years" working in Boston in the late 1980s as an auditor for mutual funds, Mike, inspired by historians of the civil rights movement, got his Ph.D. from the University of New Hampshire. There, he studied with Harvard Sitkoff. Since then, he has approached his work with an activist bent. His first monograph, Confronting the War Machine, was about resistance to the draft during the Vietnam War. His work on the 1960s won him the attention of Mad Men, which asked him to be a consultant to the show. He continues to write about politics.
He also is a big music fan. In 2015, he published a book on the Dead Kennedys album for the popular 33 1/3 series. Now, he is writing a book on Johnny Cash's politics.
Move fanatic Michael Scott is a regular on the film podcast The Dana Buckler Show and a huge fan of the related podcast F This Movie! When he's not lending his expertise to an episode of "The 20th Century Movie Club," he's working in Utah as a prosecuting attorney.
Mike talks with Colin about his career path in the justice system--beginning with his time at Emory University law school--and gives some recommendations about films he's been watching lately. He also lets us know which lawyer movies get the details right. Hint: his favorite legal flick may not be what first comes to mind.
Mike and Colin share an early memory of Star Wars and talk about how the movies have changed in their lifetime. Are the movies better than ever? Have crowds killed the movie-going experience? And most important of all, will the movies survive?
This is part two of Colin's talk with Dr. Brent J. Steele of the University of Utah about the academic job market. Colin and Brent start out by walking us through the interview process, including the infamous Dinner, in which a candidate talks with the committee and tries not to order too many drinks and say something stupid. From there, they get into interview nightmares, which range from problems with technology to rude dinner and lunch companions, to phone calls from long-forgotten committee people.
In the intro, Colin provides a Coronavirus update and debates whether anything we now know about the job market has been rendered moot by the pandemic. Happy April, y'all!
Dr. Brent J. Steele, head of the Political Science Department at the University of Utah (and loyal friend of the podcast) returns to American Rambler to talk about the (challenging? woeful?) state of the job market for Ph.D.s. Unfortunately the Coronavirus is only going to make harder an already daunting job search process. Is there hope for those wanting to land a tenure track position or just a good, stable job at some kind of research institution?
2020 may suck so far, but times have always been hard for scholars. And in Part I of this discussion, Brent and Colin talk about the many tricky turns in navigating the job market, from building your CV, to applying en masse, to getting that coveted first interview. What are grad students to expect when they are looking for work? More so, what might anyone expect who is trying to land a job at a college or university? Well, the good doctors are here to help!
A fascination with Game of Thrones inspired Megan Kate Nelson's new book, The Three-Cornered War, which examines the role of the Union, Confederacy and Native Americans in the southwestern theatre of the Civil War. It's Megan's third book. Now that she is writing full time, she shows no signs of slowing down.
Megan is a native of the West herself, and to write The Three-Cornered War, she traveled to the places she describes in her book. She lives in Massachusetts, but she is still fascinated by the West she grew up in. She is already working on her fourth book, on the history of Yellowstone, which is slated for publication in 2022.
Are you thinking about grad school? While they both have Ph.D.s, Colin and Megan talk about the difficulties of being on the tenure track and how one should maybe consider the option of "alt-ac" careers. What do you do with a Ph.D. if academia isn't for you? Megan has shown that there is life, and success, beyond the Ivory Tower. And you can start by deciding not to write for free anymore.
You can find out more about Dr. Nelson at: http://www.megankatenelson.com/
She lives near Austin now, but musician Bonnie Montgomery is a native of Arkansas. Raised in a musical family in Searcy that owned a music shop, she started playing classical piano at a young age. Later, she picked up a guitar. After graduating with a graduate degree in music, she taught in China, lived in Nashville, and traveled overseas with the popular (though now defunct) Arkansas group The Gossip.
She is known for her alt-country records, but it was an opera she co-wrote with a college friend that got her noticed. The subject: Bill Clinton, of course. With an opera to her credit, she soon turned to writing country songs.
Her self-titled, full album debut, Bonnie Montgomery, was released in 2014. Her work won her an Ameripolitan award in 2016 and got the attention of the Outlaw Country community. In 2018, she released Forever, her second album, which combines country and classical elements and features a duet with Dale Watson. These days, you can find her playing not only with Dale Watson but Ray Wiley Hubbard and Rosie Flores. Bonnie made her first appearance on the Outlaw Country Cruise this year and lived to tell the tale.
Music in this episode: "Joy" from Bonnie Montgomery; "Black County" from Bonnie Montgomery; "Goin' Out Tonight (with Dale Watson) from Forever; and "No More" from Forever. You can read more about Bonnie and buy her music at www.bonniemontgomerymusic.com.
Part two of Colin's talk with author and historian G. J. Meyer goes deeper into the writing life. It's an honest discussion of how the business works and how success is fleeting and difficult to predict amid the "sorry state of the American publishing industry."
Jerry is working on a novel, so he and Colin discuss the literary influences that have made Jerry want to write fiction. For him, those included The Paris Review, Cormac McCarthy, Flannery O'Connor, and Annie Poulx. They also find time to discuss Faulkner, Walker Percy, Robert Penn Warren, and how Otto Von Bismarck turned out to be a not-so-great subject to write about.
He lives in England now, but historian G. J. Meyer is a native of St. Louis, who developed his journalism chops at newspapers in the mid-west. Jerry rose in the ranks at the St. Louis Dispatch, and his writing won him a Neiman fellowship at Harvard. He published a book on a Memphis serial killer in 1974, but he eventually left journalism to work in corporate America, which became the basis for his second book, Executive Blues. He returned to writing full-time once he landed in New York and found a publisher for World Undone, a tour de force history of World War I.
In part one of his two part talk with Colin, Jerry discusses his winding path to becoming a full-time writer. He also talks about how World Undone was different from other books on the Great War, and how that tragic conflict changed the global landscape.
Colin welcomes back Dana Buckler, the Florida-based host of the popular movie podcast, The Dana Buckler Show (formerly How is This Movie?). Dana tells Colin about his path to success as a podcaster, including an honest discussion of some missteps he's made along the way. Dana, however, has seen his audience grow over the years as well as his guest list. What began as a one-man show has turned into an interview podcast featuring guests such as State of Grace director Phil Jouano, screenwriter Jim Hemphill, and Dana's biggest catch to date, John Travolta. Dana gives some good advice to aspiring podcasters and also talks about his future career plans, which were made possible by his podcast.
New York City writer Adam Bulger returns to American Rambler to discuss the recent death of legendary Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart. He also talks about the band's back catalogue.
Rush has always existed somewhere between contemptuous critics and adoring fans. Robert Christgau once called the Canadian trio "the most obnoxious band currently making a killing on the zonked teen circuit." Rolling Stone has written of Rush's "preconceptual roots as dull, perennially second-billed metal plotzers." Rush did not join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame until 2013, 14 years after the band was first eligible.
Rush, nevertheless, is a staple of classic rock radio with such songs as "Tom Sawyer," "Limelight," "Spirit of the Radio," "Time Stand Still," and "Closer to the Heart." Love them or hate them, they are on the soundtrack of late 20th century American suburban life.
But should you like them? Mr. Bulger takes a deep dive into Rush, learning to appreciate the band as a listener and a guitar player. He recommends the Netflix doc Beyond the Lighted Stage to get a better sense of the band's history and music. Was the nerdy Neil Peart a rock god? Rush might live forever on your FM dial, but can they make Ayn Rand interesting?
Also, in the wake of the recent white supremacy/NRA rally in Richmond, Colin and Adam talk about gun control for 20 minutes. If you want to get to skip to Rush, it starts around the 30 minute mark.
Eric Foner is one of the most accomplished historians of the 19th century United States. His first book, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, about the rise of the Republican Party, is a classic. So too is his 1988 work Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877, which won the Bancroft Prize. More recently, he has turned his attention to Abraham Lincoln. His 2011 book, The Fiery Trial, about Lincoln's views on slavery, won the Pulitzer and Lincoln Prize.
Eric discusses his early career at Columbia, including his experiences working with the renowned historian Richard Hofstadter, who won the Pulitzer Prize twice in his short life. Dr. Foner also discusses his politics, his views on the current state of the history profession, and the Trump administration.
He is retired from teaching, but Eric shows no signs of slowing down. He is still on a speaking tour for his most recent book, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution, which came out in September of 2019.
Colin merrily rings in the new year and a possible impending war with Iran by recapping his Christmas break. Mostly, it comes down to two words: Star Wars. Colin saw The Rise of Skywalker and finished the first season of The Mandalorian. He now has a serious crush on Baby Yoda.
Also, Marriage Story, zipper vs. pull-over hoodies, Chernobyl, Watchmen, Righteous Gemstones, and the joys of Friday brunch.
Wilco put out a new album in 2019 called Ode to Joy. To talk about it, Colin brings back historian and music expert Court Carney, a professor at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and a longtime Wilco fan. Together, Colin and Court discuss not just Wilco's new record, but the band's 25 year history.
Court was a fan of Uncle Tupelo, an early-90s southern Illinois alt-country band that featured songwriters Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar, who would go on to form, respectively, Wilco and Son Volt. Initially, Court was on "team Jay" before becoming enamored with Jeff Tweedy's music.
Since putting out his first Wilco record, Tweedy has been involved in various side projects, including Golden Smog and Loose Fur, as well as the memorable Mermaid Avenue sessions, where Wilco and Billy Bragg interpreted unfinished Woody Guthrie songs. Tweedy has also done solo work by himself and with his son Spencer.
But Wilco endures. And how has the sonic journey of Wilco compared to other great bands, such as the Beatles, Dylan, and Led Zeppelin? Does Wilco's recent work measure up to expectations? Whether or not you love the latest record, Wilco still loves you, baby.
Musician and actor Ben Dickey is the star of the 2018 biopic Blaze, where he played the doomed, legendary singer-songwriter Blaze Foley. Blaze was from Arkansas and so is Ben. As he tells Colin, he learned music from his grandfather, who sang and played guitar, turning him on to country stars Jimmie Rodgers and Lefty Frizzell. Ben drew on many influences growing up, and by the time he was in high school, he was playing and recording for the math rock group Shake Ray Turbine.
Ben left Little Rock for Philadelphia. A day job as a chef helped him pay the bills, while he played live gigs and recorded several albums with Blood Feathers. In Philly, he met his lifelong sweetheart, who was friends with Ethan Hawke's wife. Ethan and Ben became friends, and Ethan would direct Ben in Blaze later. It was Ben's first major role, and his turn as Blaze won him an acting award at Sundance.
These days, Ben tries to balance a life as a busy actor and musician. Music remains his first love, but he is working with Ethan Hawke again on a cable series about abolitionist John Brown. The show will air in 2020 on Showtime.
Ben's been around the country and back, a journey that has involved everything from gigging in a Bob Wills cover band in Arizona to playing with John Prine and sharing the screen with Kris Kristofferson. Among his many talents, he also does a killer Bill Clinton impersonation.
Music in this episode: Ben Dickey and cast, "Let Me Ride in Your Big Cadillac" from Blaze soundtrack; Ben Dickey, "The Bizzy Waltz," from A Glimmer on the Outskirts; Ben Dickey and cast, "Clay Pigeons" from Blaze soundtrack; Ben Dickey; "Down the Shore," from Sexy Birds & Salt Water Classics.
Winston Hodges is a Richmond comic. He started doing comedy and experienced quick success back in 2015. A native of rural Virginia, he graduated from Virginia Tech before winning a contest at the Funny Bone, where he riffed on roller coasters. It was his first time doing comedy on stage. Ever.
Recorded at the Fuzzy Cactus in Richmond, Colin and Winston talk about the local comedy scene, doing blue material vs. working clean, fast food, commuting, and what it's like to get laughs around kids. They also tackle some heavy stuff, such as losing a family member to cancer.
Winston has a comedy album, Rad Bod as well as a podcast, the Winstmas Games. Here, you can hear him talk about his comedy influences and why he's exhausted with Louie CK. Also, this episode gives Colin a chance to pull out his impression of Bill Hicks's mom. You can check out Winston's upcoming dates at www.winstonhodges.com.
Wiseguy Adam Bulger stops by for an unprecedented third American Rambler appearance to talk about Martin Scorsese's new flick The Irishman. Adam thinks Scorsese is the best filmmaker of the 20th century, but how has he fared in the 21st? Does The Irishman measure up to expectations? How does it fit into the Scorsese canon?
This Siskel & Ebert-ish discussion soon evolves into a talk about other Italian-American directors, The Sopranos, and The Wire. Also, no conversation would be complete without a Dennis Miller impersonation courtesy of Mr. Bulger.
Virginia native Ben Cleary is the author of Searching for Stonewall Jackson, a non-traditional military history of one of the Civil War's most famous generals. As Ben tells Colin, his interest in "Old Jack" stems from how different the general seems to modern students of the war.
Ben's book builds on a career spent writing and teaching. He began his work on Jackson after writing articles for the New York Times "Disunion" feature during the Civil War sesquicentennial. He is also a veteran of the Richmond writing scene and has taught at public schools in the area and in the juvenile justice system.
Ben and Colin discuss Jackson's campaigns as well as the general's thoughts on slavery, religion, and family life. Ben talks, too, about his early writing career in the "Scarytown" era of Richmond and how he learned Russian literature from a chain-smoking countess at VCU.
Recorded earlier in the fall, Colin talks about his love of stand up comedy as well as his recent trips to the Funny Bone in Richmond, where he saw T. J. Miller and Doug Stanhope.
In the intro, the Rambler examines how there's no great way to travel from Virginia to Massachusetts by car. Hope you've digested all the turkey by now!
And hey, check out my blog post on Massachusetts comedy:
https://americanramblerpodcast.wordpress.com/2015/08/13/the-funniest-place-on-earth-massachusetts-and-the-modern-comedy-scene/
Dan Carter is one of the best historians of the South. A native of South Carolina, he won the Bancroft Prize for his first book, Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South, which was published in 1969. Since then, he has written about the Reconstruction period, before turning his attention to 20th century politics in The Politics of Rage: The Origins of the New Conservatism and the Transformation of Politics (1995) and From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994 (1999). Retired from teaching, he lives in western North Carolina, where he is writing about the white supremacist, faux Native American, and Hollywood screenwriter, Forrest Carter.
Colin and Dan talk about southern politics; the realignment of parties in the late-20th century; the persistence of Lost Cause ideology; and worrisome nature of the Trump era.
American Rambler talks some music, including an overview of his vinyl collection, hitting on bands and solo artists in the H-J range. Ginger Baker makes an appearance from beyond the grave. Colin gives a few thoughts on the new Wilco record. And everyone should know about Adam Faucett.
Trae Wisecarver is the "Outlaw Historian," and he's not messing around. A native of southern Arkansas, he's working on his Ph.D in history at Texas A & M University, where he is writing about the Civil War in his home state.
Trae became a Twitter sensation in 2019. He took a cue from Keri Leigh Merritt and posted a video about the need for a new Civil War documentary that improves upon Ken Burns's 1990 film. Not one to shy away from a fight, Trae has run afoul of the dubious character Dinesh D'Souza as well as online Nazis, neo-Confederates, and other unsavory characters. Trae keeps up a spirited Twitter account, and after his original feed was suspended, he is back (and more fired up than ever.)
In addition to his interview show The Outlaw Historian, you can also catch his wrestling podcast, The Oh My Godcast: An ECW Retrospective, which he co-hosts with his friend Ben Dangerously.
In part two of Colin's talk with Brent J. Steele, Brent discusses his newest book, Restraint in International Politics, which is available from Cambridge University Press. And with several decades of college life between them, Colin and Brent talk about striking a good balance between work and life. How do you get scholarship done while also being a responsible family person? What changes will you have to make in your creative process? Are your days of third-shift writing over? Probably, but there are other ways of being productive.
In the intro, Colin talks about the World Series and how the Nat's were the team of destiny for reasons involving baby sharks, dancing, and Donald Trump.
Brent J. Steele is the head of the political science department at the University of Utah. As he tells Colin, it was an intro to American politics his freshman year at college that made him want to become a college professor. A native of Iowa, he also got his Ph.D. there. As an academic, he has a long list of publications that weave together analysis of American politics with ideas based in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and modern psychology.
Brent stays busy. He has a book coming out soon from Cambridge University Press, Restraint and International Politics. He is also the host of his own podcast The Hayseed Scholar, which may or may not contain beer drinking. Colin and Brent cover a lot of ground concerning foreign policy and the political shifts in the period from Vietnam to the Trump and Twitter age.
In this short episode, Colin provides a brief overview of the General Sam V. Wilson Papers project, which he is working on at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. Sam Wilson was a native of Rice, Virginia, and a veteran of the Burma campaign during World War II. The American offensive in Burma became the basis for the book and film Merrill's Marauders. Wilson survived that brutal campaign, and after the war, he learned Russian and went into intelligence. Years before people knew where Vietnam was, Wilson studied counter-insurgency, which became a doctrine for the U.S. military in Southeast Asia and beyond.
After serving in Vietnam, Wilson returned to intelligence work, living in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. He retired from the military in 1977 and later became the president of Hampden-Sydney College. General Wilson died in 2017. The Wilson papers processing project began in July of 2019 and is funded for two years.
John Sacher is the head of the history department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He is also the author of A Perfect War of Politics: Parties, Politicians, and Democracy in Louisiana, 1824-1861. John has been on a steady career path, but as he tells Colin, he had his doubts about staying in the history game while he was in grad school.
John attended Notre Dame as an undergraduate. As much as he loved it there, he went to LSU for grad school. In Baton Rouge, he studied with William J. Cooper (a previous podcast guest). John completed a master's thesis and dissertation on Louisiana politics, which became the basis of his first book. After spending some years in Kansas, he is back in his home state of Florida. Now, he is finishing a book on conscription in the Confederacy, the first full-length scholarly book on the subject in many decades.
As John and Colin discuss, even for the most committed students, graduate school can be daunting. Also challenging is the move from scholar to administrator later in one's career--a path that might be as inevitable for some as it is practical.
Matt Hulbert was "born in the shadow of Stone Mountain," but it wasn't until much later in life that he knew the place's controversial history. By then, he was well on his way to becoming a Civil War historian. First, though, he had to lay aside his dream of becoming a cowboy.
Matt completed his doctorate at the University of Georgia, where he studied with John Inscoe. His dissertation won the C. Vann Woodward Prize. A year later, it was published as The Ghosts of Guerrilla Memory and won the Wiley-Silver Prize for best first book. He is now working on a biography of Virginia editor turned Missourian John Newman Edwards.
Matt and Colin talk about the eastern vs. western theaters as well as the violence that characterized both. Also, a certain recent article on the Civil War and the merits of social media came up. This is by far the best podcast recorded this year in a basement office at Hampden-Sydney College. And they raise the question: who would you rather have dinner with, Nathan Bedford Forrest or Robert E. Lee? Give it a listen!
In this mini-series, American Rambler talks about one of the two classic movies he saw on the big screen this summer. Jaws is one of Colin's favorite movies, but he had never seen it at a theater before. What did he notice this time around? Does it matter, when you've seen a movie dozens of time on TV, VHS, DVD, and even have read the book?
Yes, of course! So if you're a Jaws fanatic, you might want to give this one a listen. If you've never seen it, warning: spoilers abound!
A self-described blasphemer and bewildered pilgrim, writer and novelist James Morrow was doing long-form fiction at age seven. But it was a high school literature class in his native Abington, Pennsylvania, that changed his life. There, he read greats such as Dostoevsky, Flaubert, and Camus. He went on to study at Penn and Harvard. After dabbling in film-making, he began publishing novels in the early 1980s.
In such books as Blameless in Abaddon. The Last Witchfinder, and Shambling towards Hiroshima, Jim's fiction has made religion and history central themes, while incorporating elements of sci-fi and fantasy. He has also taken a Vonnegut-style approach to lampooning the absurdities of capitalism, mass media, politics, and modern American life. His latest novel is Lazarus is Waiting, which he is hoping to get published soon.
A disciple of Jonathan Swift, and a man who had the good fortune to take a class with Joseph Heller, Jim's work has woven together philosophy and satire while taking on subjects dealing with evil, human nature, and the meaning of life. His talk with Colin covers everything from St. Augustine and Martin Heidegger to Mad Men and The Good Place. Aspiring writers: take good notes!
Originally from Michigan, Aaron Sheehan-Dean now makes his home in Baton Rouge, where he is a professor of Civil War history at Louisiana State University. An undergraduate at Northwestern, he went on to do his master's and doctoral degree at the University of Virginia. A proud member of the "UVA Mafia," he worked with Michael Holt and Gary Gallagher (both of whom are previous podcast guests) in Charlottesville. He taught in Florida and West Virginia before moving to LSU, where he has Charles Royster's old job.
Aaron is the author of Why Confederates Fought and The Calculus of Violence, the latter of which won the Jefferson Davis Award from the American Civil War Museum in 2018. But as Aaron tells Colin, he originally wanted to be in politics. Working in Congress for a few years, he saw the growth of partisan rancor. He also developed his speaking chops and realized he wanted to pursue history as a career. At UVA, he discovered that grad school isn't just for single people: he managed to finish school and raise a family.
In the course of this interview, you'll find out: what politician could "talk a dog off a meat truck?" And what exactly is a "Sweet'N Low Momma?" Listen and you'll be enlightened.
A native of Northern Ireland, Stephanie McCurry moved to Canada while in high school before settling in the United States. She studied under renowned slavery scholars Eugene and Elizabeth Fox Genovese as a grad student. She made a big splash with her first, prize-winning book, Masters of Small Worlds, which wove together politics, gender, and class relations in antebellum South Carolina. Her second book, Confederate Reckoning, published in 2010, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Now she has a new book, Women's War: Fighting and Surviving the American Civil War.
Despite her success, Dr. McCurry is honest about the challenges she has faced. She talks about her rough road to settling in America, the often thorny nature of grad school politics, and producing scholarship amid changing jobs, moving across the country, and raising children. Through it all, she has focused on the role of women in 19th century American history and how she has tried to raise (and answer) new questions about the past.
Colin saw the newest Quentin Tarantino movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film explores the lives of a struggling actor, a stunt double, Sharon Tate, and the Manson family in a reimagining of 1969 Los Angeles. But is it any good? How does it carry on the Tarantino film tradition? And is it a comment of sorts about the Trump era?
Frank Kirkpatrick is a theologian and former religion professor at Trinity College, where he taught for 47 years. He was also Colin's advisor, overseeing his thesis on Soren Kierkergaard. Frank's class on major religious writers made Colin want to be a double major in religion and history as an undergraduate. Now, more than 20 years later, they talk about some major figures in American and European philosophy and how the United States is becoming a more secular country. It's an episode that takes on everything from Paul Tillich to Reinhold Niebuhr.
Originally from Iowa, Jim Stramel is a longtime resident of Richmond. As a college student in Florida, he hopped in a van bound for Virginia and hasn't looked back. Jim started making films on 16mm, work that culminated in his first full-length movie Thrillbillys (2001). Since then, Jim has moved on to making horror films, such as Degenerates Ink. His latest work is the webseries Reviled, which explores the dark world of zombie pit fighting.
Over a couple of beers, Colin talks with Jim about how he got his start making films, his influences, "Old" Richmond, and why he likes working with musicians. Hopefully after this conversation, Sony will be calling soon!
Court Carney, a professor at Stephen F. Austin University, returns to the podcast to talk about a course he recently taught on the late, great AMC show Mad Men. As Court makes clear, the show is a rich text that tells us a lot about 1960s history.
Mad Men first garnered attention for its stark portrayal of gender roles, but the series became iconic for its modernist look, sharp writing, morally and psychologically complex characters, and intricate plot lines. And because you can't have a conversation with Court without talking about music, Dr. Carney examines how the Mad Men soundtrack--using everything from the Beatles to Sergio Mendes--heightened the drama. Also, Colin and Court talk about 1980s synth pop and the memoir by Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy.
A professor at the University of Georgia, Scott Reynolds Nelson is the author of several books and recently was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. But as he tells Colin, he was not interested in history as a young man enamored with comic books and computers. Still, history proved a much safer path than the one he was pursuing, one which might have ended him up in jail. In his work, Scott has combined economic history, social studies, and folklore. He is perhaps best known for his book on John Henry, which became the basis for not only a children's book but a musical. As he tells Colin, Steel Drivin' Man started as a mid-life crisis and middle finger to the profession. By breaking all the "rules," he had great success.
Scott also talks about his books on the Civil War, how wheat led to the collapse of monarchs in Europe, and why his work on the panic of 1873 made him very popular during the depression of 2008-2009. On this episode, we cover everything from cyberpunk to the birth of rock and roll!
Retired historian Michael Holt is one of the most accomplished writers on antebellum politics. A professor at the University of Virginia for decades, he is perhaps best known for his grand 1999 book, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party. He is also the author of The Political Crisis of the 1850s, The Election of 1860, and other books. His most recent, and last (he tells us) is about president, soldier, hard drinker, and empath Franklin Pierce.
A native of Pittsburgh, Michael talks about his days as a self-professed "punching bag" for the imposing David Donald at Johns Hopkins. From there, he discusses his days on the road doing research, his take on the race issue in the 1850s, and comparing the antebellum era with today's politics. And why should we care about Franklin Pierce? Find out in this conversation from Charlottesville!
In part two of his conversation with Mark Thompson, Colin talks about Mark's move to the Netherlands, what he teaches there, and comparison between Dutch and American living. Is college in the Netherlands really free? Is it better? And what does Mark miss and not miss about the States? Things get political, but in a respectful kind of way. That said, Colin might be ready to board a plane for Groningen at any minute. Look out, Mark! Look out, Holland!
Mark Thompson is a historian of colonial America and a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. A native of New Orleans, he studied under Jack Greene at Johns Hopkins University before moving to Baton Rouge. He and Colin met at LSU, where Mark was teaching and Colin was a graduate student. They talk about Mark's path to becoming a historian, surviving Louisiana, and his book The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (LSU Press, 2013). What was the story of the Dutch in the New World? Did they really buy Manhattan for $24? And how might their story affect how we think of the development of early American history?
Dr. Joseph Coohill is the host of the popular history podcast Professor Buzzkill. Trained as a historian of 19th English politics, Joe's penchant for "busting myths" began in the classroom. Now, it serves as the basis for his weekly show, where he covers everything from Chinese feminists and the Pearl Harbor attacks to Jesse James and Richard Nixon.
Joe talks about how he got started on the mic, some early lessons he learned, and how the show has become part of an international podcasting network. What are the differences between historical myths and conspiracy theories? How have movies such as Patton,The Imitation Game, and The Bridge on the River Kwai affected our historical consciousness? And did Mussolini really make the trains run on time?
Also, Colin takes advantage of Joe's expertise in English history to talk about the historic mess that is Brexit. Interested in doing a history (or any) podcast? Joe is here to help!
Colin reads from his 2012 paper, "4-F: Charles Bukowski and World War II." Born in 1920, Bukowski was a Los Angeles writer, epic alcoholic, and critic of all things status quo. But was he political? What did he have to say about World War II, where he was arrested for evading the draft? Here, you can find out.
Bukowski was the subject of an earlier American Rambler podcast, which elicited a spirited response from a listener. Colin reads the listener's helpful comments.
Writer and editor Adam Bulger returns to the podcast to talk about some of his favorite books. Along the way, he and Colin discuss how our literary tastes change, how to balance reading and writing, and why great books are kinda like great movies. Harry Potter fans: cover your ears! And not because of the liberal profanity throughout this episode. For others, Colin and Adam manage to discuss everything from Hunter S. Thompson to Truman Capote. Happy reading!
In preparation for (yet another) job talk, Colin talks about what he's been doing for the last three years: working on the Lee Family Digital Archive at Stratford Hall. In his talk, he discusses what he's accomplished, the appeals of doing family history, and the pros and cons of digital publishing. It's another guest-free foray into podcasting excellence!
Bill Cooper worked at Louisiana State University for nearly 50 years as a professor of southern history and as an administrator. A native of rural South Carolina, he studied with the imposing David Donald at Princeton and Johns Hopkins University before moving to Baton Rouge in 1968. Bill has published widely on southern politics, which has included the definitive and prize-winning biography Jefferson Davis, American. His latest book is Approaching Civil War and Southern History (LSU Press), a collection of essays spanning his entire accomplished career.
Gaines Foster is professor of history at Louisiana State University, where he has taught for almost 40 years and where Colin was a graduate student. Gaines is the author of Ghosts of the Confederacy, which has become a classic study of the Lost Cause, Confederate tradition, and the politics of historical memory. Gaines also talks about Moral Reconstruction, published in 2003, which examines Christian lobbyists' ability to legislate morality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Gaines continues to write about Civil War memory and is working on a collection of essays examining it. Given his long career as a historian, Gaines discusses how he has been fortunate to be where he is and how the job market these days for younger scholars is challenging, to say the least.
So, you wanna be a musician? Listen to Colin's talk with Mark Carson to find out. Mark has a doctoral degree from Louisiana State University, where he graduated in 2003 after completing a dissertation on southern politicians and the Vietnam War. Mark has long been playing and recording music, but since he finished grad school, he's been back and forth between New Orleans and Nashville. His latest group is Carson Station. They are a country outfit that has a new single and are working on putting out not one, but two albums.
Do you have what it takes, kid? Listen and get the lowdown on the 21st century music business from someone who has paid his dues, but still loves it.
Jon Bachman stops by again to talk with Colin about a film he recently saw and is excited about, Rumble: Native Americans Who Rocked the World. Jon discusses Link Wray's Virginia connections, Jon's family's own music history, the realities of teaching history to the pubic, and of course, politics. It's an episode that covers everything from The Divine Comedy (the 1940s one) to Carl Jung!
John Heckman is the Tattooed Historian. He is prone to go "all in" when it comes to his work. But as he tells Colin, it took him a while before he decided history was what he wanted to do with his life. Despite the fact that he was running a Civil War artillery unit as a living historian in his teens, he tried accounting and other jobs before realizing history was his true passion.
John now has a podcast, where he is talking with some of the best historians in the field about their craft. His story shows how our fear of failure--hopefully--is eventually overcome by our fear of never having done what we really want to do.
Over the past thirty years, Brian Palmer has worked at various jobs around the globe as a journalist, filmmaker, photographer, and teacher. He is based in Richmond now, but he is originally from the northeast, where he attended Brown University. Since then, he has covered news in places as diverse as China and Iraq.
Recently, Brian published an article, "The Costs of the Confederacy" in Smithsonian, which examines how public dollars have been used in the South to fund "heritage" projects and their warped take on slavery and the Civil War. Brian's fascination with history, our racial past, and public memory has served him well as he fights a new battle to reclaim an African American cemetery in Richmond's East End.
In preparation for a talk he recently gave at an undisclosed location, Colin talks about his career as an archivist, which began in 2007 at the Virginia Historical Society and has continued on to Smith College, the University of Arkansas Little Rock, and Stratford Hall. What's it like being an archivist, and how does a historian make the transition from graduate school to the archives world? Listen and find out!
Dave Coogan is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is also the editor of Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail, which collects stories from various people who who found themselves in the criminal justice system in Richmond. A native of New England, Dave talks about how he ended up in Virginia and how a horrible crime in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond led him on a path to his current work. He talks with Colin about the importance of getting people--whether criminals, students, or family members--to tell their stories. And he will soon be telling more stories on his own podcast.
A native of Georgia with humble roots and a love for music (including Johnny Cash), historian Keri Leigh Merrit has been busy. She is the author of Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (2017) and is the co-editor of Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (2018). As she tells Colin, since she graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2014, her scholarly path has not been a traditional one.
Throughout her life, Keri has been fascinated by questions of class and race in America, whether in discussion of the antebellum period, labor movements, or the southern prison system. Listen as she discusses how historians outside academia have to carve their own path and how very often, it involves doing things no one ever talked about in graduate school.
Thomas Bevilacqua is a California native who has spent a lot of time in the South. Earlier this year, he graduated with a Ph.D. in English at Florida State University, where he now teaches. He talks with Colin about his dissertation research, which is based on many years of studying Catholic writers such as Hemingway, Kerouac, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor. Tom's writings on the church have also given him an appreciation for the literate, rich, and existentialist world of Mad Men.
Tom is also a huge basketball fan. Earlier this year, he published Golden Age: The Brilliance of the 2018 Champion Golden State Warriors. He is also a writer for the Warriors for the SB Nation website. Tom had a good year. Hear him talk about it with American Rambler!
Craig Belcher is the Arts and Entertainment Editor at Richmond Magazine. But as he tells Colin, he's been writing and working as a journalist for a long time. A native of the Richmond area, he has seen many changes happen in the print industry over the past few decades.
Craig also knows a lot about music. He worked for more than a decade as a writer, producer, and host of his own television show, where he interviewed such classic hip hop artists as Chuck D, M.C. Serch, and De La Soul. He also talks about his recent articles on Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the need for a Virginia Music Hall of Fame. It's a conversation that covers everything from Q-Tip to Link Wray and GWAR, with some good advice on the writing life thrown in.
Robert Kenzer is known for his community studies of North Carolina during the Civil War era. But as he discusses with Colin, his courses at the University of Richmond (where is a professor) have included a class on Abraham Lincoln and baseball. Bob talks about his career path as a historian, which began in California, shifted to Harvard (where he studied under David Donald), and years in Utah before landing in Richmond.
Originally from California and the daughter of a sculptor, Ana Edwards has found her niche in Richmond. She works at the American Civil War Museum downtown, but before joining the staff there, she made a name for herself as a radio personality and activist. A native of Los Angeles, she moved to Virginia with fears about just how Gothic the South was. That was thirty years ago. Going from the West to the East Coast has given her a lot to talk about.
Ana discusses her fascination with the South's people and past--something only intensified by research into her own African American ancestry. In Richmond, Ana has been busy navigating the waters of public history, which has included museum work, broadcasting, and reclamation projects. She also discusses her interest in the 1800 Gabriel revolt in Richmond and how that tells us much about Virginia and its long troubled (and complicated) race relations.
You may know Colonel Wilkerson from his appearances on Bill Maher's show Real Time. The colonel has made a name for himself as a straight-shooting Republican, who had a long career in the military, where he worked closely with Colin Powell during the second Bush administration. He sits down with American Rambler at the College of William and Mary, where the colonel is Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy. He talks with Colin about being an Eisenhower Republican, his service in Vietnam, and how we are on a dangerous political course under Trump. It's an hour of political talk that covers everything from My Lai to the invasion of Iraq.
Put your history hat on, y'all! Colin talks with John C. Rodrigue, one of his professors at LSU (back when Colin was a lowly grad student). John now teaches at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, but he's a Jersey guy, who studied at Rutgers and Columbia. He also has roots in Louisiana's Cajun country going back to early 1900s.
John tells Colin about his academic road to studying Reconstruction, more specifically, examining the postwar years in the sugar parishes of Louisiana. John is the author of two books about the Reconstruction era. His latest, Lincoln and Reconstruction, was published in 2013. He talks with Colin not only about his own work, but his encounters with historians such as James Roark, Ira Berlin, and the infamous Eugene Genovese. He also discusses his new book project, which examines emancipation in the Mississippi Valley.
What does John think about Woodrow Wilson? How does William Shakespeare sum up the southern planter class? Listen and find out!
Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Adam Faucett grew up in the suburbs of Little Rock, where he spent a lot of time listening to Otis Redding, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Neil Young, and Radiohead. He also had a love for horror movies. His influences have led him to blend light and dark themes in songs about love, loss, and growing up in Arkansas. He also makes historical references to things as varied as the southern mystic Edgar Cayce and the Mackay Bennett, the ship that picked up the human wreckage left in the wake of the Titanic sinking.
Adam has a new album out, It Took the Shape of a Bird. As on previous records, he has written songs that are powerful and unique. Adam sits down with Colin in Richmond to talk about life on the road, growing up in Arkansas, and what it's like to be a working musician.
Happy Halloween, y'all! Colin talks about the most recent marathon baseball playoff game, watching the original Phantom of the Opera, and reading about Bram Stoker. He also manages to combine two things--politics and Edgar Allan Poe--courtesy of the great writer E. L. Doctorow.
Colin has New York author, photographer, filmmaker, folklorist, and English professor Bruce Jackson on for a second talk. This time, the conversation covers everything from prison punks to Star Wars and the power of myth. Bruce discusses his literary influences (especially Faulkner) and how his background in literature has informed his teaching of film and television (as in his past college course on Breaking Bad). Bruce also examines the rarity of successful academic couples, close shaves on death row, and his friendship with French philosopher Michel Foucault.
Tom Camden is head of special collections at Washington and Lee University. His career has taken him from Virginia to New Hampshire to Georgia and back again. But Tom is a native Virginian and W&L graduate, who grew up in the historic community of Buffalo Forge, not far from Lexington.
As he tells Colin, working at W&L has opportunities as well as challenges. Going to Italy--as he recently did--courtesy of W&L is nice, but the university has a historical reckoning going on. That reckoning involves two large figures in American history: George Washington and Robert E. Lee. Whatever the daily news cycle, Tom's work shows that archivists can no longer be gatekeepers, but people dedicated to involving students, faculty, and the public in what they do. And for Tom and W&L, such an approach is working.
Gregg Kimball is the Director of Public Services and Outreach at the Library of Virginia. He is the author of American City, Southern Place: A Cultural History of Antebellum Richmond (University of Georgia Press, 2000). He has worked in Richmond a ling time, but he originally hails from New England. Gregg talks with Colin about growing up in New Hampshire, joining the army shortly after the Vietnam War, and going back to grad school to study with Ed Ayers at the University of Virginia.
Gregg's career underscores the challenges (and advantages) of finishing a degree when you already have a job and family. Since graduating, he has tried to connect museums with the public. Gregg is also an accomplished musician who plays with the Broad Street Ramblers and Southside Homewreckers. He talks with Colin about his early influences, American roots music, and some good bands in the Richmond area.
Steve Campbell is a California guy. A native of the Bay Area, he got his Ph.D. in history at UC-Santa Barbara and now teaches at Cal Poly in Pomona. He has a book coming out in January, The Bank War and the Partisan Press, published through University Press of Kansas. Was Andrew Jackson like Trump, as many people have said? Well, yes and no.
Steve and Colin talk about the perils and pleasures of being a historian, from the tenuous and lackluster (at best) job market and maintaining scholarly objectivity, to the ongoing battles between academics and popular historians, to the challenges of getting scholarship done with a heavy teaching load.
Should students become historians? Listen and find out, as Steve and Colin talk about everything from Steve Bannon and Shelby Foote to the Byrds's ill-fated shows in Nashville in the late 60s.
Jon Bachman returns for a record-tying third appearance on the podcast. The topics of discussion are typically light, covering Michael Moore's new movie on Trump, the American prison system, and the decline and fall of democratic empire. Is there hope for the future? Listen and find out!
Jay Leavitt has owned and operated Deep Groove Records in Richmond's Fan district for almost 10 years. He's originally from northern Alabama, where he met an older Sam Phillips (who discovered Elvis and Johnny Cash) and a young Patterson Hood (frontman and chief songwriter for the rock group Drive-By Truckers). Though he still calls Alabama home, in the mid-80s, Jay moved to Richmond. Since moving to the capital, he has sold lots of records, while also promoting cool music--especially the Truckers.
Colin talks with Jay about his early years in Alabama, blowing Patterson Hood's mind, opening a business in a tough financial time, and some recent music he's excited about. It's some straight talk from a Richmond fixture and a diehard music fan.
Hurricane Florence has spared Virginia, but Colin still got the day off. So, catch up with the Rambler as he talks about the sucky summer weather, the Red Sox clinching a playoff spot, and the recent Drive-By-Truckers show in Richmond. Also, Colin talks about September brain, the dark cousin of April brain.
Colin recently celebrated his 7th wedding anniversary in (where else?) Petersburg Virginia! He talks about the Old Towne and how Petersburg presents some great and not-so-great things about the urban South. Also, Colin weighs the merits of Led Zeppelin vs. Grand Funk Railroad.
Bruce Jackson has a had a long, varied, and brilliant career as a teacher, photographer, folklorist, writer, and filmmaker. Colin first encountered his work while researching the prisons in Arkansas. Bruce visited prisons in the 1960s and 70s, trips that produced photos for his books Killing Time, Cummins Wide, and Inside the Wire.
Bruce was born in New York City, joined the Marines as the Korean War was ending, and studied in New Jersey and Indiana before winding up in the English Department at the University of Buffalo, where he still teaches. He also tried his hand at engineering and took the law exam before winning a Guggenheim and a fellowship from Harvard, both of which allowed him to travel to Arkansas to do his prison research.
During his career, Bruce has met everybody from Johnny Cash to Michel Foucault. Recently, he's worked with the Wooster Group, which has been home to actors as varied as Spalding Gray and Willem Dafoe. As he tells Colin, he calls himself "lucky." Thankfully, his somewhat accidental creative process has produced original and revealing work.
William Freehling has been around. His first book, Prelude to Civil War, was published in the 1960s. Prelude won the coveted Bancroft Prize as well as the Nevins Prize for best dissertation that year. Since then, Bill has published other books about slavery, politics, and the Civil War. Now, he has a new book, Becoming Lincoln, which looks at the successes and many failures that characterized Lincoln's early life and career.
Bill lives in Virginia, but his career has taken him literally across the country, from Harvard (where he got his undergraduate degree and studied with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.) to Berkeley, where he got his doctorate studying under Kenneth Stampp. He has taught in Michigan, Maryland, and Kentucky, but originally he is from Chicago.
Bill and Colin talk about how in many ways, the Civil War was a victory of Mid-Westerners conquering the South. What does Lincoln's role in the period tell us? For one, it says that our failures are very often more important learning experiences than our victories.
John Coski is the author of The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem, which was published in 2006. A graduate of the doctoral program at the College of William and Mary in 1987, he has been at the Museum of the Confederacy--now officially part of the American Civil War Museum--in downtown Richmond for thirty years. Over a beer at Cafe Zata in South Side, John talks about his book and the more recent events concerning the flag: more specifically, how the Charleston massacre of a few years ago spurred new debates about what the Confederate flag means.
On a lighter note, Colin and John talk about the delights of the Byrd theatre and the James Bond franchise. John is also a Beatles fan, and he and Colin get to the heart of Fab Four fandom by asking: what songs would make for the best one disc version of the White Album?
Court Carney is a professor of history at Stephen F. Austin University, where he has taught for ten years. The author of Cuttin' Cup: How Early Jazz Got America's Ear, he's now working on a book on Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest and his legacy. Court and Colin were at LSU at the same time, and they reminisce about graduate school preparing you (and often not preparing you) for later life, why Gaines Foster is underrated, and how Robin Kelley's Race Rebels made a big impression.
Since Court is a music expert (and recovering bass player), Colin takes the opportunity to ask him about his early music influences (Beatles, Johnny Cash, and Bob Dyan); how his tastes have changed over time; and why he wanted to teach a class on Nobel Laureate Robert Zimmerman.
It's a talk that examines everything from 19th century Memphis and Shelby Foote to Jeff Tweedy, Rush, and INXS. Laissez les bons temps rouler, baby!
Get more inside the mind of American Rambler, with further bits from old comedy, movies, and interviews. What's in the Rambler's mind? Well, it starts with Benny Hill music, then goes from there. Also, you'll get more poems about famous people, including Omar Sharif, Descartes, Henry Miller, and Dizzy Gillespie. Plus, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson get burned, Bukowski talks about Henry Miller, and the Fourth Doctor leads us into the great beyond. It's another foray into blatant copyright violation, y'all, with some original stuff thrown in!
Andrew Huebner has a new book out, Love and Death in the Great War. A professor at the University of Alabama, he talks with Colin about his latest project and how it relates to his previous book, The Warrior Image. They discuss how Americans perceived the First World War as a great moral crusade, and how venereal disease was at times seen as an even greater menace than combat.
What did the war mean to the Progressive Era? How did it change America and its values? Did the war make disillusioned modernists out of stuffy Victorians, or was it more complicated than that? Listen as Colin and Andrew talk about the first large scale war Americans fought in the 20th century.
Ever wonder what it's like to be inside the mind of American Rambler? Well, it might be something like this: a mishmash of TV and movie clips, comedy bits, and creative impulses. For the first time, you get to hear original American Rambler poetry! Yes, Colin reads two works about famous people, "I Rode on a Plane with Kierkegaard" and "I Had a Beer with Bukowski." So, get your Revolution 9 on, y'all. It's the most avant garde episode yet!
Kevin Levin is a veteran of the history wars. He is perhaps best known for his popular blog Civil War Memory. But he is also a teacher and published scholar, who has not backed down in the face of intimidation from the "heritage" crowd. A native of New Jersey, Kevin has degrees from the University of Maryland and the University of Richmond, where he wrote a thesis on the Civil War that became the basis for his first book, The Battle of the Crater: War as Murder.
At a cozy hotel in downtown Charlottesville, Colin and Kevin talk about doing history and how it often treads on uncomfortable political ground. Also, Kevin talks about his new book project, soon to be published by University of North Carolina Press, which addresses the myth of black Confederate soldiers. Can historians really make themselves heard above the political noise surrounding Confederate monuments and the Rebel flag? Do facts matter in an age of "fake news?" Listen and find out!
The country lost two greats recently. One, Ira Berlin, was a professor of United States history and the slave South at the University of Maryland. He was also a former guest on American Rambler (episode 28, posted in October 2016). The other great was Anthony Bourdain, who became a household name as a writer, chef, and world traveler. Colin talks about the contributions of both of these men and how Anthony Bourdain seemed to epitomize the empathetic celebrity in a America where we see a shocking empathy gap.
On a more upbeat note, Colin talks about seeing Robert Plant for the first time in Richmond, and how the former singer for Led Zeppelin manages to blend the old and the new into an entertaining and professional music package that covers country, folk, and arena rock.
A. Wilson "Will" Greene has been around. A native of Chicago, Will is perhaps the Guinness record holder for most miles traveled by a historian. His education and career in the National Park Service took him all over the country, from Indiana to Florida, Louisiana, and Virginia. He lives in Tennessee now, but he keeps busy. And on the road.
In the lobby of the Marriott in Newport News, Will talks with Colin about his adventures at Louisiana State University in the 1970s studying with T. Harry Williams and Bill Cooper, doing weekend radio in New Orleans, and the events that led him to Pamplin Historical Park in Petersburg, Virginia.
Will is the foremost authority on the battle of Petersburg. Now that he's retired, he has even more time for research. His most recent book is A Campaign of Giants: The Battle for Petersburg, which is the first in a trilogy examining the longest "siege" in American military history. Parts two and three are in the works. Will is also one of the founders of the Civil War Trust (now the American Battlefield Trust), which has preserved thousands of acres for future generations to study and enjoy.
It's part two of Colin's talk with How is this Movie? podcast host Dana Buckler. R-rated movies aren't what they used to be, but it was Dana's discussion of great R-rated films that attracted the attention of Phil Joanou, the director of Three O'Clock High, Entropy, and U2: Rattle and Hum. He also made one of Dana's favorite films, State of Grace, where Joanou had his hands full with Sean Penn and Gary Oldman.
Colin not only gets to mention C.H.U.D. for the first time ever, he also offers his list of ten movies he loves, one of which is Dana's favorite: Jaws. Apparently, even a malfunctioning 1970s shark still makes both of them scared to go in the water.
Plus, Dana tells us why he loves James Cameron and Quentin Tarantino and why the Rock is no Arnold Schwarzenegger. And, if you want discussion of newer movies, Colin and Dana examine the greatness of the low budget character study The Florida Project. It's another episode of movie madness!
Cinephile Dana Buckler is the host of the How is this Movie? podcast, where he writes, edits, and narrates episodes exploring the history of many of the greatest and most beloved films of all time. As they discover, Colin and Dana have a lot in common, not just their love of movies and history, but the fact that they've lived a long time in the South, and that they miss the old days of the video store. Together, they take you through a tour of the last thirty years or so of the movie experience, from the rise and fall of VHS and DVDs, to the perils of attending the latest blockbuster. As Dana makes clear, being a film-goer is not always easy. It's part one of a two part movie talk!
In the introduction, Colin talks about the recent run of bad weather and the need for more concise and honest weather men.
Stephen Rockenbach is a professor of history at Virginia State University, where he has taught the Civil War and U.S. history for the last twelve years. But as he tells Colin, his pursuit of history began with playing Civil War era music on the banjo. In addition to playing bluegrass, he is also a historian of the Bluegrass State. In 2016, he published his book War upon Our Border: Two Ohio Valley Communities Navigate the Civil War, which is available through University of Virginia Press.
Stephen's book examines events in southern Indiana and northern Kentucky, where the war played out quite a bit differently than in other theaters and often descended into guerrilla fighting. His book helps us understand the divided loyalties of people caught between North and South. Why are there Robert E. Lee monuments in Kentucky? Stephen's work shows how Kentucky, as the saying goes, "became a Confederate state after the Civil War." It's a story of race, reunion, and the triumph of Lost Cause ideology in one of the most important regions during the Civil War.
In part two of Colin's interview with Steve Bassett, the two talk about Steve's career after the success of "Sweet Virginia Breeze." In the late 70s, Steve began writing jingles and working with session musicians across the country. He talks about meeting and touring with Delbert McClinton, opening for Steve Ray Vaughan and B. B. King, touring with Willie Nelson, and recording for Columbia Records in Muscle Shoals with Jerry Wexler and the Muscle Shoals band the Swampers (featuring Dave Hood, bass player and father of Drive-By Truckers's Patterson Hood). Also, Steve and Colin talk about Johnny Cash, getting old in the music industry, and how things tend to come "full circle." It's another hour of music talk!
In the intro, Colin talks about his visit to Oakwood Cemetery, home of 17,000 Confederate graves.
Musician Stave Bassett has a new, funky album out called Tres Leches, named after a dessert at Richmond's Kuba Kuba restaurant. Steve's from Richmond, but his long career has taken him from the River City to Nashville, Muscle Shoals, New York City, and Chicago. Steve is perhaps best known for his song "Sweet Virginia Breeze," which he co-wrote with Robbin Thompson in 1978. A few years ago, it became the official popular song of Virginia.
Steve talks with Colin about how he started as a drummer before moving on to keyboards, his early career in North Carolina, and how "Sweet Virginia Breeze" happened. It's part one of two hour talk about the music life.
Adam Bulger is a Jersey guy who's always had a humorous take on American lit, music, and politics. Colin and Adam survived (more or less) Trinity College, where they wrote for the alternative campus paper The Other Voice. Now they're catching up after 20 years of school, work, kids, and travel. They pretty much pick up where they left off, discussing politics, music, and what's it's like to dedicate a life to writing. Adam, who works for the website BTRtoday in New York City, talks about the story behind Freddy Kruger, noir fiction, and what it was like to interview Hunter S. Thompson and David Cross. Hopefully, their next talk won't take 20 years!
Colin reads from his recent paper, published in the Arkansas Times of Little Rock, about Tom Murton and the Arkansas prison scandal of 1968. Murton was a prison reformer from California, who dug up three skeletons on the grounds of Cummins farm fifty years ago. The scandal rocked Arkansas, embarrassed Governor Winthrop Rockefeller, and made news around the world. Murton's story, which became the basis for the film Brubaker, involved everyone from Dick Cavett to Johnny Cash.
The article begins at around the 6 minute mark. Enjoy!
Given his schedule lately, which has taken him from Virginia to Louisiana to California, you might think there's more than one Ed Ayers running around. As president of the Organization of American Historians, president emeritus at the University of Richmond (where he is also Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities), and author of a recent prize winning book on the Civil War, Dr. Ayers stays busy.
Ed talks with Colin about growing up in Tennessee, his graduate studies at Yale, and a life spent studying the South--from its prison system to the Civil War and beyond. His latest book, The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America won the Lincoln Prize for 2018. It's Ed Ayers's second appearance on the podcast, and this time it's for a full hour.
Liz Covart is the host of the popular history podcast Ben Franklin's World. As someone with a Ph.D., she has worked hard to find success as a scholar in the world outside of academia. She talks with Colin about growing up in the Boston area, moving to California to study early American history with Alan Taylor, and the work involved in podcasting and staying relevant on social media. Her efforts have paid off, and last year she won Best History Podcast from the Academy of Podcasters. Interested in good history or even starting your own podcast? Liz is here to help.
Colin Bailey is best known for his work with the Vince Guaraldi trio, whose inspired music helped make the Charlie Brown television shows famous. Colin, though, has played drums with many of the best musicians in the business, from Victor Feldman, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, and Frank Sinatra, to Joe Pass, Mel Torme, and Joao Gilberto. Colin tells Colin about growing up in wartime England, his long career in jazz, his thoughts on the Beatles and Ginger Baker, his work on The Tonight Show, and why Astrud Gilberto owes him fifty dollars.
In the intro, Colin talks about Lucky, the last movie starring the great Harry Dean Stanton. To conclude the podcast, Colin offers some wisdom from Charles Bukowski about getting your work done.
Intro music: "Samba de Orfeu" from Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus and "Charlie Brown Theme" from A Boy Named Charlie Brown.
Jarret Ruminski lives in Canada now, but he is an Ohio native who has long studied the American South. In the fall of 2017, he published his book The Limits of Loyalty: Ordinary People in Civil War Mississippi. Colin and Jarret talk about the Civil War, but also the perils of the history field and what it's like to be a "recovering academic." Also, what would a talk among historians-who-love-music be without a discussion of Drive-By Truckers? It's a conversation about history, surviving the Trump era, and life after grad school. Aspiring Ph.Ds, you have been warned!
Jon Bachman stops by again to talk music and history. As always, the conversation begins with a discussion of modal jazz, then makes twisted turns into Virginia folklorist A. K. Davis, southern mystic Edgar Cayce, and, of course, Johnny Cash. Also, Jon talks about the upcoming albums by his son, guitar wizard Daniel Bachman.
In the intro, Colin rambles about the recent blustery weather, the start of baseball season, and why you should never casually google Klaus Kinski.
Greg Hansard just finished his first book, German Sailors in Hampton Roads: A World War I Story at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and he talks with Colin about teaching full time after many years of adjunct work and having a 9-5 gig. He also discusses his grandfather's experiences in France in World War II, playing baseball in Germany, and the joys of craft beer. You know, the usual stuff you hear at an Applebee's.
In the intro, Colin talks about getting over yet another cold, his unabashed love for his old Zune, and the uncertainties of owning a Mickey Mouse record player.
Historian and confirmed Anglophile Graham Dozier returns to the podcast to talk about his recent visit to London, where Colin lived for a semester back in 1996. Listen as two Civil War guys manage to get through a whole conversation without discussing Richmond monuments! Instead, Colin and Graham discuss why Cromwell died three times, the Mouse Trap's pretty good run, and the pointless mudbath that was World War I. It all begins and ends with the Beatles, of course.
So, hold on tight to your bumper shoot, have a bite of spotted dick, and try not to spill your cuppa Earl Grey. It's the most English episode yet (Patrick Carr excepted)!
It's part two of Colin's talk with Gettysburg College professor and author Pete Carmichael. Hear more about Pete's work, the Civil War, and today's politics of commemoration.
In the intro, Colin talks about seeing a bunny movie and how it didn't quite make as much of an impact as seeing Nazis melted when he was five.
Pete Carmichael is one of the busiest Civil War historians working today. He talks with Colin about growing up in Indiana, living in Richmond, and landing in Pennsylvania. He's now a professor of history and the Civil War at Gettysburg College. He has a book coming out in the fall on the "common" soldier of the Civil War. He discusses his latest work, but Colin and Pete cover everything from sports to the Confederate monuments debate. It's a two-part American Rambler extravaganza!
In the intro, Colin talks about the Super Bowl, the late comedian Bill Hicks, and the odd similarity between one Confederate soldier and Dustin Hoffman.
The Rambler be ramlin'. Enjoy this fire pit chat as Colin talks about recent movies, writing projects, TV shows, and the 2018 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In this episode, Colin hopes to answer timeless questions such as: Why doesn't Link Wray get the credit he deserves? What is Danny McBride doing in an Alien movie? And just what is Yoda's problem, anyway? It's another amazing episode of free content!
Michael Streissguth is a music writer, teacher, and filmmaker. His latest project is the documentary film he directed, The Nighthawks on the Blue Highway. He and Colin talk about how he got interested in music as a kid growing up in D.C., his books on Johnny Cash, and his collaboration with the Nighthawks. He also discusses his earlier work on Jim Reeves and Eddy Arnold. Lot of music talk here!
It's Southern, the debut demo album from Country Kitchen, the house band at American Rambler. Country Kitchen draws on everything from the Who and the Beatles to Black Sabbath and the Drive-By Truckers to write songs about drinking, family, and a demonic hound haunting the Delta. The usual stuff. Is the album good? Does it suck? Take a listen and find out!
In the meantime, Country Kitchen is available for weddings, children's parties, and bar and bat mitzvahs.
Tracks
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Traveling
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Daddy Didn't Fish Cuz He Couldn't Sit Still
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Up is Down
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Devil Dog
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It's a Fine Line Between Living and Dying
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Sydney
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Ella
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Just Got Paid
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I Love Drinking Too Much to Ever Drink Too Much
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100 Degrees in Little Rock
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Blind Willie McGhee
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Southern
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Gonna Go Far Away
Jack Lauterback got his start as a writer, blogging about his adventures in the Richmond bar scene. His funny and honest articles about bartending, drinking, and relationships led to a column in Style Weekly, where he stayed for years. Now, you can find him on the Richmond morning radio program he co-hosts with Melissa Chase at 103.7 FM. Colin and Jack talk about the Richmond bar scene, the writing life, and some jobs that aren't worth doing. It's happy hour at American Rambler!
WS "Fluke" Holland is Johnny Cash's one and only drummer. After playing drums several years with Carl Perkins, Fluke joined Cash's band, which he never left until Cash stopped touring in the late 1990s. As one of the original members of the Tennessee Three, Fluke talks with Colin about the early days at Sun, discovering Bob Wootton, and what he's going to do on his 100th birthday.
Music credits: "Drum Time," "The Legend," and "Ring of Fire" courtesy of the album Johnny Cash's Legendary Tennessee Three: The Sound Must Go On. Live, 1968 versions of "Matchbox" and "Big River" courtesy of the Winthrop Rockefeller Collection, UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture, Little Rock.
Jeffrey Abugel is a native of New York who now calls Petersburg home. He talks with Colin about growing up in NYC, living in California and writing about surf music, and suffering long winters in Iowa before landing in Virginia. He is an authority on depersonalization disorder, a prevalent but not well-known affliction that has historical roots in existentialist philosophy but has only recently entered the lexicon of mental health. Plus, Jeff discusses his work on Edgar Allan Poe, a new novel, and playing cards with Al Pacino.
Colin runs down his December, which included an accidental attendance at a Confederate Pride Christmas Parade in Mechanicsville and a welcome night at a concert given by by Drive-By Truckers front man Patterson Hood. Also, to start the show, Larry and David and Marlon Brando stop in for a spirited reading of The Night Before Christmas. It's Christmas! You'll laugh (hopefully) and cry (over your credit card bills)! Throw another yule log on the fire and snuggle in with some free online content!
Erin Devlin is a professor of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. She has written a book Remember Little Rock (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), about racial integration in Arkansas's capital from the 1950s onward. As she discusses with Colin, the story of Little Rock integration was one of progress and setbacks, and it's a story that resonates not just throughout the South, but in the North as well. It is also a story important to today's politics and battles over public education.
In their first episode in Richmond, Bun and Hawk take on the usual topics: film, politics, sexual deviancy (with focus on Louis CK), Mother Teresa, and Harriet Tubman. Why can't Bun keep the Jewish Community Center and the Byrd Theatre straight? Why does Hawk think that "no one is clean?" It's another R-rated foray into the world of pop culture and current events.
Colin survived Thanksgiving. And on this episode, he talks about his run up and down I-95 with the family, describes the glories of the fire pit, sees some dinosaurs, and offers a brief Tony Soprano impersonation. Will he keep the tree up until MLK day? Listen and find out!
Bill Martin is the Director of the Valentine Museum in downtown Richmond. A Virginia native with stops in Georgia and Florida, he has lived in RVA for over twenty years and seen big changes in the city's landscape, demographics, and attitudes. Bill has dedicated himself to telling RVA's rich and often controversial story. Along the way, he corrects some common misconceptions about the capital and its history. Tatted hipsters! Craft beer! I-95! Bill and Colin discuss it all.
Colin discusses the recent political campaigns in Virginia, the cold weather, and some of his favorite alt-country albums. Wilco! Drive-by Truckers! Bobby Bare, Jr.! We're sure they were very happy to make the list.
Stan James plays drums for two bands: the southern metal group Iron Tongue and the alt-country outfit Jeff Coleman and the Feeders. Stan talks about playing music from an early age, his days with Cry Havoc, the Little Rock music scene in the 1990s, and what it's like to teach high school kids. Stan also remembers his first tattoo, discusses his Kiss worship, and recounts the decline and fall of 80s hair band Warrant.
Colin is back in Arkansas to do research on the prisons and give a talk on Johnny Cash. Along the way, he reconnects with some friends, visits historic Dyess yet again for a concert featuring Rosanne Cash and Kris Kristofferson, and discovers what it's like to spend a night in a Cormac McCarthy novel. It's fall in the South, where the country-rock bands are jumpin' and the cotton is high. A very special American Rambler travelogue!
In anticipation of his talk in Dyess, Arkansas, Colin uploads his paper on the relationship between Johnny Cash and his father Ray, which is part of his book, Country Boy: The Roots of Johnny Cash. In the outro, he discusses a recent, belated purchase of two classic rock albums, the horrors of getting a hair cut, and the arrival of fall.
Patrick Carr knows music. A writer for the Village Voice and Country Music Magazine, Patrick collaborated with Johnny Cash on his second autobiography, which was published in 1997. Patrick talks with Colin about growing up in northern England and his early love of "the Hanks," moving to New York City, and what it was like to know and work with the Man in Black at the height of his 1990s comeback.
It was a horrible beginning of the week, but it got better, right? Colin discusses the tragedy that took place in Las Vegas and the sadness of Tom Petty's unexpected passing. He also talks about a rare date night and seeing a Johnny Cash tribute band in Henrico. To quote from a "Boy Named Sue": "this world is rough, and if a man's gonna make, he's gotta be tough." Let's hope next Monday isn't as rough.
He works in Charlottesville now, but Brendan Wolfe is a native of Iowa. This year, he published a book on Davenport jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke. Brendan worked more than ten years on Finding Bix: The Life and Afterlife of a Jazz Legend. He talks with Colin about Bix's short, brilliant, and controversial life, doing non-traditional biography, and dealing with nasty reviewers.
Alan Taylor is one of the most accomplished historians working today. A two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and professor of history at the University of Virginia, his latest book is American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804. He talks with Colin about the craft of history, his time in California, moving to Virginia, being a loyal Red Sox fan, and, of course, the War of 1812.
What do the Richmond Confederate monuments and the band Drive-By Truckers have in common? Colin sits down with Chris Graham, a Ph.D. in history, Richmond transplant, and Truckers fan, to talk about intersections between the 19th and 21st century South. As it turns out, the Civil War's legacy has a lot to do with the Truckers, whose most recent album, American Band, got political.
Also, legendary drummer Ginger Baker stops by the studio to dispense a few words of wisdom.
Recorded the day after the deadly rally, Colin talks about the battle over the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, and what it might mean for the debate over Confederate monuments in Richmond. Also, Colin remembers Dr. Chad Vanderford, a friend from Louisiana State University and scholar of early America, who died suddenly last week.
Recorded back in July, part one of Colin's tour through his vinyl collection gives him the opportunity to discuss his eclectic taste in music. It also gives him to do "both halves" of his Ginger Baker impersonation. Plus, Jack Davis draws a Johnny Cash cover! Colin defends prog and Colin shows he knows next to nothing about Delaney and Bonnie! It's another solo podcast with American Rambler!
Allen Guelzo is a three time winner of the prestigious Lincoln Prize and a professor of the Civil War era at Gettysburg College. But as he tells Colin, he began as a scholar of colonial religion and philosophy. In their talk, Colin and Allen discuss religion, Abraham Lincoln, and Robert E. Lee (about whom Dr. Guelzo is writing a much anticipated biography). Colin also asks about Dr. Guelzo's appearance on The Daily Show during the 2008 presidential campaign.
John J. Hennessy is an author and historian who has dedicated his career to the National Park Service. He is now chief historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. He sat down with Colin for a talk at Chatham, a colonial mansion that overlooks the historic city of Fredericksburg. John discusses how he got involved in the NPS, his books on the battles of First and Second Bull Run, and how historians navigate the sometimes choppy political waters surrounding history.
After a 4th of July visit to North Carolina, Colin discusses being a "beach guy," a visit to a record store in Wilmington, and the logic behind people who fly both Confederate and United States flags. He concludes with a meditation of the meaning of patriotism in American politics today.
A California native, Mike Caires got his Ph.D. in history at the University of Virginia, where he studied under Gary Gallagher. For the past year, he worked at the American Civil War Museum in downtown Richmond. Mike has a book coming out next year on the economics of the Civil War. He and Colin discuss everything from ska music to the class divide in America, the continued importance of the Four Freedoms, and the perils and pleasures of grad school.
Recovering from a move to Richmond, Colin does another solo podcast, this time on Henry Charles Bukowski, the notorious Los Angeles skid row writer and poet. Colin talks about an ironic Bukowski-related Boston trip, getting to know "Hank" as a grad student, and the similarities between L.A. and Baton Rouge. Colin also reads passages from Post Office, Women, and Notes of a Dirty Old Man. Colin concludes that as far as Bukowski goes, you come for the debauchery but you stay for the social commentary. It's another R-rated episode!
Jean Violet, the lead singer of the band Kashmir, has been performing Led Zeppelin songs for a long time. In his talk with Colin, Jean talks about where he's from, how the band got started, and what his nephew's band Deviate the Plan has been up to. In the intro, Colin discusses his recent move to Richmond, a poignant Drive-By Truckers song, and how big an influence Led Zeppelin has been in his life.
Outro music: "It's a Fine Line," by Country Kitchen.
In their last porch talk (for a while anyway), Colin and Sydney (aka Bun and Hawk) recap their unusual experiences in Colonial Beach, Virginia ("the CB"). With a move to Richmond coming up, the two take time to talk about a foul-mouthed stalker, Basquiat paintings, and the moxie needed to start a restaurant. It's the most profanity-laden episode yet!
Does Colin love D.C.? He's not sure. But earlier this month, he had a good weekend in the nation's capital, where he visited the White House, saw a show, and got close to the Pentagon. They say you shouldn't meet your heroes, but Colin did: comic and podcast guru Marc Maron, who was playing at the Warner Theatre. You'll also hear about graffiti art, a Russian lifeguard, and Colin almost getting killed by an umbrella. It's Amerikan Rambler's super terrific happy D.C. adventure!
Kathryn Shively Meier is a professor of the Civil War and military history at Virginia Commonwealth University. She and Colin talk about how a California native with a background in poetry and opera became interested in the Civil War. They also discuss grad school, Kathryn's prize-winning book Nature's Civil War, and their mutual admiration for historians Charles Royster and Gary Gallagher.
David Cox is a UVA graduate, doctor of theology, and the author of The Religious Life of Robert E. Lee. He and Colin talk in Lexington (where Lee is buried) about the general's religious beliefs and how he tried to live the life of a good Episcopalian. In the intro, Colin discusses how the late author James Dickey (who wrote Deliverance) seems to be following him around.
Mehdi Aminrazavi is Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Co-Director of the Leidecker Center for Asian Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. A native of Iran, he received his education in the United States and has lived and taught in Virginia for decades. He and Colin talk about Islam: how it developed, its central beliefs and practices, and how it has evolved since the time of Mohammad.
In the second part of their talk, Colin and Dr. Johnson discuss the good old days of academia, the Obama presidency, and the dangers of thinking of America as a "post racial" society. Dr. Johnson also explains how he got from Syracuse to Washington, D.C., to the Northern Neck of Virginia. In the intro, Colin explores his dislike of Brad Pitt and his fondness for a certain French actress.
John L. Johnson lives in Virginia now, but he is a native of Detroit. He and Colin talk about his southern roots, slave ancestors, and his long career in education. Dr. Johnson also looks back at growing up in Michigan during World War II, entering college at 16, and his move to Syracuse University and later Washington, D.C. Also, in the introduction, Colin talks about “April Brain,” and why you might be feeling a little crazy this time of year.
Part two of Colin's talk with Mark Stielper, an authority on Johnny Cash and the Cash family history. Episode two begins with a discussion of the talented and sometimes controversial June Carter Cash. And in the intro, Colin remembers Bob Wootton, who died on Sunday at the age of 75. Bob was Cash's guitarist for 30 years and the keeper of the essential "boom chicka boom" sound after the death of Luther Perkins.
Mark Stielper is a historian of Johnny Cash and the Cash family, who has been involved in many books and films. He also knew Johnny Cash personally and even played with him on stage in Virginia. After years of collaborations, he's now writing his own book on Cash. Colin and Mark discuss Johnny's life and career. It's a two part episode dedicated to the Man in Black.
Jim Hall worked as a newspaper writer for decades. Now, he's publishing history. Jim and Colin talk about Jim's journalism career in Bowling Green and Fredericksburg and his long study of racial violence in Virginia, which he began as a graduate student at VCU. Now, he has a book that examines the last lynching in northern Virginia.
Bernie Barclay was born in Ohio, but she’s lived in Virginia most of her life. She works with Colin at Stratford Hall. Their talk puts the “ramble” in American Rambler, covering everything from Iron Maiden and transgender bathrooms to growing up in Gloucester County, Turkish politics, and early Genesis. People born between 1972 and 1975 might be especially interested, but y’all should check this one out.
Dale Brumfield is an author, journalist, teacher, historian, and veteran of the Richmond zine scene of the early 1980s. He has written about his years working at an amusement park and is now finishing a new book on the prison system. Colin talks with Dale about saving an obscure Judd Nelson film, the alternative press in Richmond, and the history of the Virginia penitentiary.
Stephen Railton has taught in the English department at the University of Virginia for forty years. His specialty is nineteenth century American literature, and he has done major work on James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mark Twain. He’s also overseeing the Digital Yoknapatawpha project at UVA. Colin and Steve talk about Faulkner, his books, and how he ended up in Charlottesville
James “Bud” Robertson published his first book on the Civil War in 1963. Among other accomplishments, he taught at Virginia Tech for decades, has written the definitive biography on Stonewall Jackson, and acted as a historical consultant to the 2003 film Gods and Generals. Now, he’s working on a new book on Robert E. Lee. Bud talks with Colin about studying at Emory, being in the White House when JFK died, and his relationship with Robert Duvall.
Major Scott Slaten retired from the army after more than twenty years in the service. In this episode, he talks about how he got involved in the armed forces and how it took him from Italy to Germany, Kosovo to Iraq. It’s a two part tour through the last thirty years of U.S. military history.
Major Scott Slaten retired from the army after more than twenty years in the service. In this episode, he talks about how he got involved in the armed forces and how it took him from Italy to Germany, Kosovo to Iraq. It’s a two part tour through the last thirty years of U.S. military history.
Richard Meagher teaches politics and philosophy at Randolph-Macon College. He also recently took on the “heritage” crowd in several op-eds for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Colin talks with Rich about teaching, his recent forays into Confederatelandia, the Trump revolution, and, of course, good local craft beers.
On the mend from another mutant pig virus, Bun and Hawk look back on the shit storm that was 2016. Listen as they go over the the “Death List,” which leads to some ill-prepared commentary about the many celebrities who left us last year. Bowie. Prince. Merle Haggard. Carrie Fisher. Two members of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. This episode covers everything from Phantasm and Time Bandits to the real-life inspiration for Don Draper. Bun and Hawk: what better way to usher in 2017?
Scott Hill was born in Texas, but he is a proud Coloradan. The son of a navy pilot, he works at the birth site of George Washington in the Northern Neck of Virginia. He’s devoted life to public history and the National Park Service. Scott and Colin talk about everything from the Civil War to the National Holocaust Museum to Ford’s Theater.
Steve Katz is a guitarist, songwriter, and author, known for his work with Blues Project, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and as the producer for three Lou Reed albums. Colin and Steve talk over dinner about music, politics, and Steve’s memoir, Blood, Sweat, and My Rock ‘n’ Roll Years. They also try to answer the question: is Steve Katz a rock star?
Fredericksburg is a nice place to spend a day thinking about and experiencing history. It's also a good place to get a cup of coffee. But Colin's recent visit to Fredericksburg took place in the wake of what historians should be calling the Revolution of 2016. The Rambler discusses what he thinks of Trump and how his election will affect the country.
Gary Olsen lives in Virginia, but he grew up in the Boston area, where he studied film at Emerson College. After thirty years in the Justice Department, Gary now spends his retirement days lecturing on movies. He recently concluded a monthly series at the Fredericksburg public library on great directors and best picture contenders. Gary and Colin talk about everything from Scorsese to Hitchcock, to D. W. Griffith and Spielberg (and how Jaws may have both saved and ruined Hollywood).
In this episode, Colin talks about three things: Foghat, his visit in September to the Antietam battlefield, and Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles. It's his most Maryland episode yet!
Karen Louvar is Collections Manager at Stratford Hall. She now lives in Virginia, but her moves across the country tell us a lot about surviving in the 21st century economy. Karen talks with Colin about growing up in West Virginia, her years in college in Kentucky, and the eternal resting place of "Socks," the presidential cat.
Ira Berlin has been called "one of the greatest living historians of slavery in the United States." His works include Slaves without Masters, Many Thousands Gone (which won the Bancroft Prize), and more recently, The Long Emancipation. He has taught at the University of Maryland for a half century and got his degree at the University of Wisconsin. But he was raised in the Bronx. Here, Dr. Berlin talks about his first plane ride, activism in the 1960s, and why he chose to exchange a lab coat for the historian's garb. Also, Ira and Colin share their thoughts about the 2016 election.
Bun and Hawk take another swipe at doing a porch podcast. Despite Bun's difficulty staying awake, the two manage to have fun talking about renting in Richmond (including an unpleasant encounter with a rat), Halloween's past and present, and the Trump campaign. Also, Colin manages to ask a question that allows him to do his Marc Maron impersonation.
William C. Davis is one of the most prolific and prodigious of American historians. Over the past forty years, he has focused on the Civil War era and southern history, writing about everything from Jefferson Davis to the Texas Revolution to--as he shows in his newest book--a New Orleans prostitute who claimed to be a Confederate soldier. Davis worked for 20 years at Civil War Times Illustrated, and has won the prestigious Jefferson Davis award four times. He talks to Colin about growing up in Missouri, college in California, his work ethic, and the near loss of Gregory Peck's hat.
Note: This is a shorter version of a previous podcast. The introduction has been abbreviated to a few minutes.
William C. Davis is one of the most prolific and prodigious of American historians. Over the past forty years, he has focused on the Civil War era and southern history, writing about everything from Jefferson Davis to the Texas Revolution to--as he shows in his newest book--a New Orleans prostitute who claimed to be a Confederate soldier. Davis worked for 20 years at Civil War Times Illustrated, and has won the prestigious Jefferson Davis award four times. He talks to Colin about growing up in Missouri, college in California, his work ethic, and the near loss of Gregory Peck's hat.
In the intro, Colin talks about his battles with a "Mutant Pig Virus" and getting the attention of Foghat during their recent trip to Colonial Beach for Bike Fest.