leo_kottke raze leo kottke has spent the better part of his life redefining what someone with two hands and a restless mind can wring out of a few pieces of wood and some strings. he's made acoustic guitars do things that melt my brain. he also once described his singing as sounding like "geese farts on a muggy day". over a career that's spanned more than half a century, he's walked a long and sinuous artistic road. his songs have touched on blues, jazz, folk, and ambient music without ever settling down in any specific genre. he's worked with artists as disparate as lyle lovett, rickie lee jones, and phish, without ever becoming a high-profile act in his own right. something tells me he prefers it that way. he continues to play live and record new music well into his seventies. he probably won't put the guitar down until he doesn't have the strength to hold it anymore. in an interview with bc newspaper the times colonist, he said: "i've been trained to think — we all have — that when you get old, everything gets old. but it's exactly the opposite. if you have something, one little handle of some kind — writing, playing — i think everything does continue, and it's a work in progress. if that isn't happening, what's the alternative?" my introduction to leo's music came when i was fourteen. my dad and i were channel surfing late at night when we landed on an episode of "sessions at west 54th", a short-lived sister program to "austin city limits". i'd read about leo in a rock and roll encyclopedia, but i'd never heard him play. one song from that performance haunted me. i had no idea what it was called or what album it lived on until i lucked into finding it deep in the heart of another late night more than twenty years later. it's funny how some memories change shape if you sit with them long enough. i remembered leo talking about a father and his son. i was wrong. but the sense of loss that ran through the song like a current of hushed electricity ... that wasn't something my mind invented. that was real. it's a devastating story. but the way leo tells it, it doesn't feel like the introduction to a song. it feels like the music takes over mid-thought, stepping in where words fail, saying everything that can't be said. it might be the simplest piece of music he's ever written. i think it's also the most powerful. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVIt1MqCkH0 211024 what's it to you? who go blather from