Writing like a fifth-grader

A quick plug: I've got a new piece up today at Nieman Storyboard, part of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. (The Nieman folks are the ones who offer the fellowship that I was on for the last school year.)

The piece is about writing in a simple way, which is something I try (and often fail) to do. Would love to hear how y'all think about how you write, whether it's something professional or just an e-mail to the family.

Balloon Boy meets Hitler

I'm trying to do a serious column on the Balloon Boy for Sunday, but now I can't stop watching this.



(This Hitler scene, as you probably know, is the template for a million YouTube parodies. Be warned -- it's more addictive than Doritos.)

Avett Bros. cut short in big moment

Well, that was sort of anticlimactic.

The Avett Brothers' appearance on the David Letterman show was cut short Monday night (actually, early Tuesday morning). The band was a minute and a half, maybe two minutes, into the song "I and Love and You" when CBS (or maybe WBTV here in Charlotte) cut to commercial. (UPDATE: Fans from other cities tweet that they saw everything just fine. Could the Charlotte station be the only one that cut off the hometown band?)

The show came back on with Letterman standing with the band, saying "great song, guys" and waving goodbye.

Avett fans on Twitter are NOT happy.

What was on sounded good, if truncated -- if you know the song, you might have been able to tell that the intro was cut short. Late-night talk shows are notorious for giving bands small time windows, and the full version of "I and Love and You" -- which runs five minutes on the CD -- probably didn't fit. The show might have been running late, anyway -- after the Avetts were cut short I looked at the clock and it was 12:33. The show ends at 12:35.

It's been awhile since I've watched a late-night talk show all the way through... that felt like a loooong hour. The first two guests were Felicity Huffman ("Desperate Housewives") and Dr. Mehmet Oz (surgeon and frequent "Oprah" guest). Letterman did get off a Carolina-related joke in the monologue -- he said John Edwards had been through New York, and then showed an impregnated Statue of Liberty. We should be so proud.

 We'll see if there's any Letterman bump for the Avetts... the album goes on sale Tuesday. As in, today.

Here is a video posted overnight to YouTube.com:

Avett Brothers Week, Day 5 -- Friday time-waster edition

First off, thanks to everyone who followed along this week... this was a lot of fun for me. I'll be really interested in what you think of the story on Sunday -- leave your comments in the story or just come back here and let me know your thoughts.

(The other dispatches from Avetts Week: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4.)

Today's Avett offerings are a little longer than the ones earlier in the week. This might be my favorite Avetts video -- it's a mini-concert they did for NPR a few months ago. It's about 15 minutes long and features "Laundry Room" (from the new album), "Down With the Shine" (unreleased) and "Bella Donna" (from the '07 EP "The Second Gleam.")



The other nugget is also from NPR -- it's a segment of the "World Cafe" show that aired last night. It has a few minutes of an interview with the band, plus three songs from the new album -- "Kick Drum Heart," "I and Love and You" and "Laundry Room."



Finally, here's an early review of the album from Paste magazine. It's a pain in the butt to read -- it's a digital copy of the magazine, and you have to search for "Avett" to find it -- but they love the record: 96 out of 100.

Key quote: "Having conquered every Saturday night music hall and holler between Asheville and Portland, they have made a record that is not just a stab at the mainstream -- it's a harpoon through its sternum."

Avett Brothers Week, Day 4 -- new video shot in Charlotte

(For more on Avett Brothers Week -- leading up to my story on the band this Sunday -- check here, then here, then here.)

This morning the Avetts released the video they shot at Charlotte's Neighborhood Theatre back in July for the song "I and Love and You." It's on Myspace, and they won't let it be embedded into this post, but click here for the video.

As you'll see, they also shot some of the video around the Avetts' homes outside Concord. Their parents, Jim and Susie, are in there, along with crew members and friends. And if you were in the front couple of rows at the Neighborhood Theatre shoot, you're probably in the video.

Before I go, some Avett links from Twitter:

@theavettbros is the band's official Twitter feed.

@avettnation is a fan-oriented feed also affiliated with the band -- there's some overlap but @avettnation tends to be more prolific.

@joekwon80 is the feed from Joe Kwon, the Avett's cello player, featuring occasional haikus and photos of meals from the road.

And remember, you can listen to streaming audio of the new record all this week on NPR.

More thoughts on the new record or anything else Avett? Let's hear it...

I'm talking tonight...

as part of the New South for the New Southerner series at the Levine Museum of the New South uptown. It starts at 5:30; the real draws are my Observer colleague Sarah Aarthun, WCNC anchor Sonja Gantt, and appetizers from Mert's.

We'll be talking about living in the CLT, answering your questions and plugging Living Here -- the Observer's magazine for newcomers -- which comes out this Sunday.

The event costs $5 and they ask for an RSVP; here's more details. Hope to see y'all there.

Avett Brothers Week, Day 3 -- more video, plus fans debate!

(For earlier dispatches from Avetts Week, click here and here.)

Today's video clip is "Will You Return," from the 2007 album "Emotionalism." You'll see cello player Joe Kwon here -- he joined the band in '07 -- along with friends and crew members jammed in the back of the Avetts' tour bus. This song is an example to me of the band's evolution -- there's still a banjo in there, and they're still playing loud, but what carries the song is the early-Beatles-era melody.



A reminder: You can listen to the new album, "I and Love and You," streaming on NPR from now until the record hits stores on Tuesday.

A couple of other links:

-- The latest in the band's roll-out of mini-videos for each song on the new album: "Laundry Room."

-- The debate among longtime fans over the direction of "I and Love and You" is fascinating. Check out this discussion on the Avetts' official site and this one on the NPR site.

Let's continue the discussion here. Is the new record too different from the Avetts' older stuff, is it a natural progression, or something in between? I'd love to hear your thoughts as we get Sunday's story ready. What do you think?

Avett Brothers Week, Day 2 -- update w/Letterman info

UPDATE: Columbia Records announced today that the Avetts will play David Letterman's show Monday -- the night before "I and Love and You" hits stores -- and will also appear on the Craig Ferguson late-night show Oct. 6. They'll be doing the song "I and Love and You" on Letterman (11:35 p.m. on CBS) and "Laundry Room" on Ferguson (12:35 a.m., also CBS).

(For an explanation of why it's Avett Brothers Week on the blog, check here.)

Yes, the new record -- "I and Love and You" -- is now available for listening. But first, a quick study in contrasts.

The Avetts made their name by playing bluegrass instruments with punk intensity -- a friend of mine described them as Doc Watson and the Clash thrown into a blender. Here's a clip that really shows off that style -- "I Killed Sally's Lover" (from the 2003 album "A Carolina Jubilee"), played at a record-store appearance in Knoxville.




Now then. Late last night, NPR put up "I and Love and You" in its entirety on streaming audio. It's not in stores until next Tuesday, but the streaming version should be up all this week. Thanks to the magic of the embedded player, you can listen to it right here:



The track list:

1. I and Love and You
2. January Wedding
3. Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise
4. And It Spread
5. The Perfect Space
6. Ten Thousand Words
7. Kick Drum Heart
8. Laundry Room
9. Ill With Want
10. Tin Man
11. Slight Figure of Speech
12. It Goes On and On
13. Incomplete and Insecure


(To listen to individual tracks, go here.)

The Avetts have always played around with different arrangements and tempos, and from talking to them, they see "I and Love and You" as a natural progression. But you'll find a very different sound than you hear on that YouTube clip.

So, Avett fans: What do you think of the new songs? Or are you trying to hold off on hearing them until you can get a CD in your hands next Tuesday?

And if you're new to the band, what do you think?

Avett Brothers Week begins

So this Sunday we're publishing a story I've been working on about the Avett Brothers -- the band from Concord that puts out its first major-label record, "I and Love and You," on Sept. 29. To lead into the story, I'm making this week on the blog Avett Week. Every day I'll post a video from the band's career and add a couple of links... if you're not familiar with these guys, by the end of the week I hope you'll be caught up. I also hope to have some news on the band to post along the way.

Today's video is the earliest I could find on YouTube -- it's from 2003, a couple years after the band formed. You'll see Scott Avett on banjo, Seth Avett on guitar and Bob Crawford on bass. They didn't have a title for this song at the moment, but it later became "Swept Away," on the 2004 album "Mignonette."

It's a fan video, so it's pretty ragged -- Seth's head never quite makes it into the light -- but then again, the band was pretty ragged back then too. Still, you can already start to hear their knack for melody.



Today's links:

The Avetts' official site.

Their bio on the Columbia Records site.

Avett fans: What are some of your favorite videos/sites? Add 'em in the comments, please...

Misty water-colored... daisies?

For some reason -- no idea why -- the childhood song that plays the most in my mind's jukebox is "A Daisy a Day." It's a sweet little story -- 98 percent high-fructose corn syrup -- about a couple who walk the streets together, and how the guy thinks about his love even after she passes on.

I'll give you a daisy a day, dear / I'll give you a daisy a day / I'll love you until the rivers run still / And the four winds we know blow away.

I'm not good at remembering lyrics -- I can't even come up with the whole chorus of "Kookaburra," and we sang that roughly 6 million times in elementary school -- but damn if I won't be cutting grass or reading a book and find myself whistling "Daisy a Day." Whatever hook that melody has on me, it's sunk deep.

I thought about "Daisy a Day" when I heard that Henry Gibson died. The obit mentions his big break as a cast member on "Laugh-In" and his movie work, including his classic role as the head Nazi in "The Blues Brothers." But I was disappointed that it didn't mention what I remembered most -- his hit version of "A Daisy a Day." For years, every time that song has played in my head, I can see him singing it.

So I went to YouTube, the home of every inch of video ever shot, to find the clip. I looked. And kept looking. And then went to Google.

I couldn't believe it.

Henry Gibson, best I can tell, never sang "A Daisy a Day." He carried a daisy around as his comedy gimmick -- remember, this was the '60s -- but he didn't sing.

It was another "Laugh-In" regular who did the song -- Jud Strunk, who had a top-20 hit with it in 1973, when I was 9. Here he is doing the song on Carson:



(Unbelievable factoid of the day: According to the Jud Strunk website, "A Daisy a Day" was the first song played on the moon. This falls under the category of "too good to check.")

The point is, for the last 30-some years, I have held in my mind the indisputable fact that Henry Gibson sang "A Daisy a Day." And now it turns out I was completely wrong.

So I'm wondering which other childhood memories are wrong. Did Anna Cheshire not wink at me that day in second grade? Did I not find that magazine of dirty jokes and have NO idea what they were talking about? Did I not goof around with darts and stick holes in our new Formica table? (No, I'm pretty sure that one's real... my mom still gets steamed about it.)

Here's some advice for you 9-year-olds out there: Start writing it all down. Now. Or someday you'll be humming "Billie Jean" and thinking about that great singer, Michael Jordan.

100 Words Or Less: What would YOU say to schoolkids?

By you know you've heard all about the controversy over President Obama's speech to the nation's schools today; maybe you've even read the text. What I'd like to know this morning is what YOU would say to America's schoolchildren, if you had the chance.

I'd prefer that this doesn't turn into an argument over the president's policies -- if you're interested in that, the conversation on my Sunday column has been going on for a couple of days now. Take this time to think about what the children of this country ought to hear. And although President Obama is taking a lot more words, you have to do it in 100 words or less.

100 Words Or Less: Predictions on health care

Today I'd like to hear something a little different from you on the issue of health care. I'm not looking for what you WANT to see happen with health-care reform; I'm interested in what you think WILL happen with health-care reform.

I'm hoping this will be a test of how the 24/7 news cycle in a given day or week matches how events really play out. Obviously, serious health-care reform -- especially a public option -- looks to be in trouble right now. But how about a year from now? Where will we end up then?

That's the kind of prediction I'm looking for. We'll come back to this along the way and see how the guesses turned out. Look into the future and tell me what you think... in 100 words or less.

Four teachers

On Tuesday I spoke at Beverly Woods Elementary School -- the principal, Caroline Horne, asked me to come talk to the teachers as they were getting ready for a new school year. One of the main rules of writing is, never use material once if you can use it twice. So here's the talk I gave. As you'll see, it's not exactly local news or anything... but maybe you have some memories of the teachers who made a difference for you.

When Ms. Horne called me a couple months ago to come and speak here, she was looking for me to give sort of a pep talk. To be honest, though, I’m not sure pep is what y’all need. I know it must be a strange time to be a teacher in CMS. If I were a teacher, I’d feel like I was getting a lot of conflicting messages right now about how I was valued, how I fit into this county’s larger plans, how much difference I was making in the world.

So I’m not going to stand here and tell you how everything is gonna be great, because I don’t know that, and I don’t think anyone else does either. What I want to tell you about this morning is four teachers who made a difference in one boy’s life.

My first-grade teacher was Clara Lewis. This was 1970, at a little elementary school on the coast of Georgia. I didn’t know until years later that it was the first year the schools in our county were fully integrated. I don’t know how it might have been different, because I don’t have anything to compare it to. All I can tell you is the first schoolteacher I ever had was a black woman, and I never knew there was anything different about it because Ms. Lewis kept our class busy and quiet and peaceful.

Now I will say that our whole elementary school was generally quiet and peaceful, and there was a reason for that. Our principal, Mrs. Barone, had on her desk a large wooden paddle that had an electrical cord coming out of the end. It was the stuff of legend. Nobody I knew actually got hit with the electric paddle, but everybody I knew seemed to KNOW somebody who got hit with the electric paddle. Now, of course, I know that she just drilled a hole and glued a power cord in there. But at the time, the electric paddle was the nuclear weapon of our elementary school. Nobody did anything really bad because we were all terrified that it would be launched.

By the way, feel free to use that electric-paddle idea here this year.

Back to Ms. Lewis: That first-grade classroom, in a changing school system, could have been a place of conflict or confusion. But instead it was a place of peace, where we all sat down together and learned. That was because of one great teacher.

My seventh-grade English teacher was Lillian Williams. My family had moved just before seventh grade started, from one side of the county to the other, and so I was in a new middle school. English was my first class on my first day of seventh grade. Ms. Williams got up and started telling us how much we would learn in the year ahead and how we’d all be ready for high school next year. Slowly, as she talked, it dawned on me that somehow I had landed in an eighth-grade classroom.

Well, it turned out that when I had enrolled, the assistant principal took one look at me – I was a big boy even back then – and assumed I was an eighth-grader. I was at a brand-new school, with no friends, and I was embarrassed. But Ms. Williams talked to me, and took a look at my test scores, and then she did something she didn’t have to do. She went to the principal and said: Let me keep him. So I took eighth-grade English, and seventh-grade everything else, and made two sets of new friends. I’m still best friends with a couple of those guys more than 30 years later. I even ended up playing Charlie Brown in the school play, which Ms. Williams directed. That year turned out to be one of the best years of my life, and it was because of one great teacher.

My 10th-grade English teacher was Brenda Hunt. When I was in 10th grade it would probably be fair to say I had not applied myself much in school. I had good grades, but I was just doing what it took to get by, and I had been hanging out with a pretty shady crowd. Ms. Hunt never said a word to me about any of this. What she said to me, instead, was that she thought I could write.

She was in charge of the high school literary magazine, and for the next three years I filled that sucker up with Stephen King wanna-be short stories, and authoritative-sounding essays, and sonnets written to girls who had never even heard of me. One thing I tell people who want to write for a living is that to be a good writer, first you have to be a bad writer. Ms. Hunt let me be a bad writer, and she showed me how to get better. I didn’t know it at the time, but I now had a career right in front of me, and it was because of one great teacher.

My high-school debate coach was Wayne Ervin. The other three teachers who played big roles in my life were serene and even-tempered. Mr. Ervin was… not. He used to keep a bundle of yardsticks in the corner of his classroom, and if he caught somebody not paying attention, he would crack a yardstick across the corner of his desk and just break it into splinters. Our senior year, some students went in together and bought him a steel yardstick about an inch thick. When I came back to visit from college, it was sitting in the corner of the room, bent in half.

But if you took Mr. Ervin’s salary, and divided by the number of hours he actually worked, he was probably making about half of minimum wage. He came in early and stayed late and traveled just about every weekend with his debate students and his Model United Nations students. I was in both of those groups. We were public-school kids, a lot of us lower-middle-class or worse, but Mr. Ervin had taught us so well that we went up against the private-school kids and held our own. I gained a confidence in those activities that I had never found in myself before. And that was because of one great teacher.

I suspect that many of you have already had students come through your classroom who will one day think of you as one great teacher. I know you don’t get paid what you ought to get paid, I know you don’t always get the respect you deserve… all I can tell you is that every time that bell rings, you are creating memories for the children in your class. And doing that job well can be a reward that lasts not only your lifetime, but the lifetimes of the kids you teach.

Let me tell one last quick story. When I was in high school, I got to be close friends with a guy named Virgil. We’ve been friends about 30 years now, and except for my wife, he’s the best friend I have. One day, years after we got to be friends, somehow we got to talking about the teachers we had when we were growing up. I was telling him about this great first-grade teacher I had at St. Simons Elementary named Ms. Lewis.

He looked at me like I had hit him with a brick.

Ms. Lewis was his grandmother.

And years after I had come through her class, of course she remembered that nice boy named Tommy. She’s in her 80s now. I still send her Christmas cards. And that’s the sort of thing that can happen in your life if you have one great teacher.

Jimi and Jose do the anthem

As a supplement to this morning's column about Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock, here's the best YouTube I found of Hendrix doing the anthem:



And here's the best audio I could find of Jose Feliciano's version from the '68 World Series, also mentioned in the column... the video is a slideshow of a July 4th parade. Appropriate.

Creativity, and not quitting

I hear from a lot of people who want to be writers. They want to know the secrets to being a professional writer. You can easily spend thousands of dollars on books and magazines and seminars on how to be a successful writer -- or how to succeed in any kind of creative field. The one secret I know -- it's a secret most people don't want to hear -- is this:

Don't quit.

Ira Glass, of NPR's "This American Life," says it even better. Take this to heart, go create something, and have a great weekend.

Local boy does good

When I came to the Observer, 20 years ago this summer, I didn't know anybody. I was a one-person bureau in Lancaster, S.C., and on Tuesdays I drove up to Rock Hill for a staff meeting. That trip to Rock Hill was a big deal -- I wasn't making many friends in Lancaster, and it was good to just hang out with people I liked. The guy I ended up hanging out with most was one of our sportswriters, Joe Posnanski.

Joe was even younger and greener than I was. He had majored in accounting at UNC Charlotte until he realized one day that the last thing in the world he wanted to be was an accountant. What he really wanted was to write sports. So he wrote a letter to the Observer asking for a job. The paper took a chance on him and put him in a slot compiling agate, the tiny type of stats and standings on the sports page. Every night Joe would put together the agate, and in the spare moments between deadlines he would write columns about the sports news of the day. These columns were never published. Joe was writing for, literally, nobody. But somehow an editor found the columns in the computer system. The paper gave him a writing job. When I was down in Lancaster County, covering car wrecks and sewer-line breaks, he was in York County covering high-school basketball and writing the weekly volleyball notebook. We bonded over sports and music, we swapped stories from our favorite writers, we burned to get better and move up.

Sometimes, after work, we'd throw a baseball around in the parking lot of Joe's apartment complex, and we'd dream about where our careers might go. At the time our biggest dream was just to make it into the main office in Charlotte (we called it the Big House, or sometimes the Mothership). But sometimes we'd talk about other dreams, like maybe actually writing a column someday, or even working for a magazine. Our favorite magazine -- the defining magazine for both of us growing up -- was Sports Illustrated. They had the great Frank Deford, they had the brilliant Gary Smith, they told the kinds of stories we wanted to tell. But that was a dream too far away, in another galaxy somewhere.

Since those days in the parking lot, Joe moved on to write columns in Augusta, Ga., and then Cincinnati, and for the last 13 years in Kansas City. His blog has hundreds of thousands of readers. His third book is coming out in a few weeks.

And yesterday, my buddy Joe accepted an offer to become a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.

Joe has tremendous talent -- had it all along. But you can draw a straight line from Sports Illustrated back to those nights on the sports desk when he wrote stories for nobody, like shooting jumpers in an empty gym, hoping and planning for the day when he would get his chance.

I'm proud beyond words for my friend. But now I need to file this and get ready to write the next thing. That's what Joe would do.

Wedding video

Not mine. But, after seeing this, I wish we had thought of it.



(via Nancy Nall)

Avett Brothers video report

UPDATE: Here's a slideshow by the great Observer photog Jeff Siner.

Some days this is not a bad way to make a living. Today I spent five hours at the Neighborhood Theatre watching the Avett Brothers shoot a video for "I and Love and You," the title track from their new record due out in September. I plan on writing a longer piece on the Avetts closer to when the record comes out -- this is a big moment for them. They've signed with a major label (Columbia Records), music guru Rick Rubin produced the album... it's one of those "on the verge of being huge" stories.

For now, though, a few vignettes from the video shoot:

-- Shooting a video means doing the song over... and over... and over. The director wanted Scott Avett to stage-dive into the crowd at the end of the song, and he dove at least a dozen times before everyone was satisfied with the shot. By the end he was about to lose his pants.

-- Between takes, the band played mini-sets of some older tunes, another song off the new record ("Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise"), and even an untitled tune that's not on any album yet.

-- If you're an Avetts fan, and you're used to their "punkgrass" sound: This is different. "I and Love and You," as well as many of the other new songs, draw their heart from piano and Joe Kwon's cello.

-- Intrigued? The Avetts play two shows at the Myrtle Beach House of Blues this weekend, and play Bojangles Coliseum Aug. 8.

-- The director begged audience members (fans who signed up online) not to post video from the shoot to YouTube. But lots of people had their cellphone cameras out. We'll see if everyone keeps the promise.

My Favorite Singer (This Week): Laura Izibor

This Irish R&B singer is clearly stalking me. I heard her for the first time on the radio a few weeks ago, then she kept popping up in magazines, and last night a buddy of mine put on her CD at his house. Then it turns out she's playing a Charlotte club called Utopia SoundStage this Friday night -- advance tickets are $20, contact info and directions are here. This is assuming she doesn't just show up on our porch or something.

Ladies and gentlemen, "Shine."



So what music is stalking you these days?

100 Words or Less: United Way

Last week we kicked off the "100 Words or Less" series with a discussion of Sarah Palin. This week we toss out this question: How could the United Way win you back?

As you might have seen, the Observer is soliciting ideas on how to solve the money crisis in Charlotte-area charities. That's more of a big-idea project. What I'm talking about is a smaller thing. Of course not everyone gave to the United Way even before its recent troubles. But if you did, or if you at least supported the concept, how could they rebuild your trust and make you willing to give again?

We'll have a special guest tackle this question in my Thursday column. For now, it's all yours. Just keep it on-topic, and keep it short -- maybe, you know, 100 words or less...