How Far We’ve Come (TOTR 331)

1992 – Arrested Development – 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of...– “Tennessee”

1993 – Sarah McLachlan – Fumbling Towards Ecstasy - “Possession”

1994 – Spearhead – Home - “Red Beans & Rice”

1995 – Jewel – Pieces of You - “Who Will Save Your Soul”

1996 – Fugees – The Score - “No Woman No Cry”

1997 – Ben Harper – The Will To Live - “I Want To Be Ready”

1998 – Billy Bragg & Wilco – Mermaid Avenue - “Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key”

1999 – Moby – Play - “Run On”

2000 – Coldplay – Parachutes - “Yellow”

2001 – White Stripes – White Blood Cells - “Hotel Yorba”

2002 – Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots - “Do You Realize?”

2003 – A Perfect Circle – Thirteenth Step - “Gravity”

2004 – Arcade Fire – Funeral - “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)”

2005 – Ryan Adams – Cold Roses - “Cold Roses”

2006 – TV On The Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain - “Blues From Down Here”

2007 – Band of Horses – Cease To Begin - “Marry Song”

2008 – Kings of Leon – Because of the Night - “Use Somebody”

2009 – Avett Brothers – I And Love And You - “Laundry Room”

2010 – Gungor – Beautiful Things  - “Heaven”

2011 – Dawes – Nothing Is Wrong - “How Far We’ve Come”

2012 – Mumford & Sons – Babel - “Below My Feet”

2013 – Jason Isbell – Southeastern - “Traveling Alone”

2014 – Sturgill Simpson – Metamodern Sounds in Country Music - “Just Let Go”

2015 – My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall - “Spring Among The Living”

2016 – Mavis Staples – Livin On A High Note - “High Note”  

2017 – Iron & Wine – Beast Epic - “About A Bruise”

Somebody To Love (TOTR 330)

1967 – Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow – “Somebody To Love”

1968 – Van Morrison – Astral Weeks  – “Ballerina”

1969 – The Beatles – Abbey Road – “Something”

1970 – Allman Brothers Band – Idlewild South – “Revival”

1971 – Marvin Gaye – What’s Goin’ On – “Inner City Blues”

1972 – Grateful Dead – Europe 72 – “Brown Eyed Women”

1973 – Godspell – Original Motion Picture Soundtrack– “Save The People”

1974 – Elton John – Greatest Hits – “Rocket Man”

1975 – John Denver – An Evening With John Denver– “The Eagle and the Hawk”

1976 – Stevie Wonder – Songs in the Key of Life– “I Wish”

1977 – Bob Marley – Exodus– “One Love/People Get Ready”

1978 – Patti Smith Group – Easter– “Because The Night”

1979 – Bob Dylan – Slow Train Coming– “When You Gonna Wake Up”
1980 – John Lennon & Yoko Ono – Double Fantasy - “Watching the Wheels”

1981 – Rolling Stones – Tattoo You– “Waiting On A Friend”

1982 – Prince – 1999– “Delirious”

1983 – Violent Femmes – Violent Femmes– “Please Do Not Go”

1984 – R.E.M. – Reckoning– “So. Central Rain”

1985 – The Waterboys – This Is The Sea– “This Is The Sea”

1986 – Lone Justice – Shelter– “Wheels”

1987 – U2 – The Joshua Tree– “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”

1988 – Boogie Down Productions (KRS One) – By All Means Necessary– “Illegal Business”

1989 – Operation Ivy – Energy– “Sound System”

1990 – Fugazi – Repeater– “Repeater”

1991 – Pearl Jam – Ten– “Even Flow”

Crack The Shutters (TOTR 329)

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats - Intro

The Decemberists - Once In My Life

Tea Leaf Green - Don’t Curse At The Night

Yeasayer - I Remember

Frightened Rabbit - Swim Until You Can’t See Land

The Decemberists - Don’t Carry It All

The Avett Brothers - Ain’t No Man

Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel

Mumford & Sons - The Boxer

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals - Magnolia Mountain

R.E.M. - Finest Worksong

Snow Patrol - Crack The Shutters

Bob Marley & the Wailers - Three Little Birds

Matisyahu - Time of Your Song

Iron & Wine - Call It Dreaming

Seryn - We Will All Be Changed

Sam Burchfield - Here Tonight

NEEDTOBREATHE - Brother

The Collection - The Gown of Green

The Oh Hellos - Eurus

U2 - Some Days Are Better Than Others

Gungor - Beautiful Things

Jack White - What’s Done Is Done

10,0000 Maniacs - Let The Mystery Be

Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors - I Saw The Light

Amazing (TOTR 328)

(photo by Maddison Potter)

Judah & the Lion - Back’s Against The Wall

Southern Sons - Lift Every Voice And Sing

John Legend & Common - Rain

John Legend - Woke Up This Morning

John Legend - Pride (In The Name Of Love)

John Legend et al - Gethsemane (from Jesus Christ Superstar Live…)

Sara Bareilles et al - Everything’s Alright

Anthony Hamilton - Fine Again

Aretha Franklin - Chain of Fools

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - Fooled Again

Grateful Dead - Ship Of Fools

My Morning Jacket - I’m Amazed

One Eskimo - Amazing

Jars of Clay - Amazing Grace

Good Old War - Amazing Eyes

Mumford & Sons - Roll Away Your Stone

The Coyote Bandits - Song for the Revolution

Bono, Sting, Joan Baez, et al - I Shall Be Released

Down Home Percolators - Blues For Martin Luther King

Mason Jennings - Dr. King

Patty Griffin - Up To The Mountain

Old Crow Medicine Show - Motel In Memphis

Martin Luther King Jr - I’ve Been To The Mountaintop (excerpt)

Nina Simone - Why? (The King Of Love Is Dead)

Mahalia Jackson - Take My Hand Precious Lord

Al Green - Let’s Stay Together

What Happened at Tennessee Tech When MLK Died

Tomorrow [this was first posted on April 3, 2018], a group of approximately 50 Tennessee Tech students, faculty, and staff will travel to Memphis to commemorate the tragic mountaintop moment, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Things were quite different in Cookeville and at Tennessee Tech fifty years ago.

 The following is an excerpt from my manuscript Banjo and Bread which discusses counterculture Christianity through the lens of two Tech alumni, Calvin and Nelia Kimbrough. -AWS

By the time of the Poor People’s Campaign and Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, Martin Luther King’s lack of popularity among some southern whites was no secret. Moreover, his unwavering commitment to nonviolence had lost him support among more militant blacks.

National television coverage on CBS included full-color clips from King’s epic “mountaintop speech” and these remarks from President Johnson: “America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King. I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King who lived by nonviolence.”

Calvin and Nelia Kimbrough remember learning the news and heading to the respective TV rooms in their Tennessee Tech campus dormitories. The responses from their peers were disheartening, to say the least. “All these people were just happy,” Calvin recalls.

Then Nelia succinctly summarized what she remembers hearing: “He got what he deserved. That is what he gets, being uppity.” The poem Nelia recalls writing after the tragedy dismisses her colleagues’ cruelty. She was essentially “branding my friends as having bubblegum minds.” Among the majority white students on a campus with a very small minority population, just a few years after integrating for the first time, the scary consensus celebrated King’s demise.

Coverage in The Oracle (Tech’s student newspaper) confirmed the mood of divisiveness that King’s legacy created among whites in Cookeville. Apparently no one—from faculty to students to the community—could elude the controversies coming to the surface after the leader’s martyrdom.

History professor B.F. Jones was the target of backlash as he and his colleagues attempted to create a scholarship fund bearing the name of the slain preacher and teacher. In response to the scholarship idea, anonymous hate mail disturbed professors like Will Schrader and Jones. Other Tech faculty joined the chorus of negativity.

The Oracle quotes Schrader saying, “I am disturbed that people like this don’t have the backbone to sign their names.” Jones added, “I expected some letters like these, but I didn’t expect any from faculty members.”

Other than Bob Lewis, B.F. Jones was the Cookeville mentor most influential in changing the lives of Calvin and Nelia Kimbrough. They had switched majors to History and stayed on campus two more years to complete the Master degree, writing about African-American struggles in their graduate work. Jones’s emphasis on Black Studies really helped to radicalize these idealistic white activists. Nelia says that as much as Jones respected King, Jones had been disappointed with King’s opposition to the war in Vietnam.

But even the commander of the war (and nemesis of the antiwar activists) Lyndon Johnson could not mute his grief at losing Martin Luther King. President Johnson ordered American flags hung at half-mast in response to the murder in Memphis. The campus response in Cookeville is disturbing.

The Oracle reported, “The Stars and Stripes have not flown above the Tech campus since Tuesday after the rope used to raise the United States flag was cut for the second time.” So apparently, white racism ran so deep in the Tennessee culture that vandals would sooner deface the American flag than afford any deference to one of the most articulate dissenters the country has ever known.

Retired Cookeville journalist Mary Jo Denton was Mary Jo Johnson in 1968 and teaching freshman English at Tech as a teaching assistant. She remembers all the key players at the Wesley Foundation quite well. Denton explains, “I had earned my BA degree at Berea College in Kentucky, a school founded by abolitionists and devoted to racial equality. So even though I had grown up here in the Upper Cumberland, my undergraduate years at Berea had broadened my views considerably. Then I entered grad school at TTU and was shocked at the racist attitudes here at that time.”

Back in April 1968, her letter to the editor expressed sentiments similar to those Calvin and Nelia were feeling. In her brief remarks, Denton regretted “the air of celebration apparent in portions of the student body at Tech upon news of the death of Dr. King.”

The same mood the Kimbroughs saw in the dorm’s TV room, Denton experienced in the classroom: “I have never been more discouraged concerning my task than when my class of twenty-five people (almost unanimously) expressed hatred and racism in a discussion of the events of the past four days.”

Even though Denton has spent her life here, her younger self questioned the wisdom of working with Tech students. Her exasperation was surely shared by other Cookeville people of conscience, as she pleaded: “How can one teach the meaning and the value inherent in the concept of literature—or any other art—to people who lack elementary humanity?”

That was 1968, and I was just a baby living with my parents in Chicago. My Dad Kenneth Smith was mobilized by the Illinois Natural Guard to the patrol the streets while Chicago burned. In his ten years of service, this was the closest my father would ever come to a combat situation. But Barb reminded me that his unit did not have live ammunition during their duties.

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[In 2021, this post is all-too relevant thanks to the resurgence of White Supremacy in our Cookeville community, campus culture, and the entire country.]