Tracy Chapman Speaks, T Bone Burnett Sings, and Today's Cartoons

Plus a big weekend for Elton & Brandi.

Apr 05, 2025

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” Now watch trailer for acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE. Sustain this newsletter by ordering one of his books.

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A woman with graying dreads sits in a field of yellow flowers, smiling and clapping her hands together while wearing a light button-up shirt, jeans and a dark blazer.

Tracy Chapman has sat for very few major interviews in recent decades but she now talks to The New York Times for piece to explain some things people have never understood about her mega-selling debut album—which is just coming out in a new vinyl package that she is proud of.

I grew up in a working-class family and was very much aware of the struggles that my mom encountered as she was raising me and my sister. There were other people in my family who were working in blue-collar jobs as the industrial economy was starting to fail and fade. As a kid, I don’t think I had any sense of the politics of that, but through osmosis you’re picking up on the stress or the concerns that the grown-ups around you have.
That’s why my 16-year-old self wrote “Talkin’ Bout a Revolution,” because that was the world that I knew. That working people were struggling. It wasn’t class consciousness at the time. These were the people I cared about, right? So I’m trying to understand them, and I’m trying to paint a picture in these songs about what life is like. And I think in part, I didn’t see much around me that did reflect that….
The thing that I take from it is that, now that I’m older, is that it’s this constant practice that needs to occur. A constant vigilance. You can’t expect that things will hold.

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Finally getting to catch up with the legendary jack-of-all-trades T Bone Burnett again tonight at Town Hall in NYC. We actually go back to the autumn of 1975 and the first of Dylan’s “Rolling Thunder” in Plymouth, MA., where he was the lanky kid with the funny name, just the second guitarist in a sprawling assemblage. Of course he went on to produce numerous key albums or film soundtracks by others as well as his own solo records (I saw him again at JazzFest in NOLA).

Now he’s touring behind one of the best records of 2024, “The Other Side,” so let’s hope he plays tonight the song, below, with perhaps Rosanne Cash arriving to sing her parts:

An especially lovely cut from the album:

Meanwhile, big weekend for the Elton-Brandi Carlile duo as they co-host “SNL” and then present a special on CBS the next night. Maybe you might enjoy this new cut from their album, “A Little Light,” which comments on the mood-wrecking effects of Trumpian politics today.