Online Exclusives

SoLost takes you to the Turner Family Picnic in Gravel Springs, Mississippi, an annual event that has preserved a singular style of music for the last 50 years.

Our Mississippi-related Q&A. 

Lamenting the Mississippi River. 

Clark was heralded in some critical circles as "The New John Prine," who had been hailed, in his turn, as "The New Bob Dylan." There were a few similarities. Songs like "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" had the empathy and compassion for other folks' lives that was a trait of early Prine and "Rita Ballou" had the same dry humor. His Carter-influenced guitar playing was vaguely reminiscent of Prine. But he was obviously Guy Clark from the get-go and he was good enough that didn't have to emulate anyone.

The first in a series of online-only Mississippi Music CDs, because if you're like us, one CD can't even begin to encompass the fantastic, soul-stirring riches of the Magnolia State. Here are thirty additional tracks by super-talented musicians, most of whom are underrated. Listen and rejoice! 

From Mississippi to Chicago to the stars. 

Greil Marcus debunks pretty much everything you've heard about the great Mississippi blues musician Robert Johnson—the guy who sold his soul to the devil, right?

In a freewheeling and funny discussion with OA founder Marc Smirnoff, David Remnick dishes about life as an editor of the most prestigious and important magazine in America; his favorite New Yorker writer of all time; his early days as an inept crime reporter; and his hilarious (and humiliating) first appearance as a writer in The New Yorker.

Any kind of music you could ever want is on Bandcamp.com. The problem, of course, is finding what you like: There are so many artists on the page that it's hard to tell where to start.

If you're short on time, you might try these ten projects, which vary in scope from electronica to grindcore, but all have Mississippi origins in common.

Most photographs I've seen of Jimmy Donley look like he's being stretched from the inside. He seems to have more teeth in his mouth than one should ever, crammed into a wide and rugged jaw, framed under eyes that somehow want to either pop out of their sockets or become swallowed in his head. He looks uncomfortable, is what I'm saying, to be captured in his body on film, or even more so, to be anywhere at all, though there is also something in that capture that suggests a tide rolled unrelenting, as if of the way he lived his life there could have never been a choice. 

Love the new Music Issue CD compilation? Here you can explore new songs and purchase the wares of OA-beloved Mississippi artists. 

Poe Ballantine on the true source of Clapton's immortality. 

If you could've taken five hundred black Mississippians in 1937, showed them two dance halls, and told them they could either go see Robert Johnson perform in one or Walter Barnes perform in the other, Johnson would've ended up alone. Shit, Johnson would hightail it over to check Walter Barnes, too. Barnes was hot.

It keeps coming back to me. 

Choice selections from the boss man himself.