I Can Be Shamed Productively

I chatted it up this morning with Michael Krasny on KQED Forum. (I'm a longtime listener, first-time guest.) It went well, but a caller asked about Joan Osborne, and I totally blanked. A producer told me not to worry; they had already gone to their pledge drive, and only listeners who paid for pledge-free programming heard my reply.

I decided to make this a teachable moment, especially for me. Here's more on Joan Osborne, for all the fanatical readers of this blog who don't already know about her and her work.

She joined forces with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead when they regrouped to tour in 2003 as The Dead, sang with Motown's legendary Funk Brothers in the acclaimed 2002 documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown, and produced two albums for the great blues trio the Holmes Brothers. She's shared stages with a wide range of performers, including Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Emmylou Harris, Patti Smith, Melissa Etheridge, Taj Mahal, Luciano Pavarotti and the Chieftains. More recently, Osborne has toured and recorded as a member of Trigger Hippy, which also includes rising Americana star Jackie Greene and Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman.