© 2024 NPR Illinois
The Capital's Community & News Service
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Folk Alley Presents: Kevin Gordon

Singer-songwriter Kevin Gordon stopped by Folk Alley recently for a session taping at Beehive Productions. Joined by Steph Graham on bass, Gordon performed material from his latest album, Long Gone Time. About this song, "Following A Sign," he told us:

"This song is unusual for me, because I usually write about real people I've known. I heard the voice of the imagined woman telling her story in this song while reading a couple of different things around the same time: revisiting the Doris Betts short story 'The Ugliest Pilgrim,' in which the female protagonist is on a journey to visit a faith-healing minister, whom she believes will fix an unstated physical deformity; also an interview with the Milwaukee self-taught artist and street preacher known as Prophet William Blackmon. I've always been fascinated with the relationship between religious faith and the everyday realities of believers, that tension between what is and what is hoped for, and those known as 'faith healers' and other 'charismatic' believers, for whom the separation of the natural from the supernatural seems to be veil-thin."

SET LIST

  • "Following A Sign"
  • Watch Kevin Gordon's full Folk Alley Session at FolkAlley.com.

    Video produced by Linda Fahey (Folk Alley) and Jeff Oehler and Sue Bibeau (Beehive Productions), with audio assistance from Redia Spada and camera assistance from Jeff Bradley.

    Copyright 2021 Folk Alley. To see more, visit Folk Alley.