My friend Tom Witherspoon has been modelling writing to a prompt and having the bravery to post the results. We even talked about it a little bit and the value of sharing those sketches of ideas.
It occurred to me that I do this all the time on my radio show. I’ll drop in a story or two related to a song, or the theme for the night, or whatever. Usually these get a little mental preparation, but a proper written draft would probably make them even better – and why not share those here?
So of course I’m going to cheat on my first one, because this got aired last Friday. But here it is.
It was past sunset and starting to get dark as we exited Fort McAdams. And as we walked towards the ferry, the tall, dark-haired woman walking next to me started to hum the traditional closing song of the Newport Folk Festival, Goodnight, Irene. So I decided I would hum along with her. She smiled.
She asked me what my favorite moment of the weekend was. And I said, “Well, I don’t know if it was the best moment, but my favorite of the moment of the weekend was the set from Illiterate Light,” who I am just entirely in the tank for. I thought they put on a great high energy show and I had a soul-feeding good time.”
She said, “You know, I love Josh and Jake. I love they run the bike stage. I love that they bring us terrific acts who play on the bike stage. But their music… I call it cheese grater music. It’s like taking a cheese grater to my brain.”
And in fairness, it is. The band is two guys, drum and guitar and a whole mess of feedback and processing and an immense amount of personal energy. And I really enjoy it, but I can see why somebody’s first reaction to it, especially live, would be “that’s a whole lot, maybe too much”. I feel like somebody else got that reaction at Newport at least once.
This comment stuck with me for a while. I was driving back when it finally occurred to me. Sometimes you need a cheese grater. You want to make a pizza, a quesadilla, a casserole, a fondue… ok, sure, I guess you can use sliced or cubed or crumbly cheese, but that tool exists for a reason. Sometimes it’s good to rip and tear so you can recombine the shreds, even if there’s a little bit of knuckle-skin in there too.
And sometimes I think you need to take a cheesegrater to your brain. Rip off some of the stuff that’s gotten too tough and see what’s underneath, taste the shreds and see how they recombine. And so this is the rock set, featuring Illiterate Light. Please imagine the opening card for The Last Waltz: this music should be played loud.
Featured image is my own picture of the Claiborne Pell Newport Bridge, taken from Jamestown, RI, on the night of July 27th, 2025.
