Posts by Billy Rosenbeck

When Josh Ritter met Stephen Kellogg almost twenty years ago, Ritter was sleeping underneath a piano in Cleveland, Ohio. It was the 2000 Folk Alliance International Conference, and the then-twenty-four-year-old Ritter–like the then-twenty-four-year-old Kellogg–arrived on the banks of the Cuyahoga to peddle his wares, a young aspirant folk pup in search of connections and a […]

The Chick-fil-A in downtown Mobile, Alabama is flushed with starving artists this afternoon, taking their lunch break from the Southeastern Theatre Conference, a meat market for aspiring stage professionals that descends on the Azalea City each spring. Last year, during a similarly maddening lunch rush, two Chick-fil-A employees walked out in the middle of their […]

Dark and twisted, as only the Irish can do, The Young Offenders is a bold, hilarious take on working class problems.

When Scott Leeper and Ben Miller met a decade-and-a-half ago, Scott was “literally working in a shit factory.” More accurately, it was a wastewater treatment facility, where Leeper would remain employed for several more years before music became gainful enough to quit. The work was unpleasant, but as always, he remained patient: now nearing sixty, […]

[rating=9.00] Eddie and the Cruisers is an ill-fated, 1983 movie about a New Jersey, rock’n’roll band that falls apart in the second act: inexplicably, the plot pivots from something legible to a Scooby Doo-style mystery that leads Tom Berringer on a car chase through a castle made of scrap metal in the middle of an […]

In a golden age before digital music and streaming services, Mark Erelli made his first mixtape. It was the seventh grade, and back then, a mixtape was more than just a compilation of songs: it was a grand, romantic gesture, designed “to tell a story about the things you loved, or things about yourself that […]

With season 3 of Peaky Blinders in the rearview, Billy Rosenbeck reflects on where Tommy Shelby has been, and where he might be going.