BIOGRAPHY CONFERENCE IN NEW YORK CITY

I’ve been waiting since 2020 to travel to New York City for the Biographers International Organization conference. I’m a plank owner of BIO, which grew out of the Washington Biography Group in D.C. I attended those meetings while I lived in Maryland and was writing Live Fast, Love Hard and Twentieth Century Drifter. After signing a new book contract in 2019, I registered for the BIO conference, looking forward to reconnecting with the Washington writers and becoming known as “Randy Travis’s biographer.”

NEWS

The latest class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has been announced. It includes Willie Nelson, 90, along with Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott, Kate Bush, George Michael, The Spinners, and Rage Against the Machine. The induction ceremony will be held in November at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. CMT News reports more than 1,000 artists, historians, and music industry professionals voted on this year’s candidates.

NEWS

Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, 84, died May 1 at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Canada. He first gained fame in the early 1960s when Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded two of his songs, “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me.” His reputation soared when Marty Robbins recorded “Ribbon of Darkness.” He had his own hits, such as “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People,” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” (more…)