Stories In the News

Homeless Vet Travels From Sarasota Streets To Play At NFL Game

[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text h1_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690354}” h2_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690354}” h3_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690355}” h4_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690356}” h5_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690356}” h6_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690357}” p_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690357}” link_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690358}” list_css=”{.vc_customizer_1442426690358}”]Donald Gould of Sarasota, Florida does an interview and shares that he studied music theory in college and learned to play every instrument.  He is a former marine and currently homeless.  But since being captured downtown on video playing “Come Sail Away” on a piano,…

Read More

Accentuating the positive: SF singer/songwriter spreads his messages through music

By Adrian Gomez Chris Chickering needed some rest – so he took it. After working 60-70 hours a week this past summer on music, he retreated to Florida for two months. The singer-songwriter is back and ready to promote his latest album, “Living in the Now,” which came out on Oct. 1. Chickering wrote 37…

Read More

With ‘Saving Mr. Banks,’ songwriter Richard Sherman relives the pain of ‘Mary Poppins’

85-year-old Richard Sherman is a character in the Disney holiday release “Saving Mr. Banks” opposite Emma Thompson as Travers and Tom Hanks as Walt Disney.   Jason Schwartzman plays Sherman and B.J. Novak plays Sherman’s brother and songwriting partner, Robert B. Sherman. Schwartzman, who at 33 is two years older than Sherman was in 1961, sings “Feed the Birds” beautifully…

Read More

The Saddest Christmas Songs Ever?

By Randy Lewis  “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” says one of the most popular songs of the season. Yet good cheer isn’t what everyone experiences during the holidays. With that in mind, Pop & Hiss hoped to compile a list of the saddest yuletide songs ever recorded. We can’t claim these are definitively the saddest, because…

Read More

Lyrics to heal: Veterans struggle with PTSD, find comfort in songwriting

When Army and National Guard veteran Todd Foster talks about his songwriting therapy sessions at the Alvin C. York VA, his eyes light up and his hands become steady. Once a week on Friday, Foster goes to the VA and meets with seven or eight other veterans, a songwriter and a music … Click to…

Read More

Dirty Loops Releases First Single On YouTube

How many innovative power trios can you name off the top of your head?   Let me try…   Cream.   Jimi Hendrix Experience.   Thin Lizzy.   Emerson Lake & Palmer.    Rush.   The Police.   Kings X.   Green Day.   Nirvana.   Dirty Loops. That’s right, I said it – Dirty…

Read More

96 Year-Old Man Pens Viral Song After Losing Wife of 73 Years

By Brandon Lowrey “Oh sweet Lorraine, I wish we could do all the good times over again,” the song goes. Fred Stobaugh, 96, remembered laying eyes on the prettiest girl he ever saw: It was 1938, and she was a car hop named Lorraine at an A&W Rootbeer stand in East Peoria, Ill. Two years…

Read More

Songwriting Dream for The Voice’s Elise Evans

A talented teen still hopes to pursue her dream of making it big in the music industry. Elise Evans from Glynneath, who had a taster of stardom on BBC’s The Voice, has big plans to get her own music heard and hopes to become a professional songwriter. ​ The Voice’s Elise Evans “I would love…

Read More

Rod Stewart on Being a Born-Again Songwriter, Future Faces Reunion (Q&A)

Especially since it’s been nearly 20 years between songwriting. It hasn’t been 20 years between original material. But risk is good. Risk is going forward. And it seems to be getting fairly nice reviews. It’s exciting and it’s scary, because we have to … Read more from Chris Wellman’s article >>>

Read More

The Hitless Songwriter

Michael Tannen, The Roches’ manager, was yelling into the phone at me. Why don’t you just listen to the radio and figure out how to write a commercial song? Then the phone went dead. We were at that point every music career gets to where the honeymoon was over. The Roches had burst onto the…

Read More