"You’ve got to understand a culture quickly to get what you want or need. The earth is in a terrible fix. Water to drink is a Huge issue. There are saints and assholes everywhere."

Andy Clausen:

The Blues Stories of the Beat President

Andy Clausen was born Andre Laloux in a Belgian bomb…

"Water your art with your vital juices. When counterculture became a mass movement in the 1960’s that was the end of counterculture. Now, nerds are the outlaws but even that is becoming co-opted by the advertisers."

Phil Scalia: Art Valley Pixels…

"Blues lyrics are a folkloric story in a form borrowed from European folk music. The African American treatment of this form became the blues and the inherent moan mirrored the anguish of modern times when technology threatened extinction rather than neighboring tribes or natural catastrophe."…

"Music was all that was important before I began writing. Was what I did...and that was okay. This was years between beats and hippys...we were just college kids getting high and listening to jazz and blues and hillbilly stuff."

Jim McCrary:…

"Outlaw is about bringing something new to the word, the poem, the lyric, or the music. Robert Johnson was an outlaw because of what he invented."

Tony Moffeit: Shaman of Outlaw's Tribe

Tony…

"Art is suspect if it doesn’t jingle in our pockets. Dreamers are true activists. They take to the streets in their heads and raise a victory flag in their hearts."

Paul Fericano: Smart Smile Dreamer

Paul…

"Great poets use their voices like musicians, drawing forth humor, grief, love, desire, hate, awe. Musicians have a step up with their instrument, that’s why I think some poets like to have a musician accompany them."

Catfish McDaris: The Blues of storyteller…

"Poetry is free-form chaos brought into a modicum of control and direction.  Poetry is the explorer...I’m only the vehicle. I could be replaced by a toilet plunger."

Roxie Powell: A Primitive Poet…

"Don’t go with the flow. The majority is usually wrong."

Bruce Louis Dodson: Citizen of the world

Bruce Dodson is a sculptor, photographer and writer of fiction and poetry in Seattle, WA. He was born in Alton,…

"I put up Beats in Kansas at KU because of the odd fact that 80 percent of living beats were from Kansas."

George Laughead: The Duke of Kansas

George Laughead grew up in Dodge…

"Blues lyrics are like poetry. And jazz leaves a lot of room for words. Rock music is also connected to poetry. Poetry and music. It was bound to happen."

Brahja Waldman: The legacy of great souls…

"On listening to poets like Charley Plymell and Ray Bremser, I’ve heard jazz-like meter, syncopation, swing, along with the soul of blues."

Carl Waldman: Cherry Valley Blues…

No dreams, no nightmares. My motto is “Life is too short for tight shoes”

Jeffery Beach: Enlighten Your Life

Jeffery Beach is a photographer and Blues, Rock and Jazz fan. Also,…

“Burroughs was talking about breaking down control systems personally and macrocosmically. This can be found not only in his writing, but in his life and his reading as well.”

Michael Stevens: The Road to Interzone

Michael Stevens is the…

"The avant-garde and the underground are ahead of the curve."

Pamela Beach-Plymell:…

"Beat means compassionate cool - timeless as opposed to faddish cool; minding your own business but helping out those in need; finding inspiration and courage along the way to express yourself creatively."

Laki Vazakas: Saints &…

"Music can be like mediation and connect us to everything. When I work I have the music going."

Bob "Barbitol Bob" Branaman:…

"A deeper emotion might be eliminated. We could do away with guilt or any of the "bad." It might be a 'good thing' But alas!"

Charles Plymell: Matter, Void, Energy, Spirit

Charles Plymell was born on the high…