Colin E. Woodward's Official Site

Jay Leavitt has owned and operated Deep Groove Records in Richmond’s Fan district for almost 10 years. He’s originally from northern Alabama, where he met an older Sam Phillips (who discovered Elvis and Johnny Cash) and a young Patterson Hood (frontman and chief songwriter for the rock group Drive-By Truckers).…

By Colin Woodward Yesterday marked the fifteenth anniversary of the death of Johnny Cash. Despite the fact that he’s been dead for more than a decade, and historians have written much about him since then, Cash continues to be the subject of misunderstanding. Here are a few handy things to…

Bruce Jackson has a had a long, varied, and brilliant career as a teacher, photographer, folklorist, writer, and filmmaker. Colin first encountered his work while researching the prisons in Arkansas. Bruce visited prisons in the 1960s and 70s, trips that produced photos for his books Killing Time, Cummins Wide, and…

Colin recently celebrated his 7th wedding anniversary in (where else?) Petersburg Virginia! He talks about the Old Towne and how Petersburg presents some great and not-so-great things about the urban South. Also, Colin weighs the merits of Led Zeppelin vs. Grand Funk Railroad. Listen here: http://americanrambler.libsyn.com/podcast/episode-107-anniversary-petersburg-led-zeppelin

By Colin Woodward Patterson and I go back a ways. Well, not really, but I feel like I know him by now. It started as a Richmond thing. I first heard of the Drive-By Truckers about ten years ago. Like most great things,  I learned by word of mouth. It…

Jeffrey Abugel is a native of New York who now calls Petersburg home. He talks with Colin about growing up in NYC, living in California and writing about surf music, and suffering long winters in Iowa before landing in Virginia. He is an authority on depersonalization disorder, a prevalent but…

Colin runs down his December, which included an accidental attendance at a Confederate Pride Christmas Parade in Mechanicsville and a welcome night at a concert given by by Drive-By Truckers front man Patterson Hood. Also, to start the show, Larry and David and Marlon Brando stop in for a spirited…

Erin Devlin is a professor of History and American Studies at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. She has written a book Remember Little Rock (University of Massachusetts Press, 2017), about racial integration in Arkansas’s capital from the 1950s onward. As she discusses with Colin, the story of Little…

In their first episode in Richmond, Bun and Hawk take on the usual topics: film, politics, sexual deviancy (with focus on Louis CK), Mother Teresa, and Harriet Tubman. Why can’t Bun keep the Jewish Community Center and the Byrd Theatre straight? Why does Hawk think that “no one is clean?”…

Colin discusses the recent political campaigns in Virginia, the cold weather, and some of his favorite alt-country albums. Wilco! Drive-by Truckers! Bobby Bare, Jr.! We’re sure they were very happy to make the list.