Next year marks the 30th anniversary of the first innocence mission album. Since then, the Lancaster, Pa., band—wife/husband duo Karen and Don Peris (both play multiple instruments and sing) and bassist Mike Bitts—has released nine more LPs. The latest is Sun On The Square (Badman), which also features Peris children Anna (viola) and Drew (violin) on a couple tracks. Karen and Don will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week.
Don: The boys of summer, running … I grew up across the street from a city playground entirely covered in asphalt. Nowadays, the summer smell of evening rain on the oily bitumen of macadam is transporting. It’s right up there with the smell of gasoline and freshly mown grass, “Sugar Mountain,” the opening of chapter three of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine, the carnival scenes from Pollyanna and the mandolin songs on R.E.M.’s Green: “ … leap the sprinklers.”
