Tim Easton has been singing and writing songs since he was 14 years old. He never considered another career. After finishing college, Easton hit the road with his guitar and spent seven years singing and playing on European street corners. When he got back to Ohio, Easton joined the Haynes Boys, a roots-rock outfit that made one album before breaking up. Free again, Easton picked up his guitar and returned to the road, touching down long enough to make nine albums that earned him a loyal following with their blend of gritty roots-rock and heartfelt songwriting. Every LP took a slightly different approach and his latest, Not Cool, shows off his love of rockabilly and early R&B. Easton will be quest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Easton: I lived in the second floor guest room at Shakespeare And Co. in 1990 and ’91. I was transient and chewed on by bedbugs just like Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who once took my place and sent me packing for Bretagne. In order to stay there, for, say, a week or two at most, you had to do three things: Work in the shop every day for one hour, read one book every day, and write an autobiography for the collection of our patron, George Whitman.
One day the American Beat poet Gregory Corso entered the shop with his entourage of cantankerous New Yorkers and began arguing with a German professor about whether Corso’s writing was in fact poetry or not. I quickly grabbed the most recent Anthology Of American Poetry, which had Corso’s most anthologized poem, “Marriage,” in it. I pointed this out to the German professor, and Corso looked at me and said, “Actually, in the case of that one, he’s probably right!” The classic spin on the singer not caring for his biggest hit song. Everybody in the room laughed before walking out into the night.
Video after the jump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUpSR9fhQDM
