The following is an interview I did with Cody Canada and Jeremy Plato for the cover story of LoneStarMusic Magazine during the fall of 2009.

Happiness and All the Other Things. Sounds good, doesn’t it? It’s an apt title for the tenth album from Cross Canadian Ragweed in this, their fifteenth year as a band.

While two members of the band – Grady Cross (rhythm guitar) and Randy Ragsdale (drums) – are back in their home base of Oklahoma, happiness is certainly the theme at an early lunch of sushi as …

While I was doing the story on Ryan Bingham for LoneStarMusic Magazine, the band was kind enough to let me take some pictures. Elijah Ford was busy preparing for his driving test during the sessions (and was good at hiding from the camera), so there are very few pics of him among my hundred or so total.
Here are 20 of the shots, including some of the pics that ran with the story in the magazine.
All images are copyright Michael Devers. Use by permission only.
Hope you enjoy!

I spent a couple of days in the studio with Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses for LoneStarMusic Magazine as they recorded Roadhouse Sun. It was one of my favorite stories to write. I had to fly blind with it some as the record would come out almost a year after we went to press. Here’s my story:
Captain Guitar, the Confused Protestor, and a Hobo
the new world of Ryan Bingham
Monday night at Saengerhalle was open mic night. This was back in late 2002 and I booked the venue so I …

Randy Rogers Q&A
by Michael Devers
September 2008

Yes, the Randy Rogers Band is on Mercury Nashville. Yes, their label mates include Sugarland, Billy Currington, and Bon Jovi. And yes, they will be making an appearance during the annual Nashville orgy know as Fan Fest. But if there’s anyone out there yelling “sellout!” they’re either not paying attention or they’re just willfully ignorant.
To start with, the lead track on the band’s new CD, Randy Rogers Band, wasn’t written by some Nashville “song doctor”, or for that matter, even by Randy Rogers. …

From his new book, What the Dog Saw, a collection of essays that originally appeared in New Yorker magazine.
The Pitchman
Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen
8,737 words
The Ketchup Conundrum
Mustard now comes in dozens of varieties. Why has ketchup stayed the same?
5,332 words.
Blowing Up
How Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy
7,787 words
True Colors
Hair dye and the hidden history of postwar America
7,167 words
John Rock’s Error
What the co-inventor of the Pill didn’t know about women’s health
7,373
What the Dog Saw
Cesar Millan and the movements of mastery
unavaialable
Open Secrets
Enron, intelligence, and …

Music Edition
I find that people who don’t know much about music tend to ask the same few questions when given the task of interviewing an artist. I’m guessing there’s an equivalent in every line of work, but I’ll leave it to someone else to inform us of the complete list of banal questions in politics (“What’s it feel like to be a senator/congressman/president?”), movies (“What’s it like to be famous?”) or plumbing (“Why did you choose urine and feces as your work medium?”).
For music though, here are the questions that …