The Rangers welcome the Astros to the American League to kick-off the 2013 season.

[Photo Via: It’s a Long Season]

Before Opening Day tonight gives Easter. And more from Sweet Lou Lou (C’mon Honey, don’t front):

[Photo Via: Posie Gets Cozy]

Sweet Lou:

[Photo Credit: Uta Barth]

Justin Verlander and Buster Posey: Making Ducats.

Nasty.

Coming Soon…

I have almost no interest in it. Maybe it’ll be good, who knows?

[Photo Via: It’s a Long Season]

Byrd in Hand.

[Image Via: mOrtality]

Picture by Akihiko Miyoshi.

Picking up on yesterday’s Gram Parsons post, here is an interview with Emmy Lou Harris in the New York Times:

You blossomed as a songwriter relatively late.

Well, there were so many songs that were already written that I wanted to sing. Really, I don’t know why I avoided it. Sometimes I have to be backed into a corner. After “Wrecking Ball” I wanted to continue on that path, that sort of sound, but I felt that I had to bring something else to the table besides my voice. At about the same time Rodney and I were visiting Guy [Clark] and Susannah, and Guy looked me right in the eye and he said: “You need to write your next record. I don’t care if it takes you five years.” And I think it did.

Gram Parsons was your first mentor and you lost him at a tender age. Does he continue to influence you?

I started out being a fanatical lover of folk music. Country music, even though I was exposed to it, I just thought that I couldn’t be bothered with it. I could not hear the subtlety in it, I couldn’t hear the poetry in it. I was a Joan Baez wannabe. But Gram, he heard something in my voice. He thought I could sing country music. I started as a harmony singer, that was his way to kind of sneakily turn me onto this extraordinary body of music, and in singing country music I really found the place that my voice was supposed to be. It also made me appreciate the joys of working with a band, which meant a drummer, which was anathema to folk singers. I can’t imagine that I would have gotten to the place I am artistically or even vocally, if it hadn’t been for Gram.

Emma says goodbye to Johan.

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Daily News]

Get healthy, bitches.

Here’s the 2013 MLB preview over at SI.com. Nobody has the Red Sox making the playoffs and only Albert Chen has the Yanks making it.

Our pal Cliff salutes Tim McCarver.

Painting by Ha Huynh My.

Yum fun via Ghost in the Machine.

The freaks come out at night.

[Picture by Ed Vebell via This Isn’t Happiness]

Via Black Book, here’s on Eileen Myles on Gram Parsons.

Via Kottke, here’s something juicy: a 1978 “Raiders of the Lost Ark” story conference transcript with George Lucas, Steven Speilberg and Lawrence Kasdan.

Over at Philadelphia Magazine, DJ Jazzy Jeff remembers He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper:

Before we started on that album, we were in the process of doing a DJ album, and we already had those songs done, so when we started recording songs for He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper, I was like, “Yo, why don’t we put both of these albums together and just do a double album?” It was kinda funny because no one had ever thought to do that. We just made the suggestion, and Jive was like, “Yo, that might be great. It would be the first rap double album.”

So, we already had half of that done, and we just started piecing together the songs and figuring out which ones we were gonna have on the record. One of the shows that we did was at Union Square in New York, and it just so happens that [New York radio DJ] Mr. Magic taped it. I just did a DJ routine and didn’t even think anyone was taping it. We did that at every show. He started playing the show on the radio, and people were calling in and requesting that part. It got so big that it really helped me as a DJ, especially in New York. So, we called Mr. Magic and asked if we could have a copy of the tape because I had suggested we put that on the album, too. So “Live at Union Square” was actually a cassette recording of us performing at Union Square.

Yankee notes from the man, Chad Jennings: here, here and here.

[Image Via: It’s a Long Season]