Page 14 - BiTS_04_APRIL_2026

AC: I make my living, such as it is, largely playing the work of those whom I call
Early Twentieth Century American Classical Music Composers, the Blues Guys of
yore. My feeling is that Folk Music writ large is one big thing and the subdivisions

are many. Each affects all, sometimes directly and sometimes over the back fence.

My degrees are in Anthropology. I've done Archaeology, studies of how hand posture
affects what you can and can't play, but mostly I've schlepped around the country

playing music, sometimes by myself but often with others. I don't like to be onstage
alone anymore. Maybe I'm just getting sentimental in my old age.

Such work as I do, and it's truly not much, draws from a host of disciplines I'm

acquainted with the bare basics of, everything from Anatomy and Physiology to
Archaeology to Sociology and Ethnology. I could go deep and start explaining how
it all fits together, but you probably get the point by now. I'm a reader but not much

of a writer, though I feel I owe the world
about eight books.

Fact is, I can't afford to die because I

have too much homework to complete...

BiTS: Andy, Let’s move on to the new
album. You told me that when your wife

Larkin passed away, you busied
yourself with projects. Is the new album
part of that stream?

AC: Why yes, this CD is part of that
stream. Larkin was beset with brain Larkin and Andy Cohen
cancer, glioblastoma, which I think was

the case for a number of years prior to it presenting. She was feeling queasy after
the January 6 riots, and I thought it might be due to another episode of small intestine
closure. She'd had scar tissue from another operation wrap around the linear middle

of it the year before, and they had no choice but to open her up like a melon.

She was getting over that pretty good when this happened along. I dropped her off
about ten in the morning but couldn't stay with her because of Covid restrictions.

Then I didn't hear from the hospital till about eight at night. I came by and was met
at the door by a neurologist who showed me an X-ray with the telltale signs of

Glioma, an oval depression in the dura mater with a line through it.

They got what they could out, but they never get it all in a case like this. I saw the
MRIs and I nearly heaved, and I have a strong stomach. I know what a brain is

supposed to look like, and that wasn't it. We arranged for home hospice and
everybody did everything they could to make her comfortable. It was horrible for
me and a thousand times worse for her. But money wasn't a problem. Her mom had
provided for her, and we had good insurance. A quarter million dollars worth of

treatment and I never paid a nickel.