When I made 'Who Needs Pictures,' my first album, I had been west of the Mississippi River one time in my life, and that was in fourth grade. We traveled to California for vacation and stayed with some friends of my parents. It was culture shock, and it was different.
I've always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns.
Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system.
Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed.
Coming from a town of 30,000 people on the Mississippi River, having 'Queer Eye' in 2003 through 2007 when I was in high school was really important.
Barge traffic on the Mississippi River represents the most efficient, most cost-effective, most environmentally sound means of transporting commodity goods from this region of the country to market.
If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it.
I grew up by the Mississippi River, and I would swim in that as a kid.
I was attracted to black music for the same reason that I loved those old Irish ballads. Both were social statements of sorts, and both were indigenous to their respective cultures: Ireland, where my father had grown up, and towns like St. Louis along the Mississippi River, where I was growing up.
When I visited the Water Institute's Baton Rouge offices overlooking the Mississippi River, I couldn't find a drop of the charged politics that drives so many environmental conversations in Washington.
