Scott Newton Photo

Here’s Johnny, 18 years after his performance on ACL. Johnny Cash is and was my favorite Country male entertainer. His depth and gravity were without peer. His voice wan’t pretty, but it was raw and real. It was his soul that was so readily readable, like a rhino in your bathtub. He was a huge Force of Nature, unstoppable like the tide, uncontrollable like a hurricane. When I think of “the man in black” I think of a mountain of integrity. This is my best shot of him. I hope you can see some of the pride and stature…. Look! It’s Mt Rushmore, strumming a guitar….

Robert Plant, the voice of Led Zepplen, (Stairway to Heaven, etc), possesses one of the Voices Of The Century. What I was most impressed about him, however, was his sharp intelligence. You don’t normally think of Rock and Roll gods as smart, but this guy is… I’ve shot lots of “really big stars”, but this guy impressed me as much as anyone…. I like portraying him as humble and receptive, as opposed to the wailing emotive shot usually associated with him….

The classic Al, rose in hand, dressed in white, crystal-shattering voice soaring. Nobody hits the high notes like the Reverend Al.

Here’s the Reverend Al Green showing his lingual proficiency. Seems kinda nasty coming from a Reverend, but there it is..

Here’s one of the greatest musical forces of our lifetime, Ray Charles, in full channel. He was at the height of his game, 21 years ago, and all his powers were on display. This is one of those shots where I saw him do the revealing thing, rear back like this and belt it out, but just momentarily, and I missed it…… So I waited him out until he did it again. Click. The automatic signal of a great shot, to me, is when the hair stands up on the back of my neck and a wave of chills instantly sweeps over me. All of that happened when I made this shot. I can still remember that moment like it was today.

Elvis Costello is one of the best there is. He’s unique, powerful, iconoclastic, and original. Shot this year, the day after ACLFest, Elvis teased us with the news that he had almost moved to Austin with the band in 1978. THAT would have certainly changed the course of Austin’s provincial scene….

Okay, imagine this: It’s 1986. You’re climbing very steep pyramids in the jungle in the Yucatan; not tourist pyramids, but really steep ones in the middle of the jungle. You and a small group of friends get to the top of the tallest pyramid on the whole Yucatan peninsula, and the remnants of a hurricane assault and purify everyone. My great friend, Jane Rusk Kasey, stood in the driving wind and rain on top of the pyramid, overlooking the jungle and received the Rain god’s benediction and showed me how to become One with it All; Here in the Now…. Jane has been dead almost 10 years now… Every time I look at this shot, which is every day, I’m goaded to accomplish as much as Jane did, in the immortal instant captured by this shot….. I hope you can feel her, as I do, right down to her pink tennis shoes. She was among the best of humans.

I love having such a great forum. It send me scurrying off into corners of closets for boxes of slides to show people the really cool images I’ve been honored to have seen over the years. (Now I get to show them to you…welcome to the slide show….) anyway….I shot this in 1986. I couldn’t believe the primacy of color in Mexico. It was like they saw color and us Anglos don’t. What’s up with that? Why don’t we? Anyway, whenever I come back from visiting there I always wonder where all of the color is.

Mexico has a depth of soul and character that we don’t get to experience here in the US of A all that much.. It seems that behind every corner hides a shot like this… In Mexico, spirit is as real as material things, like money. It somehow makes the poverty seem poetic. Why is that? Por que? Yo no se…

This is Christina, my assistant and good friend. This is my front yard, just a month or so ago…. Can you see the invisible made visible? Can you see the circles and eddies? Can you feel and trace the energy flowing through the shot? If you can, I probably have something to say to you.