Liberty Bar

Special Collection of Best of Laidback Lounge, Chillout and Smooth Jazz Vibes for your special time of Enjoyment and Good Mood!

We have all pondered seemingly unanswerably but significant questions about our existence—the biggest of all being, “Why are we here?” Philosophy has developed over millennia to help us grapple with these essential intangibles. There is no better way to study the big questions in philosophy than to compare how the world’s greatest minds have analyzed these questions, defined the terms, and then reasoned out potential solutions. Once you’ve compared the arguments, the final step is always deciding for yourself whether you find an explanation convincing.

At the time of this live recording, February, 2008, Willy DeVille was clean and sober, and had been for a few years, yet he still seems delightfully deranged, screaming and squawking between songs, still emitting a strange voodoo attraction that seems to channel James Brown (minus the overblown theatrics), Dr John and Tom Waits, despite DeVille unkindly describing Waits thus in 2007: "He's a friend of mine but I've never really listened to him - He always sounds like he's goofing, You remember Emmett Kelly, the tramp clown who wore the top hat? He kind of reminds me of him in a funny way - He's the funny drunk at the end of the bar. But when Willy sings 'Try stealing a guitar that's strung with barbed wire, Ripping them strings like your fingers' on fire', on his own 'Muddy Waters Rose Out Of The Mississippi Mud' you instinctively feel his connection to the blues, the South, to the old, weird Antebellum America, and even earlier before Manifest Destiny masquerading as Lady Liberty stole the Mexican land and incorporated it into the growing United States. Despite being raised in New York this is his America. It's all there to hear, too, in 'Spanish Stroll', 'Chieva', and 'Demasiado Corazon'. At his heart he's still the entertainer, the showman, the raconteur, the musician and with exhilarating, thrilling and powerfully individualistic covers of 'Trouble In Mind', 'Heartbreak Hotel' and 'Hey Joe!', it feels like he's speaking from personal experience each and every time.

Ronny Spears was a fixture of the Texas country songwriter circuit in north Texas and beyond, sharing the stage over his career with Willie Nelson, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Radney Foster, Robert Earl Keen, Chris Wall, 1100 Springs, The Dixie Chicks, Charlie Robison, Bill Kirchen, Jack Ingram, Geronimo Trevino, Donny Ray Ford, Deryl Dodd, and many more.