puffing billy emerald

• Picking Up the Trail

Having three kids himself, one of whom is in his second year at New York City's American Academy for Dramatic Arts, [Billy Brennan] knows how to tap young psyches, even the most insecure ones. "If you get up on stage and you're a parent, you're like, `Oh, they're just kids;' there's a sense of vulnerability and softness that might not be evident there, but it's there in spades," he noted. "I think you have to remember the exterior covers up a lot of really sensitive, emotional things. Brennan's most recent song is a work-in-progress about cicadas, the exceptionally noisy buggers that recently emerged from 17-year hibernation across the eastern seaboard. "I work out of the Washington, D.C. area, and they're just there by the billions," Brennan marveled. "It's hard to have a conversation...

... biggest community-based festival on the Emerald Isle, with the usual entertainment options, music,...Gone are the days of the beat poet puffing away in the coffeehouse, along with the hazy blues...

• Syracuse New Times
• July 30, 2009