Ken Sanders of Ken Sanders Rare Books talks about running a counterculture bookshop and why, decades after opening, its future is uncertain.
You can find out more about “In the Telling” at lizzylizzyliz.com
Theme music by Gordon Vetas
Episode extra: Ken Sanders recommends his favorite local writers, poets and musicians.
Ken Sanders of Ken Sanders Rare Books talks about running a counterculture bookshop and why, decades after opening, its future is uncertain.
You can find out more about “In the Telling” at lizzylizzyliz.com
Theme music by Gordon Vetas
Episode extra: Ken Sanders recommends his favorite local writers, poets and musicians.
Ken Sanders: 0:00
I would submit to you that bookstores look, I like shoes. I wear shoes every single day when I get home that night, and I'm going to say I love shoes. But I like him. Who doesn't? Babies? Little Children, Connors. They don't like shoes. A choose going off on tangents. I don't work for scripts list, but the point being I like shoes. We need shoes, stores. This is a bookstore I would submit to you. There's a cultural difference between footwear and reading, where shoes and books there's something and I don't mean to be pretentious and I'm not gonna lift myself up. I'm talking about the books. The books are important. The books, the knowledge that you retain their time machines as a child. What child that reads has never been transported toe Oz or Wonderland or or Narnia or Middle Earth. Or now we've got the whole Harry Potter thing that you know whether those books air good or not. Good. It doesn't matter. It's making kids think for a generation now or more, that books are cool and reading is cool. And that's always
Liz Christensen: 1:13
the voice you just heard belongs to Ken Sanders, founder and owner of Sanders Rare Books I
Ken Sanders: 1:19
List I'm Ken Sanders. I own and operate Ken Sanders Rare Books in downtown Salt Lake City. I also have a small publishing company, mostly inactive, but I publish a book or two that I like called Dream Garden Press.
Liz Christensen: 1:33
Ken's contribution to the counter culture community of Salt Lake City goes back quite a few decades.
Ken Sanders: 1:38
I founded the cosmic airplane bookstore back in the 19 seventies and people older than you. It's still you've never heard of it, but people in their mid to late forties and older still worship and revere. The store
Liz Christensen: 1:54
can join me for the third episode of Season two to talk about why he started the bookshop, what he considers a rare book, the counterculture of Salt Lake City and why Sanders Rare Books Future is uncertain with current downtown affordability issues and development plans. I'm your host, Liz Christiansen, and it's all in the telling Welcome to Episode 24 with my guest Ken Sanders. As we talk about loving books, selling books and staking out a place for an important idea, a performance or a business, listen through to the end of the episode to hear the episode extra. Ken Sanders recommends his favorite local writers, poets and performers. Ken and I started our interview at the beginning. I had to ask him about the cosmic airplane.
Ken Sanders: 2:44
It was an old hippie head shop that Steve Jones started in 1967 at ninth and ninth. It went through three or four locations, including over on South Temple in the fourth West, which would be the steps up to the Delta Center today. Now, I know it's not called the Delta Center anymore, but I refused to keep track. It'll be called something else tomorrow. I ain't keeping track. The sports park is called Dirks Field, thank you very much. And the Delta Center, where the Jazz plays the Delta Center. Whatever they put name, they put on the building that was a no man's land circuit, 1970 the cosmic airplanes struggled. Stephen always dreamed of having a bookstore. Another sixties radical, Bruce Roberts, kind of STS sir. Got involved? Yes, the students for a democratic society.
Liz Christensen: 3:32
I got it.
Ken Sanders: 3:33
They kind of denigrated into the weatherman later on, like just like the Black Panthers denigrated into the S. L. A. The symphony's Sudanese Liberation Army became very radical. Arms started blowing people up. Not a good thing out of that. In the seventies, I created this bookstore in its among a certain age group. It's still revered, and this is the last living remnants of.
Liz Christensen: 4:00
So how is this an extension of that on evolution?
Ken Sanders: 4:04
Well, the record shops gone the fight. You know, all the vinyls gone, the gift shop, the jewelry bar. They have hippie ad shop, all the dope Arifin. Now that's all on. But the spirit of the sixties, the books, the counterculture that lives on here in this store threw me, of course, but what you learn over this many decades, every person, well, maybe not every person. There's a handful you have to throw out, but accepting those the people that come to work for you over the years, the customers that come in the storage, you learn from them like they learn from you. And it's a constant process, and everyone that walks through the doors contributes to that process, whether they are aware of it or not. Oh, do you have any books by fill in the blank? Well, who's that? And every day of my life. Somebody asked me for a book or an author I never heard of. No one can know all what I think is to do this job properly. This store is about my name's on My Name wasn't on the cosmic airplane. The name is a non dream garden press, and nobody knows I did those things, But mostly I put my name on it so I could not drive around in a fog, wondering where I should park in the morning and go to work. Now it's my name, so it's inseparable from me. But it's much more than me. That's what I'm really trying to say.
Liz Christensen: 5:29
You're talking about really like community of knowledge or a creation. A synthesis. Maybe. Is that too pretentious? The word
Ken Sanders: 5:38
I don't know if it's it's something. As Buffalo Springfield sang in their great sixties protest song. What it is in exactly clear is a man with the gun over there telling me I got to where
Liz Christensen: 5:54
what is? What is counterculture mean?
Ken Sanders: 5:57
I'm not trying to pick on warm ends here, but since we're here and we're from here, any time you have a monolithic culture like we do in Utah and the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. When most people adhere to a single faith or culture or whatever you wanna call it, it could be repressive for people that aren't part and parcel of that religion or culture. And that always has spent the more monolithic it is, the more kickback feedback push back you're gonna get. And Salt Lake In the 19 fifties, I'm told there was a gay bar here called on State Street called The Tin Angel that was nationally known coast to coast. Hold that thought of that, you know, the air of, you know, finding Khamis under every rock tail gunner, Joe McCarthy. And on all the repression, we think of the fear of the atomic bomb in the fifties that there would be an openly gay bar in Salt Lake City. I mean, it blows my mind and then and my own era the sun started. It was next door to the cosmic airplane, and it was. It was this long, hard core alky bar for ages, and then one day it turned into a gay bar. Nobody knew what's a gay bar, and so the counterculture. It's just it's pushed back. Plus, you know, I was born in 1951. So I really came of age in the sixties. Yeah, we did a lot of silly and stupid things in our youth, but there's a lot of movements that came out of the sixties that I think we're really, really important, you know, awareness of the environment and nature and how it plays a part in our lives. And the early, you know, the fifties was really the struggle for, you know, African American rights, the civil rights movement that that really exploded in the sixties as well. And, by the way, late sixties early seventies, the feminist. The original Wave feminist movement is really taking off, especially here in Salt Lake City during the cosmic airplane years. In the consummate airplane, we had things. Some of it seems silly now. You couldn't really get anywhere else. We we had alternative religions and eastern regions and Hindu and Buddhism and Muslim. We had metaphysics and everything from pyramid power toe every kind of strange, her medical path. Mankind's ever gone down. We had gay and lesbian literature, and we had even science fiction. It was hard to find if that's not even believable now tell you is true. We were the place at it and we would push the limits on things, certainly with art and photography, books and nudity. We certainly pushed the limit, and that had a backlash within the feminist movement. These little we never company one doing this, but people would come into the store with these little stickers that are left over from the Wall Place. The Wobblies were the international workers, the world, and they're famous for their great labor clashes against the ruling class. From the turn of the century on Joe Hill was a mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill and others. Mother Jones is famous for saying, If I can't dance, I won't come to your revolution. Joe Hill was a worker, wobbly striker here and in the minds, and 1915 he was falsely arrested for a murder he didn't commit and was executed at the old Territorial State Prison at Sugar House Park. Today's the location of that prison up until 55 it was called. The shot was heard around the world set off labor riots from Moscow to Paris all over the U s
Liz Christensen: 9:47
I had no idea. No, of
Ken Sanders: 9:48
course not. Most people don't. And that's that's really the nexus And what I'm trying to do here with art, history, politics, culture. And I know Southern agitator stickers were an outgrowth of the Wobblies. They used them just management off. So the feminist movement of the seventies adopted its little sticky stickers. So books that had nudity in him that they found unacceptable. They would put the silent agitator stickers over the offending parts with the sticker that said, This insult women.
Liz Christensen: 10:28
That's right, they say. So it's not because of a conservative need to censor. It's, ah, feminist. Need to push away what objectifies
Ken Sanders: 10:39
Clearly, Yeah, it's It's a complicated issue. You know, there's there's no easy black and white right or wrong, I don't have the answer.
Liz Christensen: 10:46
I want you just follow up on that idea of it being complicated, not black and white, because as you're talking about counterculture and use the word pushback, I don't get any sense of it being aggressive or angry. And I know you have books on, like warm and culture in the Mormon religion. In your book store.
Ken Sanders: 11:04
This store we carry almost what we don't carry everything, and we're aware of the cultural in we do. If a book crosses the line in terms of being really explicit, we're just simply not gonna carry it. It's not our market. It's not our culture. It's not my interest, so I don't have to carry anything. Nothing gets in this door if I don't buy it. But do we have things of a sexual nature Or especially underground comic books from the sixties? Robert, Carl, etcetera Man, Oh man, are those not for Children? We keep him locked away cause if they're lying out here, that kid's gonna go right. Tooth. Um, I don't want that. I wouldn't want my own Children read AM. And I don't want your Children reading. They're not age appropriate. The other side of that dealing with Mormonism. It's one of the biggest sections in the store. One would be foolish to run a bookstore in Salt Lake City or Utah and not deal with Mormonism. You can choose to if you want. There's no rule, there's no law. But why would you not to, regardless, if your LDS or not, Mormon history is absolutely fascinating, and the greater number of the LDS people don't even actually understand their own history. They practiced their religion. There's a huge difference between those two things. It's and that's okay. I'm not criticizing and that's not my job. Do you think I believe in every book and every subject that's in this store? Do you think I've read them all? Well, of course not. My job isn't to proselytize for Mormonism against Mormonism or any other religion. We have it here. The good, the bad, the ugly. If someone chooses to be offended by the selection of books in here, that's their parole. If that's their right and they do. Mom, I'm not gonna be offended that they don't want to shop here. I want to have it all. I find it all interesting to do this job properly. I bought a very large library, thousands of books. I left far more than I took. It was heavily religion and philosophy. Those air two subjects I personally don't read in. But these air, I mean, they're too hot. Both religion of loss fear highly sought after highly red subjects. A lot of people have huge interest in this was a library of a lifetime. We're still unpacking up, and people have been coming in here. But as the word gets out like there's asleep Mo Bs, classical library, Greek and Roman and their their little books over there. But we bought, like, 300 of I've never had more of a handful before. People come in and just sit in front of that section for hours and pull out these up two stents, hundreds or thousands of years old tax to take home and buy one or two arena. You're not gonna catch me reading that stuff. It's to me. It's too boring. So in order to make this bookstore, it's not just about me. Of course, all of my passions air here, but you can't run a bookstore on that alone. You have to have everyone's passion. You have to be able to go into those library of thousands of religious books that you know next to nothing about. And they have to speak to you. And you? Yes, and taking this one. Nope. You're staying? You're gonna go to the estate sale. You didn't make the cut to get into the books. This bookstore
Liz Christensen: 14:40
is that kind of a gut instinct on your part.
Ken Sanders: 14:42
I haven't read the books. I'm ignorant of their authors and their contents. But yet I have tohave some kind of esoteric knowledge. I mean, I have been doing this for 50 years, even a slow learner like me. He's gonna learn something half a century.
Liz Christensen: 15:01
So when it's as rare books, I'm getting the sense that our conversations kind of coming right up to this question that its books that are not necessarily going to be easy for me to get somewhere else.
Ken Sanders: 15:12
I love your definition, Liz, because every always said, What's a rare book, especially if they're trying to sell me books? No, no common common no can't use can. What is a rare book? I facetiously answer. A rare book is a book that I have. You don't
Liz Christensen: 15:29
Oh, hey,
Ken Sanders: 15:34
rarity. It's related to value, but it's not the same thing. The most sought after LDS book is an 18 30 edition of The Book of Mormon. The 1st 1 It's an important book. It's the Mormon Bible. It's not a rare book. Newsflash. You want one? I don't have one in the safe right now. You want to pay $100,000 from. I'll call it a colleague and I'll get one over 90. It's always available.
Liz Christensen: 16:03
It's expensive, but it's easy to get
Ken Sanders: 16:05
perfect exactly. So to me, the definition of a rare book is one that everybody acknowledges its importance. It has to be known. I mean, the rarest book in the world is probably one that only exists in one copy, rotting somewhere that no one's ever heard of and no one's touched in centuries. That's probably the rarest book in the world, but no one cares. You have to care. That has to be awareness consciousness about it. But there's gotta be more. There has to be desire on demand for it. The rarest warming book is The Book of Commandments. The Book of Mormon. 18 30. Palmira, Kirtland, Ohio. 18 35. The Doctrine of Covenants, His second book of LDS Scripture In between, in 18 33 there was an attempt to publish a Book of Commandments, which is actually a precursor to the doctrine that's anti Mormon. Mom, aren't the press through everything destroyed it, burn it all down. Story is, the sheets are blown in the wind and the Lightner girls gather the sheets up under their long skirts and hide in a cornfield. To this day, 180 plus years later, I've only been 29 copies of that book ever discovered or found.
Liz Christensen: 17:28
Yeah, that definitely sounds like rare,
Ken Sanders: 17:30
as opposed to a 5000 copy print run for The Book of Mormon. Last known sale was $1.5 million. Now that's a rare book, and it's a book that matters, though it's compared to, say, Shakespeare, Folios, Gutenberg Bible, Audubon bird folios, Darwin original species. Not as well known as those
Liz Christensen: 17:53
How much of your bookshop is local community specific and geared that way?
Ken Sanders: 18:00
Well, in percentage. It's hard to say, I would say, probably 20%. It could be a little higher. We absolutely, I mean, I have championed going back to the cause of airplane days. We have had thousands of authors, poets, musicians, visual artists, performing artists, perform and do their thing here. Yeah, once in a while, it's a best seller, a well known person. You know Terry Tempest Williams here. We're going to sell a lot of books. Correct Childs, who's up and comer, not nearly as well known. He performed here about a month ago with the local musician Cake Macleod. This place filled up so tight you couldn't get any more. People does. I don't even know. Dozens minimum got turned away and we sold a lot of books. That's rare. We don't do events to sell books. We do events. You think we make money off a poetry reading. Poets don't have any money to buy anybody's book. We do them because it's part of our culture. The people that are making things. They're so creative And maybe they don't have a big voice. I don't care. We've had much, many more Unf ain't faint. What's fame got to do? Money and fame, Those air Those are false gods. Do you start things we should be worshipping art and culture. I just love I love music. We've had, you know, going back to the cosmic air pain days. You tough to hear you. Utah Phillips, Rosalie Sorrells. Katie lied. You know, these aren't giant, you know. They're never gonna be singing it. The Super Bowl Halftime. But they're way more important to me.
Liz Christensen: 19:41
You have a bookstore the way I have a podcast. Just I like this thing and I'm interested in just in case anyone else's too. Here's how I'm gonna make it available.
Ken Sanders: 19:50
And it doesn't matter because you're not. Yes. You want an audience? Yes. I want customers. Okay, but you're not doing it for money. This I'm not doing it. I mean, I have to I can't keep it open. And that's maybe it's a good time to Segway. Well, why you're here is because you saw the publicity to start. This entire block is being bulldozed down. So within 12 to 24 months, after almost 1/4 of a century here and almost half a century of being a bookman in downtown salt way things were gonna change. Well, pour me No, no, no. This is This is so far larger than I am. And I'm a pretty big guy. Got mines out of control. The bookstore meat. It's a metaphor for something larger. My role model, My business model, if you will, is no longer sustainable. I have had a very good run. I've paid extraordinary cheap grants to be here for 23 years. This is a 4000 square foot bookstore going forward to replicate the space isn't sustainable. What's happening in housing and residential real estate? It's unaffordable. Young people can't buy houses or afford apartments with same thing. Only worse is happening on the commercial side. It's being land baked. It's just I can pay it, afford to pay a dollar a foot, but it's gonna cost me $25 a foot. So 10,000 paperbacks in the back of the shop there 3 to $10.10 dollars of the 100,000 books in the shop flowing out of this shop, maybe 10,000 of them. One would consider a rare or collectible book. That's what we live. That's what keeps the doors open, selling a three selling multiple 34 and some five figure books. That's what pays the salaries and the rat in the overhead to have the luxury of selling the cheap books. If I could do a volume business, sure, if I could do 100 times the volume in the cheap books, then I could afford to pay the rents. But no corporation would look it. That shelf there they would want. Okay, every every one of you guys, listen up. We need a roo. I return on investment out of you of turn of six point by everyone. Even a self 6.5 times per year. Will this eight How we run this bookstore? Those books that shelf in particular would be lucky to sell to book. That's local poetry. This look 10 books a year off that shelf. I'm not getting rid of them because they don't sell. Howdy fuzz. I won't do it. But that role model is no longer sustainable. I can't pay big ranch to do it. So we're Will we go one? I'm not gonna So quit selling books till I'm dead. Two. I can't afford to quit something bookstore. I'm dead because it's coming. I don't have any retirement. I got I got to get rid of these books somehow that I have some peoples have too many books. I I'm not sure I I can't help myself. I'm going to use a metaphor here, and you're never gonna hurt. You've heard about Disney and you know about Donald Duck, right? Do you know about Uncle Scrooge McDuck? Oh, this I'm so impressed, cause I don't mean to patronize you, but it almost nobody knows. Uncle Scrooge.
Liz Christensen: 23:25
I grew up with the cartoon.
Ken Sanders: 23:27
Well, me, the comic books and Carl Barks. He didn't create Donald Duck that he created Uncle Scrooge and he wrote and illustrated when you were kids. You could tell the good duck stories from the bad ones because they were Karl Marx. Anyhow, he created Uncle Skirt. Uncle Scrooge had fantastic Killian's of money. He had a whole money being
Liz Christensen: 23:49
right. He goes something as
Ken Sanders: 23:51
well. His love for money. That's what I love because it's pure. It's not about the money. It's not about being rich. Memory addled his dime number one. And what in the cartoons was evil magician. Dispel always tryingto steal us. Number one dime. So all his fantastic killings, he just wanted to swim in that shower coins over his head. Is it pretty? Pure love of the money, right? The metaphor is me and books. I just like the wall around. I'm happy I got to go over there on that chair there. I started last night. There's all these books I bought from a book scout and I gotta go get my pencil eraser and it's like it's the closest to meditation all over. Get me and just pricing $35 books isn't worth my time. No, but I love it. And those? Oh, I just get through. Oh, God! Wow! We just scored. We's got Auntie Kay. Bye, Aldous Huxley. That never Comes in used. It's a very obscure novel by the famous author of Brave New World. That gives me a thrill that I placed it $5. Takes a lot of $5 books toe run this empire
Liz Christensen: 25:05
your store's about to open. So I'm gonna ask you one last question. What happens from here?
Ken Sanders: 25:11
I do not know the outpouring from the Tribune article. And then I did a kind of a response to it that my staff put on our weekly newsletter and actually Facebook in a week. It got 42,000 hits. That's like 10 times more than anything we have ever done in history. What I've said about develop month, its neck away. It's really that the rock I've thrown in the pond is rippling out there, especially to the younger generations. 20 years from now, I'm gone. What do you want your city to be? Do you want unaffordable housing? Do you want giant big box? Everything's on every corner of the city in the Valley that Onley chain retailers and giant corporations and chain restaurants. Gonna Ford? Is that what happened to independent stores? Independent thought, unique little bo Tate, bodegas and shops, no matter what they self. And choose the books too, you know, Homemade pie, tow, whatever. What do we want? Did anyone in this valley vote for dirty air? I don't think so. Oh, wait a minute. That wasn't a vote at all. Why do we have the dirtiest air in the nation? But I'm not. I'm not trying to predict or suggest that my stores what you want or what we want or not. What I'm trying to do is ask the question. What do we the people want? What does the taxpayer want? Why on earth are we the governor and the Legislature just gave Amazon 5.5 million West Valley through it in a three point $5,000,009 million in future tax breaks to bring 2000 jobs toe West valley? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, clearly, I say bad thing. That's not what I want the argument about. I want the argument about what we? That's our tax money. Did we have a say so in that? No, we did not. Why not? It's our bloody money. We should get Tau have a say so in it. Maybe during that recession of 12 13 years ago, maybe it would have made sense then. But does it make sense to bring 2000 jobs to a polluted city that has no affordable housing and the lowest unemployment in history? Maybe the timing's bad. I'm just saying. But again, that's not the argument. The argument is, why don't City City Council's City Mayors County Nares They have the power. The Salt Lake City Council is the R D A. They're the ones issuing the building permits. We have the power. Why are we abusing it? Why aren't what do we want? Why aren't we subsidizing if we're going to subsidize foreign corporations that 2/3 or more of the monies they take out of our our community are going elsewhere? When I say foreign, I mean non Utah but foreign in a global sense, too. Why do we want that? How is that good? So why aren't we? What's wrong with homegrown Utah rooted and started indigenous businesses. Where's the fun to give them $500.5000 dollars, $50,000 that would make and a staggering amount of difference in most small businesses? Lives? Why aren't we doing that? Why is it a good thing to give giant corporations money and a bad thing to give it to local people in Salt Lake, where Sanpete County or wherever have you? Wouldn't that make a difference? Most of our rural communities are really suffering on the jobs market, especially is traditional fossil based fuel patterns that have lasted for 150 years are viable anymore. What are we doing? Where's the plane where we decided we, the people, we the taxpayer? Why are we deciding what we want to do with our tax money and what we want this community to be in 20 years from now? And let's start with clean air.
Liz Christensen: 29:42
I don't include a call to action at the end of my episodes. You know the place where the content creator asks youto leave a rating or toe like share subscribe, and I am not asking you to do that now, but I do want to ask you to do something. Not for me, not for Ken, but for our community. I want you to think about what your response waas to listening to Ken. Talk about taxes, development, the economy and books. And I want you to do something about your response. The legislative session is on, and I think the timing of that is useful. I know I want Salt Lake City to have little shops, boutiques in bodegas and that I prefer local homegrown businesses that are deeply integrated into our community the same way I love supporting an interfacing with our local artists and creatives. But whatever you want, the story of Salt Lake City to be in the decades going forward, do something to create that story, throw a rock in the pond and see what ripples out thank you. To my guest, Ken Sanders. I really appreciate the passion with which you've spoken about all of these things today, and I'm so grateful that I got to come down to stop and interview this morning.
Ken Sanders: 30:56
Miss, thank you so much for listening to me, ranting and raving. It's a talent of mine,
Liz Christensen: 31:03
huh? In the telling is excited to be back with its second season and is gearing up for something special. Ah, live show for its one year anniversary, you can find out more about in the telling at Lizzie. Lizzie lizzie dot com theme music by Gordon Videos in The Telling is Hosted and produced by Me was Christian said Thank you for listening.
Ken Sanders: 31:26
Alex called the Arrow the Sin Ossa for Sicilian born Brooklyn raised. Orem, Utah. Sin Ossa. You have to hear him. That's the only way you have to see him. He is about the sound off language she has performed from Antelope Island to Koblenz Valley, too flat on his back for an entire poetry reading, He challenges assumptions. He just blows people's minds. Trent Harris, the Bondo filmmaker that you tried to make it big in Hollywood and fail that has been with us ever since. He's made a string of movies that air coat movies from Plan 10 from Outer Safe Spaces, Mormon SciFi thriller to the Beaver trilogy to Ruben and add to a bunch of documentaries like The Cement Ball Between Heaven and Earth. It's about a Laotian landmine museum keeper, this guy that has dedicated his life to trying to recover a disarm all of the land mines that the U. S. Government spread all over Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War that have maimed and killed countless people sense. And he actually does this for a living. And he has a museum there in Cambodia and Trent made a film about. It's extraordinary and nobody's ever heard of. Ken Brewer are late poet laureate, that Utah State University. Extraordinary teacher, poet, storyteller. We had him. David Lee, the very first poet laureate of Utah, had him here. Can David still with us? We had him here not six months ago. Can, unfortunately, died of pancreatic cancer. His last book, Whale Song, is a book about the poems he wrote about his journey into cancer. It will make you weep, but it's a beautiful book. And it through his dying, he taught the rest of us how to live and how to die. This is the kind of stuff I like. Kate Macleod is a Eastern transplant that has been here for 40 years. She has been plant been playing her violin fiddle for 50 years. She practices every single day of her life. Alison Krauss, you've heard of She can play a violin, fiddle and sing while she's doing that. So can Kate. Guess what I learned any idiot and pick up a guitar and learn four chords and pretend to be a singer. Try playing your violin and singing at the same time. That's not a talent very many people can do. She is the Tape Macleod extraordinary singer songwriter. She hates being John verified that she comes out of the folk tradition, but she breaking out of a big time, and it is such a blessing to have her these others graced this bookstore with their presence.