95 Piccadilly

By Shane Gilreath With the race for Oscar firmly behind us, I couldn’t help but reflect on my early teenage years, growing up fascinated by film and movie-making. Though creativity has taken me down different roads, that person feels a complete contradiction to the person I am today. After all, I didn’t even watch the…

By Shane Gilreath Spencer Matthews is a decade younger than me.  His family own Eden Rock on the Caribbean island of St. Barts and he’s well-known for his appearances on “Made in Chelsea,” a reality television show about posh Londoners, living in the historic Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.  We both speak a little…

By Shane Gilreath There’s a lyric in a Pam Tillis song, “met you once in a Williams’ play.” It’s a testament to his genius that we know his characters, have met them, live with them, are neighborly. From the moment I was conscious of his contributions to American theater, Tennessee Williams became one of my…

Recently, I’ve been re-watching the series, “Foyle’s War,” revolving around a police investigator during WWII, but it’s interesting, in life, how wars can rage all around us.  Life can throw a myriad of bombs our way.  Determining what to do with the fragments can be difficult, but they and that decision are major catalysts in…

If you’ve never heard Jessie Mueller sing her gut-wrenching rendition of “She Used to Be Mine” from her Tony nominated performance in the play, Waitress, the singer longs for a time when she was “reckless, just enough,” and while the play is set in more dire circumstances – like the film, upon which it is…

Even knee high to a grasshopper, it was not lost on me, this miraculous place I call home.  My father made sure of it, as we toured burned out homes and battlefields. Seemingly innately, I have always known there is an eloquence in the South that awes me, even then, and Sundays – my favorite…

As we approach the universal day of love, I wonder if love of place amounts to a Valentine’s tradition.  Last night, I heard Paul Ott’s “I am Mississippi,” and thought of the broader rendering of the song, “I am the South.”  It resonates in a world that acts against it and it’s the regional lyrics…

Last night, I was watching a PBS documentary on Vaudeville, when John Lahr, the son of the Cowardly Lion, said that we have lost our frivolity. Given the state of our world – and the subject being vaudeville, where his father, Bert, got his start – I think it’s a fair assessment. This was a…

It was a bit windy one morning, and as I sat on the front porch, I watched as the wind touched the remaining copper and gold leaves, scions of the mighty oak, and gently rolled them along the ground. The leaves, ever a good sport and having made ready for the journey, politely obliged, but…

Friday afternoon, as I prepared to file 95 Piccadilly for the week, the world learned of the untimely passing of Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of music and cultural icons Elvis and Priscilla Presley, and the atmosphere at Piccadilly suddenly changed, as the world (and music lovers everywhere) was left to contemplate her short life. …