In Memoriam

In the age of social media, it’s now highly possible to not hear from a friend for a while, go to their Facebook (or Instagram, Twitter, etc.) profile to see how they’ve been and what they’re currently up to… only to find out they’ve passed away four years earlier. To coin an internet trope, I was this many days old when I found out our good friend of Big Shout Magazine and kind-hearted sales rep John Rodgers passed away in 2020 as a result of a bad car accident.

From 1984 to sometime in 1987, Kenny Budd and I were best friends, bandmates and co-songwriters for a Delaware band you probably never heard of called The Exam. So it saddens me to report that Kenny passed away on Thursday, August 25, 2022 of an undisclosed cause. After decades of not hearing from one another, he and I connected on Facebook in July of last year, but sadly we never took the time to talk to each other by phone.

“I’m not sure at what age you’re supposed to begin reading obituaries with daily dread. This past year, too many friends have ended up as neat little column-wide fillers between ads for flowers … and undertaking services.” — Tom Watkins, Big Shout Magazine 1989 Tom Watkins was a multi-faceted person Read more…

On Monday, April 12, 2021 much-loved studio engineer/producer and guitarist Keith Moss passed from a short bout of cholangiocarcinoma or bile duct cancer. His passing was quick and too early, and it is currently rocking the state of Delaware’s musical world.

It can be said with a straight face that Robert Hazard was Philadelphia’s first homegrown rockstar of the 1980s.

It’s February 23, 2021, and at about 2:33 pm EST today I found out that a good friend of mine passed. Jones Purcell. Maybe you knew him, too.

If you lived in the Delaware area from 1980 to about 1995 there’s a good chance you would have heard of him even if hadn’t followed any of the goings on in the music scene in that area.

For anyone who ever hung out at the Deer Park Tavern in Newark, DE from 1989 until about 1999, you’ll be sad to hear that a prominent fixture in that area’s local scene passed away of cancer earlier this week. Tom Uffner, otherwise known as “that dude who sold me Read more…

I don’t remember the first time I ever met or the last time I ever saw Art Callahan, but there’s no doubt it was at 845 N. Tatnall St. in Wilmington, DE… the site of the Barn Door. I think I only saw Art outside the walls of that place Read more…