Last year, Bwog jammed with the JJ’s Place guys, shaked to Shakira with Dean Peña-Mora, and sang a Sesame song with Dean Denburg. We know how those crazy cats in Dodge Hall like to party, so we asked Music Department Chair and Ethnomusicology Professor, Aaron Fox, what’s in heavy rotation on his Ipod. Below are the musical selections he kindly shared with us.

• Mark Chesnutt, “A Better Class of Losers (Misery’s All the Same)”
• Justin Treviño and Wanda Jackson, “What Have We Done?”
• Lucinda Williams, “Sylvia” (“She Loves the Night”)
• Willie Nelson, “Darkness on the Face of the Earth”
• Marvin Gaye, “Mercy, Mercy, Me”
• Lyle Lovett, “LA County”
• Al Green, “Funny How Time Slips Away” (a Willie Nelson song, btw)
• Marty Stuart, “Badlands”
• Hal Ketchum, “Mama Knows the Highway”
• Stoney Edwards, “Blackbird”  (the Chip Taylor song, not the Beatles’ one)

Professor Fox added the following in his email:

That’s my actual top 10 right now. The artists stay the same even if the songs change (plus throw in Tom Waits, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Chrissie Hynde, a few others). Pretty boring for an ethnomusicologist, huh? I mean, I spend more time perhaps listening to recordings of Native American music made in the 1930s and 40s, but that’s my work. This is what gets me to and from work. I have worn the exact same brand of boots and jeans for 20 years, and my personal musical tastes firmed up right around the same time.

Who knew the Chair of Columbia’s Music Department was a country fan? A little bird named Google informed us that Fox is actually a professional country guitarist. Way cool. Looks like Columbia has its very own Mr. Hyunh. (Bwog basically learned about country music from that excellent episode of Hey Arnold).