No Depression, the bimonthly magazine covering a broad range of American roots music since 1995, will bring to an end its print publication with its 75th issue in May-June 2008.
Plans to expand the publication's website (www.nodepression.net) with additional content will move forward, though it will in no way replace the print edition.
The magazine's March-April issue, currently en route to subscribers and stores, includes the following note from publishers Grant Alden, Peter Blackstock and Kyla Fairchild as its Page 2 "Hello Stranger" column:
Dear Friends:
Barring the intercession of unknown angels, you hold in your hands the next-to-the-last edition of No Depression we will publish. It is difficult even to type those words, so please know that we have not come lightly to this decision.
In the thirteen years since we began plotting and publishing No Depression , we have taken pride not only in the quality of the work we were able to offer our readers, but in the way we insisted upon doing business. We have never inflated our numbers; we have always paid our bills (and, especially, our freelancers) on time. And we have always tried our best to tell the truth.
First things, then: If you have a subscription to ND, please know that we will do our very best to take care of you. We will be negotiating with a handful of magazines who may be interested in fulfulling your subscription. That is the best we can do under the circumstances.
Those circumstances are both complicated and painfully simple. The simple answer is that advertising revenue in this issue is 64% of what it was for our March- April issue just two years ago. We expect that number to continue to decline.
The longer answer involves not simply the well-documented and industrywide reduction in print advertising, but the precipitous fall of the music industry. As a niche publication, ND is well insulated from reductions in, say, GM's print advertising budget; our size meant they weren't going to buy space in our pages, regardless.
On the other hand, because we're a niche title we are dependent upon advertisers who have a specific reason to reach our audience. That is: record labels. We, like many of our friends and competitors, are dependent upon advertising from the community we serve.
That community is, as they say, in transition. In this evolving downloadable world, what a record label is and does is all up to question. What is irrefutable is that their advertising budgets are drastically reduced, for reasons we well understand. It seems clear at this point that whatever businesses evolve to replace (or transform) record labels will have much less need to advertise in print.
The decline of brick and mortar music retail means we have fewer newsstands on which to sell our magazine, and small labels have fewer venues that might embrace and hand-sell their music. Ditto for independent bookstores. Paper manufacturers have consolidated and begun closing mills to cut production; we've been told to expect three price increases in 2008. Last year there was a shift in postal regulations, written by and for big publishers, which shifted costs down to smaller publishers whose economies of scale are unable to take advantage of advanced sorting techniques.
Then there's the economy...
The cumulative toll of those forces makes it increasingly difficult for all small magazines to survive. Whatever the potentials of the web, it cannot be good for our democracy to see independent voices further marginalized. But that's what's happening. The big money on the web is being made, not surprisingly, primarily by big businesses.
ND has never been a big business. It was started with a $2,000 loan from Peter's savings account (the only monetary investment ever provided, or sought by, the magazine). We have five more or less full-time employees, including we three who own the magazine. We have always worked from spare bedrooms and drawn what seemed modest salaries.
What makes this especially painful and particularly frustrating is that our readership has not significantly declined, our newsstand sell-through remains among the best in our portion of the industry, and our passion for and pleasure in the music has in no way diminished. We still have shelves full of first-rate music we'd love to tell you about.
And we have taken great pride in being one of the last bastions of the long-form article, despite the received wisdom throughout publishing that shorter is better. We were particularly gratified to be nominated for our third Utne award last year.
Our cards are now on the table.
Though we will do this at greater length next issue, we should like particularly to thank the advertisers who have stuck with us these many years; the writers, illustrators, and photographers who have worked for far less than they're worth; and our readers: You.
Thank you all. It has been our great joy to serve you.
GRANT ALDEN
PETER BLACKSTOCK
KYLA FAIRCHILD
No Depression published its first issue in September 1995 (with Son Volt on the cover) and continued quarterly for its first year, switching to bimonthly in September 1996. ND received an Utne Magazine Award for Arts & Literature Coverage in 2001 and has been nominated the award on two other occasions (including in 2007). The Chicago Tribune ranked No Depression #20 in its 2004 list of the nation's Top 50 magazines of any kind.
Artists who have appeared on the cover of No Depression over the years include Johnny Cash (2002), Wilco (1996), Willie Nelson (2004), Ryan Adams' seminal band Whiskeytown (1997), the Drive-By Truckers (2003), Ralph Stanley (1998), Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint (2006), Gillian Welch (2001), Lyle Lovett (2003), Porter Wagoner (2007), and Alejandro Escovedo (1998, as Artist of the Decade).
http://www.nodepression.net/
Well, they packed the car and headed home this morning...Eem-er and Fishbone will miss them so very much. My girlfriend came to visit and brought her 15 year old son who spoiled the stuffing out of them. I hope they don't expect me to play with them that much. I guess without a game system here, there was little else to do while we were home!!!
friends from home in town....catch up later in the week.....like way later.....
In doing so, Tod also inspired me to clean my kitchen....including my kettle.....although I can see a dang dog hair in this photo!!!!! ARGH!!!!
But, whatever, they are right... Be prepared, folks. It's spring. Get dispatch on your speed dial. Be involved. Be a presence. Make some noise. It's ours...and I don't wanna lose it.
It's starting to get busy around here....
new working girls in from somewhere....
People trying to make Nob Hill theirs again, after months of work for us to take it back. Some kids made a little fort in the park the other day, it was so cute! The next day, the crackheads were squatting in it doing drugs. This morning I dismantled it. Sorry, kids. Maybe someday but not this day....maybe the parks department could come pick up all the fallen limbs and such soon? We'd appreciate it, thanks.
Deals are being made. Make a fuss. You know your neighbours will back you up!!! 
The peach tree we planted last year is blooming like mad....and I'd like to stay around long enough to enjoy some cobbler from my own tree. 
I am a wimp. Hah, beat you to it, didn't I? I am. A wimp, that is. I agree. But last week, we were out in shirt sleeves working in the yard...counting the blossoms, putting up lattice for the passionflower vines that are probably dead now. This constant change in the weather wreaks havoc on my body, too, and the regular low-level daily dose of arthritis in my back and shoulder has been amplified to near crippling for days now...taking aspirin or advil or anything kills my stomach, churning up acids and air, which then causes further pain in my shoulders and back and this horrible cycle is rolling along again at a fair pace right now.
I am in a slow, simmering bad mood...my own typical moroseness, this state of limbo while waiting to hear from Immigration, the grey returning after the promise of sun and sweetness; all egged on further by this nagging pain running down my spine and crawling over my shoulder and down the top of my arm . It makes me wonder what age 60 will feel like...or 70. And how I will deal with it then. All I want to do is crawl back into bed. And cry...until I fall asleep and dream of warm beaches on a southern gulf, long days of sunlight and short seasons of rain...the sun warming me all the way, deep into to my aching bones. 
It's not supposed to be like this here, now.
This is what it is supposed to look like...this was last week.
This is today. What gives?
We took a little stroll down the back alley of some of his other properties this past week during our Neighbourhood Walk(speaking of which, WHERE IS EVERYBODY?)....a very scary and stomach sickening stroll. I think I will try to walk that alley again this week with the camera(and then we will really talk about garbage)...but the zombies of I Am Legend scared me less than the things I found in that alley backing his properties. Also, there is quite a parade of drug activity coming and going from this and another roominghouse property of his close to Nob Hill Park.
Who taught my mom to Forward bad jokes, right-wing political bullshit, "urgent messages," "this is a true story" emails and countless photo pages???? This is for you...(it doesn't matter how old this photo is, does it? The sentiment is exactly the same!!!!!!)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But...the cops are there, too. A few of them. For a while. For quite a while. That's always fun.
And it's hard to sell(or buy) your crack or meth or whatever with cop cars parked in front of both crack houses, so everyone jumped ship to head off downtown...
Yesterday, walking Eem-er to Nob Hill Park, I saw that it appears there has been an eviction...or the manager/landlord is taking rent money from someone living in the yard now. People are just walking in there and helping themselves to stuff, like it's the tail end of a garage sale when folks just give it all away...only it rained all night now...ick.
I wish I could feel a little happy about it. That I was feeling confident that things will be different but this is one of those places that rents to bad news time and time again. Various rooms or apartments in the roominghouse have been crack houses again and again and again...I don't know why they bother kicking anyone out because the next person they rent to has probably been living there/crashing there/peddling there...and the same faces will still be coming and going from it. They may even just move that pile back in from the yard....ya know? I mean, it's probably their stuff....some of it.
because I was doing the dishes this morning and the sun coming through the window set my yellow kitchen aflame and made me find beauty in the most mundane thing...household chores....
I can't believe the moments of Grace I find sometimes. It's so strange to be doing my dishes one moment and running for the camera the next, then pouring over pages of poetry to find words that might match my moment.....
But that is how I have lived much of my life...Once, when I was in a college course(at a slightly advanced age) that had something to do about human relationships(don't recall the name of the course but it was like NO OTHER course I had ever taken and was the start of my Real Life, my life of being aware that I am OK, after all), there was a question posed by the instructor and an answer from someone far braver than me that knocked my socks off....He said, "Imagine you are driving down the most beautiful country lane, the sun is glorious, the weather is magnificent, the perfectness of it all(the moment, the emotion, the grandness, the ever-lovingness of it), and you come across the most pristine field of clover and grass, sun and wind, and emotion, perfect, with two magnificent horses grazing....what is your reaction?" This Very Brave Soul, who was ten years younger than me, said "I would get out of the car and get down on my hands and knees and graze with them." 
Is this not a Norman Rockwell just waiting to be painted? I mean, really?
The walk around the park is altogether beautiful and I have brought you all here many times. It has been a favorite of mine since we came to live here. I have two dogs with me here...Eem-er and somebody else. Sometimes(like yesterday) I cannot keep back the tears...but at least now, they aren't the same kind of tears.
Shack Island. With the TtV technique, it reminds me of the summer houses in the Ya-Ya Sisterhood book...the happy parts, anyway...and the Ya-ya Sisterhood reminds me of my childhood, even the sad and tragic parts...including a cabin by the water.
Spring is here but not yet warm. Snakes are out again...yet still moving. so. very. slow. I actually had my camera barely inches from this poor guy's nose and he just could not muster the energy to move on. I LOVE garter snakes.
Sea Spray blossoms.
Grass wearing a scrunchie.
And Fawn Lilies....not what we came looking for, but a sure sign of Spring, all the same. These will bloom in large blankets around the parks here...so fragile and lovely. So delicate and hardy, at the same time.
The face of Lily.
At the end of the walk, the very end of the walk, we came across these little mysteries, not quite blooming....we're not sure. I am going back later this week to find out for sure....we think this is a Chocolate-Lily-to-be...not quite the extravagant amount I first found here, but then again, that first blooming of numerous lilies has had me coming back each Spring looking for more. Fingers crossed, though. I have been trying to find them again for some time. 
