Spaw, your reaction made me think about how different it must have been to encounter Shep in print first, before ever hearing him.

By the time I first found anything he had published, I had already been a listener for a while, so I couldn't possibly read the words without hearing his voice, intonations, etc. I'm not saying its a "better" persective, just different. Interesting.

I always thought of Shep as a product of and spokeman for the urban Midwest. It's a region that provides a true cross-section "Americana" experience because you grow up visiting the good old-fashioned rural world pretty easily (state fair, etc.) while living day-to-day in the industrial rust-belt.

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I've been at The Ledge, by the way, having grown up in Plainfield and gone to high school in Metuchen...