Lionel

The mononymous Lionel is an unapologetic and unabashed flame-throwing (out)spoken wordsmith, sui generis to a fare-thee-well, a raconteur and rapscallion with a raucous and ribald riposte, he’s a blackbelt in realpolitik, hardcore vegan and extreme spelunker, a conscientious conspiracist, renaissance lawyer, tyrannical troubadour, bluegrass nativist and gutbucket practitioner, author and essayist, pioneer podcaster and talk radio maven, a television and radio news decoder, possessed of a surgical wit that’s been known to frighten horses, a sesquipedalian and Brobdingnagian logophile whose deft facility with the mother tongue is nonpareil. Along with his Lock ‘n Load triomates, Bob Harris (the international flatpicking phenom) and Bob Sutor (a card-carrying banjo master), Lionel displays a down home musical pastiche and buffet that pays homage to the great Americana songbook, celebrating inter alia inbred mountain buggery, squealing like a pig and purty mouths and a Clampett Clan paean here and there, all in tribute to the celestial and immaculate twang of mother bluegrass. Newsweek calls Lionel is “[a]n intellectual known for his irreverent political and social humor.” And perhaps legendary music producer Jerry Wexler said it best in describing his friend Lionel: “He wears the mantle of Lenny Bruce, with Lenny’s own tropisms: The Oblique, The Irreverent, The Tangential, The Concupiscent, The Polymorphous Perverse, The Arcane, The Numinous. And yet Lionel brings to the table his own savory: A love of the mother tongue and a gonzo vocabulary that puts his logo on all his works, whether talk-show hosting, standup-comic spritzing, or hanging out – with himself a minor art form.” Amen.