Roy Kasten

Though he studied criminology in college, singer-songwriter Tom Russell has traversed continents and musical styles during his 30-year career — sometimes aiming for hard honky-tonk, sometimes for conceptual folk dreamscapes. But his muse always leads him back to the convicts and the gamblers, the laborers and the drifters, the immigrants...

This much was clear: She wasn't coming back on her own. "Where's Lu?" a woman, apparently a manager, was asking. "We're late." Lu was last seen standing behind the outdoor stage, just after the rain had soaked the venue's parking lot, flipping through a thick black binder of song lyrics,...