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Peter Coyote. Photo: Miikka Skaffari/FilmMagic What would a Ken Burns documentary be without its measured, authoritative narration? In The West , The National Parks , Prohibition , The Dust Bowl , The Roosevelts , The Vietnam War , The Mayo Clinic , and now Country Music , actor Peter Coyote delivers hours of often dense, complex text — full of facts, figures, quotes, and grand unifying ideas — in a manner that Burns refers to as “God’s stenographer.” His calm, cowboy-around-a-campfire timbre is basically the voice of America, at least within the orbit of PBS. Generations of kids first met Coyote as the embodiment of authority — he played Keys, the head scientist in E.T. the Extra Terrestrial — but the man himself has lived a Zelig-like life. Growing up as a secular Jew with communist relatives during the McCarthy era, Coyote was an early convert to political activism and the counterculture. “I saw grown-ups weeping in my living room,” he says. “Men and women who were broken by lies the government was telling.” As a young man, he was invited into Kennedy’s White House after staging a protest against nuclear testing during the Cuban missile crisis, threw himself headlong into a decade of drugs, Hell’s Angels, and commune living , narrowly escaped being drafted to Vietnam by pretending to be a cold-blooded marauder, helped run the California State Arts Council for eight years, and then decided to become an actor. These days, he’s also an ordained Zen Buddhist priest. Coyote has lent his voice to a plethora of ads and documentaries over the decades, but his decades-long relationship with Burns is something special. Vulture spoke with both men about Coyote’s unequaled voice, their unique recording process, and how they handle political disagreements. Peter, how did you get into the narration game? Peter Coyote : I was broke after ten years in the counterculture and I needed a way to make some money. I wasn’t an actor at that … [Read more...] about The Golden Voice Behind All Those Ken Burns Documentaries

Maybe country music isn’t your thing. That’s fine! Most things are not everyone’s thing. Something that is everyone’s thing, however, is Beyoncé. So if you skipped the 2016 Country Music Association Awards under the illusion that you don’t like country music, boy did you mess up. Because Bey was there, and she performed her country song “Daddy Lessons,” and it was exactly as excellent as this sentence has heretofore led you to believe it would be. Adding to that excellence is that she took the stage with the Dixie Chicks, who have made a habit of performing “Daddy Lessons” on tour . Oh, and the Beyoncé feat. Dixie Chicks version is now available for your consumption. Since we’ve all learned a lesson or two about genre-boxing our very best performers, watch above, and when you tire of that, listen below. … [Read more...] about Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks Dominate the 2016 CMAs With ‘Daddy Lessons’ Performance