I met Ran Coney in my first art class at Carson-Newman in 1970. I joked, “Like Coney Island?” He replied, “Yep, only without the roller coaster. Although I may be a hot dog.” Ran was a remarkable artist and songwriter, but he was also humble and kind. We quickly became friends—and friendly rivals. During Friday chapel, we passed notes and played word-chain games, linking phrases until they ended in nonsense. That game inspired this episode’s title: “We Ran Coney Island,” and it’s all about my friendship with Ran from our college days until our Atlanta get-together-singalongs.
After my college band broke up, Ran and I formed Friendex with several friends. We once argued over whether the Eagles’ Desperado album was about outlaws or a rock band on the road…or both. To make my case, I wrote this first song in this episode, “Half-Past Chattanooga,” using a band of Southern cavalry as a metaphor for a Southern rock group.
Ran later encouraged me to move to Atlanta so we could make music together again. Our gatherings with Carson-Newman friends often ended with “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” I wrote the second song of this episode, “Renaissance Café,” as a musical reflection on our college years. Ran helped record it, and we captured our friends singing around his piano and that live recording serves as the song's coda.
We lost Ran to leukemia in 1997. At his lakeside service, our friend Filmore Strunk imagined Ran parasailing toward the sky until someone (on the other side) exclaimed, “Look, here comes Ran!” My sister Jann, Joe Holbert, and I sang “The Other Side,” an a cappela song I had written while jogging in Brooklyn. That serves as the third song in this episode.
© 2026 David Ray Skinner/Electric Quilt Music, BMI
