Mike Conklin

Hi there, reader. My name is Mike Conklin, and I’m the Editor-in-Chief of InsideHook. I’d like to welcome you to the new and improved version of our site. We’ve been working on this redesign for the better part of a year to ensure that what you see on the screen before you is the most accurate possible reflection of who we are and what we hope to provide for you. I’m thrilled with how it turned out, and I hope you are, too. Before you start poking around, a few notes on what we’ve ch…

For Christmas of 2015, I received as a gift a long-sleeve Merino 150 Base Layer from Smartwool. It was maroon with tiny black horizontal stripes. It was unfathomably soft out of the box, and over the next three months, it only got softer. It’s the best long-sleeve running shirt. At the time, I was running at least five days a week, and I realize you will probably think I’m exaggerating when I say this, but I am not, I swear: I wore “my Smartwool” every single time. I wore it on its own on mil…

Thirteen albums and nearly 30 years into a career that’s most easily defined by Jeff Tweedy’s continued insistence on evolving, Wilco has come to be written about and discussed almost exclusively in terms relative to one’s favorite era of the band. You have your old-school alt-country types, who favor the straightforward singalongs of A.M and Being There. You have your diehard Jay Bennett acolytes who swear by the dense power-pop arrangements of Summerteeth. A ton of extremely vocal and extr…

Try as we might to find any other jacket for fall — and we’ve tried, from anoraks to denim joints to technical shells — there’s nothing that scratches that early-fall-morning-wearing-boots-for-the-first-time-and-sipping-a-pumpkin-spice-latte-that-we’re-totally-not-embarrassed-by itch like a chore coat. We constantly find ourselves reaching for that certain tri-pocketed lightweight layer when the temps hit the mid-60s and the Sam Adam Octoberfests hit shelves everywhere: call us basic, but the li…

Occupying the surprisingly vast space between jeans and proper chinos is an extremely versatile and extremely underrated garment generally known as 5-pocket pants. The name references the orientation of the pockets, which mimics that of denim: two on the front, two on the back, plus the coin pocket or watch (or guitar pick) pocket, as it’s sometimes known. Chinos, on the other end of the spectrum, feature four pockets: two on the side seam and two in the back, for a slightly more formal presenta…

Occupying the surprisingly vast space between jeans and proper chinos is an extremely versatile and extremely underrated garment generally known as 5-pocket pants. The name references the orientation of the pockets, which mimics that of denim: two on the front, two on the back, plus the coin pocket or watch (or guitar pick) pocket, as it’s sometimes known. Chinos, on the other end of the spectrum, feature four pockets: two on the side seam and two in the back, for a slightly more formal presenta…

By Mike Conklin Walking beside Tommy Prine through Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville, I get the distinct feeling we’re being watched. Or that he is, anyway. The shop is among the most famous in the world, a well-known mecca for high-end guitars, with a focus on extremely sought-after old acoustics. If you were in the market for, say, a 1960s Martin D-28 owned by Graham Nash and Judee Sill and you had $60,000 burning a hole in your pocket, you’d be well-served by a visit to Carter Vinta…

On November 11, 2022, when Plains, the collaborative project featuring Texas-born and LA-based songwriter Jess Williamson and Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutcthfield, played New York City’s Webster Hall, Crutchfield was all business — stoic and calm, a seasoned professional fresh off a tour supporting the biggest success of her career in 2020’s Saint Cloud. I’d seen her headline the very same sold-out room with Waxahatchee just shy of a year earlier, and she seemed charmingly nervous. But here, with Pl…

Update, 4/6/2023: Having lived with the Pro-Ject Audio Debut Carbon Evo (previously known as the Evolution) for nearly three years, it is still an impressively high-performing turntable that is unmatched in terms of quality for the price. Technology has continued to improve around the Debut Carbon Evo, but mostly in regard to bluetooth functionality, wireless connectivity and built-in components, all of which remain on an entirely different (and lower) tier of vinyl listening. When it comes to o…

“This is a Photograph” is the result of a quarantine spent thinking about the nature of time and what we do with it.