Greg Garing’s otherworldly voice nearly overtakes his bone-thin luminosity, soaring sweet and achingly powerful, then dipping in a hushed outcast cry. “Blues In My Heart” perfectly collapses any resistance to hillbilly music. When “old-timer” Ward Verity joins at the single […]
Almost from their inception, Twin Cities band the Honeydogs established a toehold with Iowa City audiences; carefully-spaced appearances have assured ever-larger and increasingly rabid turnouts. With Seen A Ghost, the band’s third disc and major-label debut, entrenching them as one […]
“We thought there might be about 50 people here,” said Jim Boquist. Guess again. The small 400 Bar was flirting with an over-capacity crowd, maybe five times what Jim and his brother Dave had expected. The doorman was turning people […]
It was close to 2 a.m., and just as Robbie Fulks was returning to the Horseshoe stage for the second encore of his second set of the night, a fan in the crowd caught the singer’s attention. “Hey, Robbie”, the […]
As evidenced by this entertaining but sparsely attended show, Slaid Cleaves is a songwriter’s songwriter. For this solo acoustic gig, the Maine native interspersed covers and older material with several songs from his recent Philo/Rounder disc No Angel Knows. Cleaves […]
The little blurb in the Austin American Statesman South by Southwest supplement described Loudon Wainwright III as a “humorous songwriting legend.” But anyone who went to Wainwright’s showcase that night expecting funny-bone frolics had another thing coming. Accompanying himself on […]
Songwriting legend P.F. Sloan’s first Texas appearance in as long as anyone can remember was a low-key one, even though it came in the midst of the South by Southwest Music Festival. Though he has released one indie album, (Still […]
Roughly 30 years ago, my mother — then a young nurse in a small rural hospital — was recruited by the county to be on night call for a dying 92-year-old woman whose family had promised to keep her out […]
Drove she ducklings through the water every morning just at nine Stubbed her toe on a splinter, fell into the foaming brine. Ruby lips above the water blowing bubbles soft and fine But, alas, I was no swimmer so I […]
Trying to describe One Fell Swoop, I feel the way Bob Dylan must have felt writing “Sara”, his epic paean to a mystical lady who is “so easy to look at, so hard to define.” Indeed, much of One Fell […]
