1 Bob Dylan, Time Out Of Mind (Columbia) 2 Ani DiFranco, Little Plastic Castles (Righteous Babe) 3 Steve Earle, El Corazon (E-Squared/Warner Bros.) 4 Whiskeytown, Strangers Almanac (Outpost) 5 Cheri Knight, The Northeast Kingdom (E-Squared) 6 Alejandro Escovedo, More Miles […]
God isn’t real. Or so Robbie Fulks sang to me and around 50 other folks on a brisk Sunday night last November. Fair enough — but then how was it I was sitting five feet away from Fulks in someone’s […]
LET’S MAKE A DEAL: The Bottle Rockets have been released from their contract with Atlantic. An Atlantic spokesperson suggested there were plans to re-release last summer’s 24 Hours A Day on another label, but Brian Henneman, in Nashville recently for […]
It never fails to amaze how a series of chance happenings can hold sway over the development of an artist’s craft — in this particular case, how the circuitous route between London and Nashville was shortened by a succession of […]
It’s the eve of a stormy Memorial Day weekend, high in the Clinch Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. Jimmy Martin’s enormous green tour bus has just barged its way up the winding road to Ralph Stanley’s Hills of Home park, a […]
“Well, it’s not like I’ve got the last couple of fragments. It’s not like I’ve got the last half-dozen tunes. There’s so much stuff here, I mean, I could make a record and then if that’s no good then you […]
Nobody wants to be lied to. We who take our music seriously — be it country, punk, rap, or any other subgenre — are particularly petulant about this matter. That music with which we so closely identify, which speaks to […]
Several years back, Steve Dawson joined the swollen ranks of songwriters in Nashville under contract to pen songs — hit songs, mister — for established country singers. Having blended styles in Stump the Host, a twangy Chicago band that built […]
At some point it comes down to who you know. Not inherently a bad thing, that; music, like life, has much to do with trust and the invisible certainties that link and separate strangers. And between them, Randy Scruggs and […]
Hot New Country stinks, but you can’t smell it. Good country songs should effect at least three-fifths of your senses. Take, for example, the Drive-By Truckers song “Bulldozers And Dirt”: “Can’t get the red stains off of my socks/Can’t get […]
