After Steve Earle opened with “Christmas In Washington”, we could just about have gone home. “Come back, Woody Guthrie,” he sang, invoking the spirit and purpose formerly associated with American folk music that has since seemed to dissipate into introspection […]
When Paul Burch was growing up, the single record that made the most impact on him wasn’t what is thought of as roots music. It wasn’t an archival folk recording smelling of dust and shellac, though as a kid Burch […]
Star Hustler’s Jason Hatfield may be a springboard for rising starlets. The brother of alt-pop/rocker Juliana Hatfield, he began playing music in Boston with Mary Lou Lord in the band Chupa when she was strumming in subways back in the […]
Sometimes the good breaks are lurking in the midst of disasters. When Tim Easton’s band, Columbus, Ohio, roots-rockers the Haynes Boys, made their first appearance at the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, in 1995, they were eagerly […]
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker — Ogden Nash There stands the glass. Half full or half empty, doesn’t matter so long as there’s enough folding money in the pocket to remedy the situation. Not quite a drunkard’s prayer, […]
In the atypical little world of the Makeout Room in San Francisco’s Mission District, Virginia Dare is in heavy rotation. Their music is always playing between bands’ sets, and their shows there attract a lively crowd. But don’t chalk up […]
A comprehensive dissection and depiction of the songwriting process and the uncertain world in which the songwriter must live, Jimmy Webb’s brilliant new book is both a textbook and a behind-the-scenes glance, gloriously woven by the writer’s heartfelt love of […]
Watching Lucinda Williams step on the Rose Garden Arena stage as the crowd of 14,000 filed in, I recalled the first time I saw her perform, in 1989 at a small club in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her tentativeness that […]
The first night of Son Volt’s 16-date “acoustic tour” was at this 500-capacity club on a college town’s bohemian strip. The Blue Note is home turf to Jay Farrar, the single most important venue in his early career, the right […]
It’s a perfect crowd for Mose McCormack — old friends, fellow pickers, crusty bikers hoisting Buds beside their hogs, hippie cowboys and earth mothers, elderly Hispanic neighbors, gaggles of kids running around. There’s several plastic coolers full of beer, a […]
