Kelly Kessler and Jane Baxter Miller began their country career as the Texas Rubies in 1989 in a setting that couldn’t have been more urban: Chicago subway stations. Their favorite venues, though, were living rooms, and the biggest place that […]
Donald Lindley, longtime drummer for Lucinda Williams, Rosie Flores, Dave Alvin, Joe Ely and many others, died of lung cancer in Austin on February 3. His frequent bandmate Duane Jarvis wrote the following remembrance of the man a couple days […]
Chris Gray, the prolific co-leader of Martin’s Folly, would like to see the music industry return to a simpler, more artistically creative period of musicmaking that allowed artists to release a album of newly recorded material every year. In fact, […]
“Space in a song is what gives it emotive power,” says Janas Hoyt with deliberation, spreading her words out even as she speaks, leaving room to consider whether this statement applies only to her songs. For Hoyt, the leader of […]
Alternative country can have more than one meaning once you get out of Dodge. For Petty Booka, the alternative country is Japan, and their venue is the 24-hour craziness of Tokyo. In the audio wasteland that is Japanese pop, only […]
“Collision” is a word Terry Allen often uses in talking about the ideas behind his music and art. To those familiar with Allen’s music, that might be disturbing, considering that some of his best-known songs are about speeding down the […]
“Father. Artist. Midwesterner. Eccentric. Walker…” So begins Paul Westerberg’s noun-filled description of himself in the bio for his new album, Suicaine Gratifaction. The order of the words is important, for not only is Westerberg an astute judge of his own […]
Among the first wave of rock journalists, Robert Christgau is the only critic whose job description remains largely unchanged: He still churns out his semi-regular “Consumer Guide,” presides over the annual Pazz & Jop critics poll in The Village Voice, […]
It would be difficult to exaggerate the impact of Bob Dylan’s decision to move away from folk music and plug in to rock ‘n’ roll. But judging by British writer C.P. Lee’s new book, it could be easy to exaggerate […]
As leader of the Gun Club, an early ’80s Los Angeles punk ensemble, Jeffrey Lee Pierce communicated alienation and despair through a swamp boogie tightrope stretched between the blues and surreality. Pierce’s date with a death wish featured the usual […]
