“This is 20 minutes before I was knocked into the decade of the ’90s,” Vince Bell says by way of foreshadowing as he slips a tape into the living-room stereo at his home just outside Nashville. The recording he has […]
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Creoles, at the risk of oversimplifying, are the black, French-speaking people of Southwest Louisiana, and zydeco is the versatile term for their dances, dance halls and infectious dance music. Sometime in the 19th century, black musicians adopted the accordion-driven repertoire […]
The authors are English musicians who inaugurate a new series of books profiling esteemed songwriters with this portrait of Guy Clark. (Their next subject is the sisters McGarrigle.) Alternating between oral history and song explication, Song Builder is a quick […]
The summer bluegrass festival season begins with this annual event, honoring Doc Watson’s son, Merle (who died in a 1985 tractor accident). Or at least the festival season begins; summer itself wasn’t quite on schedule, for Thursday night there were […]
Though you’ll probably never see them on VH1, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Bill Morrissey are still an interesting pair of storytellers. On one hand is Morrissey, who weaves his tales in songs that burst with exquisite detail, like well-crafted short […]
This rain-swept evening’s twin bill neatly illustrated the challenge facing young bands who rely on studio trickery and atmospheric tension to provide their music with sustainable momentum. These two British acts rolled into town on the strength of either a […]
Despite Manchester’s reputation for turning out groundbreaking British rock acts (from the Buzzcocks to Joy Division to the Stone Roses to Oasis), the city also is generally quite supportive of American roots music. Indeed, even on this typically dank Manchester […]
So many touring bands skip Milwaukee on the way from Chicago to Minneapolis that those who do stop and sit a spell ought to be guaranteed an avid response. The Bottle Rockets didn’t sell out this 300-capacity club — named […]
A few years back, I swore off ever seeing John Wesley Harding again after he walked onstage, looked out at a pretty respectable gathering (for a Monday night, anyway) and sneered in a voice dripping with contempt, “Well, I’d like […]
After a recent swing through the Southeast opening for the Black Crowes, a club tour back into the same areas could have been a letdown for the members of Nashville band Bare Jr. This particular night didn’t start out too […]
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