“Hard times are hanging ’round my door,” Wayne Turnage sings on the opening of Fair River Station’s 16 Cuts, the band’s debut disc on Black Dog Records. Listening to his husky, time-worn voice, it’s not hard to believe. He’s on […]
“Hard times are hanging ’round my door,” Wayne Turnage sings on the opening of Fair River Station’s 16 Cuts, the band’s debut disc on Black Dog Records. Listening to his husky, time-worn voice, it’s not hard to believe. He’s on […]
Our story begins one sweltering night in the dog days of summer in 1991, at the Hole in the Wall, a dive on The Drag (a.k.a. Guadalupe Street) in Austin where a million stories have begun over the years. I’m […]
In a 1996 feature in The Austin Chronicle, Merle Haggard told interviewer Tim Stegall, “I’ll play the game now. I’ll do everything I’m supposed to do, and see if that’s what it is.” He was speaking of Nashville, and his was […]
Any mutt chomping into the opening cut of Beware Of Dog, the Hangdogs’ new CD, might think he’s just met the business end of a buzz saw. Savage guitars, a relentless rhythm and caustic vocals shadow a Texas wife as […]
As a young girl, Jennie Benford would fall asleep to the strains of her father’s bluegrass band rehearsing in their Northern Vermont home. One night she awoke to a song she hadn’t heard before, the traditional murder ballad “Pretty Polly”. […]
Laura Cantrell has had a big influence on the country music scene in New York City, primarily through her role as the host of WFMU’s “Radio Thrift Shop”, where she spins a delightful mix of old country and alt-country and […]
I’m going to write about East L.A. I’m going to write about the fruit vendors, the sewing women in the sweatshops, the smell of the tortilleria, the sounds that waft through the air on Saturdays from backyard parties, the Mexican […]
In 1975, as America stepped out of the shadow of Watergate and into the hollow pride of the bicentennial, filmmaker Robert Altman turned his gaze on Music City and conjured a bleak analogy for the national mood called Nashville. “Minnie […]
Ten-year Californian Phil Cody recalls his old stomping grounds of Cincinnati as a place with a little bit of everywhere. “Cincinnati is right on the Ohio River with Kentucky across the way [so there’s] all the river traffic bringing stuff […]
Two weeks from now, this little Kansas City bar will be the scene for the CD release party for The Spectacular Sadness Of Rex Hobart And The Misery Boys, produced by renowned Skeletons honcho Lou Whitney. Tonight, it’s just Rex […]
FRESH TRACK: Matt Andersen – “Magnolia”Check it out
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