A couple years ago, Tom Heyman packed up his Philadelphia home and headed out to San Francisco, leaving behind a twelve-year legacy of writing songs and playing guitar for the alcohol-fueled, honky-tonkin’ rock band Go To Blazes. The move has […]
Ted Roddy likes his country music with a lot of soul. The Tearjoint Troubadours, his latest band, cover songs by such writers as Donnie Fritts and Dan Penn, whose song catalogs are saturated with soul. Tear Time, Roddy’s first collection […]
Evidence that Sarah Harmer’s career has turned a corner is obvious from the scene outside a recent Toronto appearance. The stairs at the ornate Trinity Centre are crowded with young women who have copped Harmer’s gamin look; a remote truck […]
One morning in the summer of 1956, when Rodney Crowell was not quite six years old, his father rousted him from bed before dawn and hustled him into the back seat of a borrowed 1949 Ford. Three cane fishing poles […]
Inevitably in every sideman’s career comes a moment when he finds it necessary to step to the front. Rick Shea has had the good fortune to be hitting an enviable artistic stride at just such a moment. Shea has served […]
Pat Haney knows gas stations and John Prine, American history and bluegrass, towboats and toasters. “I could tell you the history of the world starting with a toaster,” he says. Haney speaks of moving in and out of college at […]
Arthur Alexander may best be remembered as the first artist to have had his songs recorded by the ’60s triumvirate of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. In Get A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues, Richard Younger shows […]
Not so long ago, Mason Jennings was rolling burritos by day and writing idiosyncratic, oddly metered folk-rock songs by night. Transplanted from Pittsburgh, he says he was “a total loner,” with no fans, no band, and a self-pressed CD that, […]
While nowadays it’s hard to view the latter half of the ’70s through anything but the safety-pinned lenses of punk, at the time there were pockets of resistance blissfully unaffected by the Sex Pistols and their unholy spawn. Back then, […]
Let’s face it, video killed the rockumentary. In a time when seeing music has pretty much eclipsed merely hearing music, the mystery and value has been drained out of the music documentary. Too many modern record releases are accompanied by […]
