“Harry Smith’s shining down on us,” exclaimed a stately Marianne Faithfull early into a five-hour tribute to the legendary music archivist and Beat Generation Renaissance man. While Smith’s monumental 1952 Anthology Of American Folk Music frequently has been credited with […]
No less a figure than Greil Marcus said of Teddy Morgan’s 1999 HighTone release Lost Love And Highways that he would “have Hank Williams and Kurt Cobain high-fiving if they weren’t so pissed they didn’t see this coming.” That’s some […]
What remains of Varnaline, Versions One and Two, is now sitting in boxes in frontman Anders Parker’s closet. After the dissolution of the Zero Hour label, Parker became keeper of the remaining copies of his band’s early recordings, which he […]
A relatively affluent inner-ring suburb, Huntington Woods seems to blithely ignore the notion of Metro Detroit as a wasteland of post-industrial blight. The houses here, generous old brick edifices mostly, sit well back from the shaded streets. They’re carefully kept […]
It seemed perfectly suitable when news came that Steve Earle was putting together a collection of short stories. Long considered one of our era’s most literate songwriters, Earle seemed a natural to delve into prose. With Doghouse Roses, Earle proves […]
Fans who have seen the Handsome Family in concert know that Rennie Sparks can spin a twisted tale. In Evil, a self-published collection of 13 disturbing short stories, Sparks revisits many of the same themes she explores as a lyricist […]
At this point the commercial success of O Brother, Wherea Art Thou? is bound to be condemned in some corners as a marketing juggernaut, instead of honored as the happy accident it has been. But back on May 24, 2000, […]
Just past a brief title sequence, we enter a worship service in full joy, finely dressed folk stomping and shouting and working it all out while a steel-guitar-led band orchestrates the service. The camera cuts to Bishop Charles E. Campbell: […]
To the right, to the left, to the front, to the back — everywhere you looked in the giant field at the foot of the Watson Stage, there were endless throngs of people, eagerly awaiting the Merlefest debut of Dolly […]
Could the best twang-informed roots band you’ve never heard be alive and thriving in, of all places, New York City? It could well be. The outfit in question is Star City, named not for the Russian rocket base, but for […]
