R.I.P.: William “Smokey” Dacus, the original drummer for Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys, died October 9 in Rogers, Arkansas. He was 90…. Cajun musician Rusty Kershaw died October 23 in New Orleans after suffering a heart attack. Rusty and […]
For several years singer-songwriter Mark Insley has been living in Ventura, California, and gigging around regional hot spots such as Bakersfield and Los Angeles’ now-defunct Palomino Club. Yet from the sound of the title track on his new album Tucson, […]
Jim Crow notwithstanding, American music has always been a child of miscegenation. Drain the blues influences from Father of Country Music Jimmie Rodgers or from Western Swing creator Milton Brown, to cite just two key examples, and what we now […]
Most people tend to view blues and country music as the province, by turns, of black and white cultures. Nothing wrong with that, really; with few exceptions, the greatest blues singers have been African-American, while the best honky-tonkers have been […]
From 1995 to 2001, Say ZuZu drove a 1987 Ford school bus they called The Bull. They often asked fellow musicians they admired to sign the interior, and over the years “Lil’ Bull” was graced by the likes of Richard […]
The irregular application of red dye has done little to subdue Tom House’s half-long hair, nor to mute the gray at his temples. The rushing years have only served to speed his work, anyway. Four albums in five years have […]
Almost from the time Troy Olsen was old enough to drive (that’s age 10 for a rancher’s kid), he’d take a truck up from his family’s canyon home to the highest point around, plug a TV into the cigarette lighter, […]
Toni Price took the stage at the Continental Club on November 6, as she does every Tuesday night for happy hour — but the chair at stage right was empty. In its place rested a bushel of flowers, a scattering […]
When he was spending long hours with Flatt & Scruggs records in college, Gene Wooten thought he was teaching himself banjo. It turned out he was laying the foundations of one of the celebrated Nashville dobro careers. “There was always […]
To reach the home of Larry Sparks, you have to get off the interstate and head into the cornfields of southeast Indiana. The roads there run between farms, around ponds and cemeteries, and through towns that are little more than […]
