As a kid in Ohio, I spent a fair amount of my warm-weather weekends at flea markets. We’d pack up the car with our most recent discards and head out to some dusty parking lot or shut-down drive-in theater in […]
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Though record stores are built around them, it’s no secret that most musicians can’t stand categories. Country or blues, jazz or rock ‘n’ roll — file your record in one of these slots, that’s how the business is run. But […]
The Coen brothers couldn’t have scripted a stranger irony than the musical resurrection of Chris Thomas King. After years of refusing to submit to traditionalist strictures — resisting the pressures of a record industry that couldn’t accept his streetwise raps […]
Home to a quarter-million souls, one of the coolest minor-league ballparks on the planet, and the definitive state fair (this year’s included pie-eating contests, the Butter Cow and Bob Dylan in its blithely guileless presentation), Des Moines is best known […]
A composite of reality and fable, the cowboy represents many aspects of the American national character. He is a rugged individualist with a strong sense of values and an insatiable quest for adventure. He’s hard-working, smart and kind, but doesn’t […]
At the end of the second segment of the four-part American Roots Music special, narrator Kris Kristofferson states with wonder that from 1930-1954, America gave birth to country and western, western swing, honky tonk, bluegrass, and rock ‘n’ roll, and […]
1 Bob Dylan, Love And Theft (Columbia) 2 Various Artists, O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack (Mercury/Lost Highway) 3 Ryan Adams, Gold (Lost Highway) 4 Various Artists, Poet: A Tribute To Townes Van Zandt (Pedernales/Freefalls) 5 Alison Krauss & Union […]
Ragged Old Glory: Different ways to love your country My very first issue of No Depression came in the mail today, and while I can’t wait to tear into it, I felt compelled to stop for a moment and write […]
WILCO WORLD: After discussing offers from various labels, WILCO has signed with Nonesuch, which is tentatively planning to release the band’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in April. Wilco severed ties with Reprise after major disagreements with the label regarding the album, […]
Instrumental prowess alone is not enough for studio musicians. Working in virtual anonymity, the best are chameleonlike, peripatetic geniuses who hop from session to session, plumbing their virtuosity to enhance a singer or instrumentalist. Nashville’s legendary A-Team, who dominated country […]
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